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How Salon & Spa Teamwork Drives Customer Loyalty

MMWU - Teamwork drives salon and spa customer loyalty 5.22.17

This is NOT just another article on “teamwork.”

This IS an article that gives a very different spin on what teamwork truly needs to look like in salons and spas, and how teamwork is the engine that powers customer loyalty.

Customer Loyalty is a Business Outcome.


Customer Loyalty is all about delivering extraordinary service, quality and value to achieve maximum client retention … and doing so with a no-compromise passion to be nothing less than world-class.

As an owner or manager, you must take special care to monitor, inspire, coach and lead employees to do whatever it takes to drive customer loyalty … and to do it as a team.

FACT: Anytime an employee or team loses the vital connection between their work and customer loyalty, there will be a measurable drop in customer retention.

Here are eight simple yet powerful strategies you can use to create the level of teamwork that drives extraordinary customer loyalty to your salon/spa:

  1. The hard work that makes teamwork look effortless: Put the time, effort and training into developing highly functional and empowered teams. Just like in sports, teamwork takes discipline and practice. You cannot mandate teamwork. It takes leadership, systems, discipline and focus on a goal.

  2. Connect your customer loyalty dots: To achieve coordinated teamwork throughout your salon/spa, all the players and all the teams must see and understand how all the pieces, procedures, standards and systems work together to deliver customer loyalty. If you’re not pleased with your customer loyalty ratings, you haven’t connected the dots.

  3. Teams must be ego-free: I can’t write about teamwork without tackling the most common teamwork buster. Keep egos grounded and in check. Because you’re in a service business that employs service providers, you understand the drag big egos can create. It’s sad when “superstars” think the world revolves around them … that the company can’t survive without their royal presence. Such behavior is disrespectful to everyone in the company who works hard to deliver extraordinary salon/spa experiences and to ensure every customer leaves not just satisfied … but delighted.

  4. Teamwork and games go hand in hand: Create some healthy competition or games between teams that focus on customer loyalty and driving first-time retention, on-time service, impeccably thorough consultations, pre-booking, customer problem resolution, increase visit frequency, etc.

  5. Mix it up to share knowledge: Implement cross-functional team development by rotating employees to other teams for a few days, or a week. Nothing creates an appreciation for the ripple effect one team’s performance, or lack of, can create for other teams throughout the company.

  6. Empower decisions to be made within the teams: Set the guidelines and cut the apron strings. The job of the no-compromise leader is to lead, not bog things down by holding on to decisions that teams are capable of making.

  7. It’s the team’s score - not the “me” score: You’re not a team until EVERYONE is pushing and pulling the numbers in the right direction. If you have employees that could care less about your salon/spa’s monthly team goal for service and retail sales … you should care less about signing their paycheck. Got it? Learn more about scoreboards here.

  8. Keep celebrating customer loyalty wins: Allow your teams to experience the sweet smell of success.


Here's my challenge to you: It’s easy to toss around the term “teamwork” and never truly live it in your salon/spa. Teamwork, and its impact on customer loyalty, has yet to be unleashed in the salon/spa industry at the level it is capable of. Consistency in delivering those extraordinary customer service experiences is not even close to where it can be. And when it comes to consistently delivering thorough retail recommendations to clients at the conclusion of a service … the industry barely gets a passing grade.

Creating and maintaining true teamwork is the hard work of leadership and culture building. And when it’s done right … and when it’s done consistently … the reward is a truly impressive world-class Customer Loyalty Business Outcome.

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