What Do We Mean by Salon Customer Reviews?
Salon customer reviews are essentially real-life testimonials that reflects the level of quality, service, and value your salon brings to customers.
Typically, customers only leave reviews after an experience that’s either amazing or far from it. This results in reviews that often lean heavily toward one side of the other.
For businesses like salons, this can make it challenging to gather a balanced range of reviews that reflect the full breadth of customer experiences.
Salons should focus their efforts on platforms that people search on for salon services, like Facebook, Google, Yelp, TripAdvisor, or any other local directory.
Usually, the general public will judge a salon based on online reviews, despite never stepping foot in them, which makes it important for you to manage your online reviews.
To put it in perspective, around 49% of Americans are influenced by online reviews when choosing a salon!
Why Are Reviews Important for Salons and Spas?
Reviews are very important for any business, especially for service-based ones like salons and spas because reviews show trust and give potential customers assurance in your business and service quality.
Also, customers tend to stay with one spa or salon that they trust for a long time.
Good online reputation and review management help you get loyal customers who will keep coming back since the average lifetime value for businesses like salons and spas is very high.
Good reviews also help in boosting your online visibility on search engines like Google and review platforms like Yelp.
These platforms want to give the best user experience, so they will rank businesses higher with more positive reviews. But remember, this is only one of many ranking factors!
Think about it, if you have a salon or spa in Hong Kong. Imagine how many more clients you’ll attract if you’re the top result for searches like “Best Salons in Hong Kong”!
What Can You Do With Your Salon Reviews?
As we’ve mentioned, salon reviews act as trust signals and are considered user-generated content (UGC). UGC is similar to word-of-mouth marketing, as people generally trust the words and opinions of others, that’s just how humans are wired.
As a result, including UGC in your marketing material, be it offline or online can be a big determining factor for conversion.
That’s why when you see most sales landing pages, you’ll see stuff like “what people say about us”, or maybe “our clients”. The same logic applies.
For salons and spas, you can try including reviews on marketing channels like:
- Flyers and Banners
- Email Marketing
- Facebook or Instagram Posts
How To Increase and Improve Salon Customer Reviews
1. Use a Lead Magnet or Incentive for More Customer Reviews
By far the most effective and easiest way to get customers and clients to leave more online reviews is to provide a lead magnet or incentive. This could be in the form of free products, a discount, or maybe a free add-on on their next visit.
Doing this shifts the power dynamic and makes them want to leave a review instead of you requesting one.
To take it a step further, you can provide vouchers to customers that they can share with their friends and family – that they can claim as well. All they need to do is leave a review and you can validate it on your end, once they’ve done so.
Our voucher management module, Click2Redeem allows you to generate and validate online or offline vouchers without hassle!
Not to mention, if you want, you can automatic prompt a voucher to your customer’s email after they leave a review or give feedback!
Click on the button below if you’re interested!
2. Gamification to Increase Salon Reviews
Another great way to get customers to leave reviews is through gamification. This essentially means that you make it fun for them and make them want to leave reviews.
Here are a couple of examples that you can try:
Giveaways & Raffles
Giveaways and raffles are a good way for salons and spas to get more reviews from customers.
You can give one raffle ticket for each review, and let customers have as many as they want.
Customers can get their friends and families (preferably those who have visited your salon or spa) to leave reviews for more tickets.
In addition, you can also offer a ticket for each platform! For instance, you can provide 1 ticket for Google, 1 ticket for Yelp, and another ticket for TripAdvisor!
Another important thing to factor in is to make sure the prize is worth it enough for people to want to get their friends and family to leave reviews.
But this method is still a cheap way (compared to others) to get a lot of reviews on many different platforms!
Scratch Off Discounts
A fun way to motivate customers to leave reviews is to offer scratchcard rewards. The concept is to have a variety of discounts and/or other perks in the form of scratchcards, where customers receive a random benefit by scratching the card they’ve received.
You can have some scratchcards without any discounts or rewards, but make sure that the odds are favorable enough for customers to spread the word that they can win a prize, which can also boost your word-of-mouth marketing.
3. Simply Ask for Positive Reviews If Possible
A simple way to get reviews if you lack the resources for the above options is to just ask for them. Most people are not unwilling to leave reviews, but they often forget once they get out the door.
The best way to do this is to ask customers right after the session is over, the chances of them leaving a review are quite high if they had a good experience.
On that note, you’d want to ask customers who you think had a positive experience, as they’re more likely to give an honest review and of course, you’d prefer more positive reviews than negative ones!
You’d be amazed how many customers are ready to leave reviews if you simply ask for them!
4. Make It As Easy As Possible for Customers to Leave Reviews
According to some of the clients that we’ve worked with, many customers are not willing to leave reviews simply because it’s a big hassle. Think about it, they have to:
- Search for your business on platforms like Google (it’s a lot harder if your Google profile is not optimized for search engines).
- Log in using their accounts (if they’re not already logged in).
- Go through 2-factor authentication (if they’ve got it activated).
- Leave the review.
That’s too much hassle for something optional. So, the smart thing to do is to make the experience as simple and convenient as possible.
The best way to do this is to use QR codes to link directly to your Google profile or another platform.
You can display these QR codes in prominent places and have one on your payment counter. If you can, remind them to leave a review, along with the incentive if you’re offering one.
Alternatively, you can automatic prompt an email after every appointment with a link attached – like we mentioned just now!
5. Use Automatic Messages & Emails After Every Session For Feedback
In line with the previous point, you can also use automatic messages and emails for a Google review after every session. This makes it easy for them to simply click a link and head to your Google profile or another platform.
To do this, we recommend using an online booking system (like KlikNRoll, our flagship product) so that you can collect emails and phone numbers for your appointments seamlessly.
Most online booking platforms don’t allow you to collect comprehensive data like this, but you’re able to get full control of everything because our booking system will essentially be an extension of your website, which is great since your customers won’t need to download any app, adding another step to the process.
In KlikNRoll’s booking system dashboard, you’re able to effortlessly extract data, segment them, and put it into our dedicated email marketing system to automatically send your predesigned emails.
You can also do A/B testing to see which emails work the best to optimize for conversion. On top of asking for reviews, this is also great for sending promos, getting your customers caught up on your business, etc.
If you’re interested in our solution and the flexibility that comes with it, contact us for more information using the button below!
6. Be the Expert in Your Industry and Educate Your Customers
Customer education is a very powerful way to get reviews. You might wonder how that works.
Well, the spa and salon industry is one of those industries where skill and quality work are crucial for customer loyalty and word-of-mouth.
Being an expert in what you do not only gives customers confidence but you can also teach them based on the service.
For example, if you do a perm on a certain type of hair, it will end up dry. You can inform your customers about this issue its causes and what they can do to prevent and reduce the effects.
Your customers will appreciate it and will consider you an expert in the industry. Don’t trust us?
Check your reviews or your competitors’, and you’ll see that many of them have the words “knowledgable” or “knows their stuff” in them.
If you feel like you already have adequate industry, product, and technical knowledge, perhaps it’s the communication skills that you can work on.
7. Staff Training for Scaling to Boost Reviews and Enhance Customer Experience
We’ve discussed how to ask happy customers for reviews, as well as how to educate them. But how do you scale that up? Besides sending automated emails and messages.
The secret to scaling and getting more and more customer reviews is through consistent staff training.
Consider this, there’s a reason why many industries need exam certification that expires periodically – to keep employees up to date with the latest industry knowledge and trends.
For the customer education aspect, you should train your staff on technical knowledge, so that they can handle different situations and services.
Moreover, soft skills training is vital as your employees are the first point of contact between you and the customer.
Not only that, soft skills training is incredibly important as your employees are the first line of contact between you and the customer.
Having them be polite, patient, and understanding, with good communication skills is paramount, whether doing consultations, giving suggestions, or simply just asking for reviews.
How to Handle Negative Salon Client Reviews
As you get more reviews, some of them will no doubt be negative. The best way to deal with them is to reply to every single negative review. This will achieve 3 things, which are:
- Providing context to potential readers. Context is very important and there might be a valid explanation why some people had a poor experience on certain days.
- Showing readers and search engines that you value customer experience, improves conversion and search rankings.
- Motivating the person who left the bad review to give you another try, to make them a satisfied and loyal customer. This can be done with an incentive like a discount or a new service. You can also demonstrate that you appreciate their feedback.
Besides that, you should be honest and polite with your responses and accept criticism. Reacting angrily and shifting the blame will only ruin your online reputation and presence.
You should also attempt to provide a win-win solution for the person who left the bad review.
This demonstrates that you sincerely care about their experience and could also motivate people to visit your business anyway, despite that review.
The Bottom Line
There you have it, increasing the number of Google reviews is directly tied to customer satisfaction and your expertise. However, it does help if you make it a lot easier for them to leave reviews!
If you follow the tips that we’ve given, you’ll be on your way to building a mountain of client reviews and testimonials in no time!
Hey there! I’m Jeffrey Hau, and my journey in the digital world started after I wrapped up my psychology degree at UCLA. Imagine coming back to the bustling streets of Hong Kong from the tech haven of Silicon Valley – it was a whirlwind of inspiration! Seeing how social media platforms were evolving at breakneck speed and realizing the limitations of traditional advertising in this digital age, I decided to dive in.
In 2012, I laid the foundation of Prizm Group. From our humble beginnings, we’ve now blossomed into a global powerhouse with a team of over 200 passionate professionals. Our HQ is right here in Hong Kong, and we’ve spread our wings to SG, AU, NZ, JP, and China.
As a digital problem solver, our team found that several industries are in need of reservation systems, especially for F&B, Hotels, Beauty, and Medical sectors. Our digital magicians started crafting reservation systems tailored to cater to these specific needs. We extended our expertise to e-commerce, voucher management systems, and campaign management systems, combining them into KlikNRoll – an all-in-one solution. We deep dive into various industries, understanding their unique challenges and developing innovative solutions.
We’re not just a company; we’re your dedicated partners in transforming how you navigate the digital landscape. Our passion lies in providing businesses with intuitive and tailored solutions using KlikNRoll’s powerful capabilities.
Ready to embark on this exciting digital adventure with us? Let’s make your brand stand out in the digital jungle!
