Business people often talk about providing good customer service; making their clients feel valued, maintaining a reputation as honest and skilled tradespeople, and creating customer loyalty. And that’s incredibly valuable to a business.
But there’s another equally important piece to offering good customer service that is sometimes forgotten and that’s internal customer service. The employees that keep a salon busy and profitable are equally as important as the clientele – perhaps more so.
Management and staff both need to remember to treat each other with respect at all times and that can be harder to do than being professional to a client that you only see for a short time every month or two. Different personality types, skill levels, and belief systems can easily clash in a salon creating a less than pleasant work environment. Most of us share a passion for animals and caring for them that makes it easy to fall into a relationship more like friends than co-workers but it’s important to still keep it professional.
Some suggestions on serving co-workers as well as we serve our customers:
- Avoid using bad language. Some people are offended by it. Plus, a customer may overhear.
- Avoid assigning blame when something happens, just work together to fix it.
- Work as a team. Even if you are straight commission based pay, taking a moment to help another groomer with a difficult dog may ensure that you receive help when you need it. If you are hourly it’s just a no-brainer to work together to get dogs done as quickly and stress free as possible.
- Knowing exactly what expectations are is a big help. Owners should have an employee handbook in place with hours and attendance, work responsibilities, dress code, time off procedures and every other aspect of work clearly written out.
- Say please and thank you, and praise others for doing good or extra work!
Enjoy working with like minded people just remember that it’s work and treat everyone with at least as much respect as you show the paying customers.
By Carol Visser, Journalist, Master Pet Groomer, Certified Dog Trainer, Pet Product Expert
