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[00:00:00] Refined Network Podcast. We're actually doing this video, obviously, if you're hearing audio. You just picture us sitting upstairs at Anagen 11 in Appleton, Wisconsin. Got Christopher here today. And, man, what a
Christopher: beautiful space. Thank you, sir. We are up in the clouds. That's what I call this office is the cloud office.
Evan: Let me paint a picture real quick. So you come in the front door and if you turn right, he has a ladder that goes up into this, I would call it like a crow's nest and you climb up this ladder and it brings you into this area up above. That's amazing. You got desk up here. It's where you record video.
It's just the coolest thing. And I was telling him earlier, I said, so if you up, if you're up here, you probably don't have many people climbing up here. Like it's gotta be serious if they're coming up here to ask you a question. Is that correct? A hundred percent.
Christopher: And [00:01:00] I think, it's one of those parts, you have to work for it.
And then the other part is, I love it so much. You have to duck your head. And it was my favorite part that they messed up within the bill. Cause I think we can always check our egos, right? So every time I'm coming up, every time I'm going down,
Evan: I'm just a little ego check, check yourself. I love that.
You look at something that most people would be frustrated about and you're like yeah, I couldn't find the silver lining of this. Oh, see that silver and angel 11 all in one. We wanted to jump on the podcast today to talk about Customer care, luxury customer service, because I have been here for 24 hours.
Now we've ate some really great food and us being the service business, we have seen kind of some subpar customer service when it comes to at the restaurant. And then this morning we've had really great customer service. So we want to talk about customer service. And I hear this a lot, luxury.
What [00:02:00] is luxury? And I think a lot of people think different things about luxury and they think it's about going and buying all this really nice stuff. So let's dissect this. Let's talk about our lunch yesterday and the customer care.
Christopher: So you know, so it's a situation where you go in and they really put a lot of intentionality into a lot of people.
pieces of it, right? The interiors done well. They've chosen nice glassware, the silverware weighed 17 pounds, right? And it was solid. Yeah. It was a lot of things, and the part of it though and this isn't meant to be a personal rip on anyone that we've had in customer service.
It's more of just a reflection on, how's everything coming together as a brand's mission and vision. And the main thing that I think that I was really left with was every part of it was great. They, they paid for a nice interior, they had great lighting, everything was beautiful.
However, the experience that we had with our server was almost like it was like we were, it was annoying to have to serve us. Like it was a job to have to, serve [00:03:00] us in that atmosphere. And it brings a focus to just, we weren't even in a salon, right? We were just experiencing something out and we had immediately, both of us were like, Oh, this is definitely a point of they could really focus here.
Evan: Now here's the thing. I'm sure maybe if this was in the salon atmosphere, we could use in the restaurant, the manager might be like they took your order. She took our order, right? She did. But that was about it. There was no. connection or anything like that. And you're right. The place was beautiful.
The food was great. But every time she came to the table, we were just baffled. She walked away. It's I've never had someone so direct with no emotion and just walk
Christopher: away. The, the thing I think is interesting too, and it's, this is one of the things I always encourage to people that are in service.
Go out and experience, strive to experience great service, right? Take yourself out to a nice meal, go to a nice spa. And [00:04:00] watch what people are doing and watch how intentional they are. I think one of the biggest things that like, I looked at, both these situations. So to paint the picture, we went to two places that were very, they had spent the money.
Up at Lambeau Field at 1919. They had spent the money to make this atmosphere beautiful. And though the part that actually that we were there for it was to, we're there to be serviced and that part was where they fell short. And I think that, the biggest thing in my mind that I said, I was like, if I had to say one word that was to give them an idea of Hey, this could be some encouragement.
I think in service and care, if you strive to be unforgettable, and I don't mean that you have to go outside of your means of who you are and if you're an introverted person, be this, amazingly extroverted person. But I think if we think about the idea of be unforgettable, it can mean the right thing to each table, the way that you connect with them, right?
The comments that you make, the acknowledgments that you make eye contact, right? The way that you set something down, all of [00:05:00] these little points that you can think on. I think a lot of people sometimes are like, Oh, I'm just, I don't have that personality. Like your personality is fine, no matter who you are, right?
If we focus on connection and to be unforgettable. I think that pairs well with a luxury experience. Did you get a school superlative when you were in school? I
Evan: don't even know what that word means. You don't know what a school superlative is? Like most athletic, most.
Christopher: Oh, probably most likely to fail or something like that.
I won't look into that. Yeah.
Evan: I got most unforgettable. And I was like, wow, Mr. Unforgettable
Christopher: in the building.
Evan: And I was like, I remember in high school, I said all these other ones people are going to forget. They're not going to forget. This term forgivable. Absolutely. You're so right. I've used the word like be remarkable.
Whatever you do something different than everyone else is doing. I told our team in January, we're not in the salon [00:06:00] business. We're not in the cut and color business. We are in the experience business. 100%. And that's where the luxury comes in. You can go buy all the nice things. You can go buy the 10, 000 shampoo bowls.
You can go buy the nice flooring and the nice chairs. Now don't get me wrong. Things are nice. Yep. Those shampoo bowls are probably a little extravagant because most people can't tell the difference, but in 10, 000 shampoo bowl, but it needs to be comfortable. It needs to be aesthetically pleasing, but if you don't have the right people, you don't have the right culture.
Then all that doesn't mean anything. Now, the place we ate this morning was not a luxury place, but the customer service was, you wrote a review. Yeah. Literally
Christopher: at the table, you the main thing I took away from it was they hadn't spent the money in these other places in the way that they had, very simple. Some of it, honestly, you could tell that they put it together in a the part that I was really inspired by though, was [00:07:00] Their entire team worked as a team. And if I'm trying to think through it, but while we were there, we had six different waitstaff check in with us, and every one of the waitstaff, as they came up, it was with care. It was with great eye connection and a smile. Exactly. And, you could tell that they genuinely did the experience that we give you, cause in, in that business, especially just simple, breakfast type of diner.
They realize that's what matters, right? And they have that ability. Like you can have a 10, 000 statement wall or you could have, there's might've been 50 bucks from Hobby Lobby, right? It, in the idea of it, what was memorable were the people that filled the space, right? And that's, I think one of the main things right now, when we try and differentiate and bring this back into the salon business if you're in a space that's curated and it's beautiful, just, that, that's something to just have a lot of gratitude for.
But then to also understand that if the brand's vision is to deliver an experience, [00:08:00] that's where all of us have to happen. For you, it is, you're Mr. Unforgettable. That makes total sense. Shameless plug, 2002. That's okay. That's wisdom. No it was something though that in the way of the experiences, the our collective check was around 10 percent of what was the most expensive meal that we did.
And that was the one that really had me feeling I was like, wow you all really worked for the money that I gave. The
Evan: other ones were beautiful. Good places we ate. Yep. It didn't move the needle for you to leave a Google review. Not at all. So a lot of people are focused on, yes, your place needs to be beautiful.
You got to have the people, you got to have the culture that moves the needle. It's not the stuff. That's inside because those salon chairs, they're going to be obsolete in 10 15 years. If you take care of them. If you don't take care of them, they won't last very long. Big if. But the people are going to be there [00:09:00] long term, hopefully.
If you have the right culture and you hire the right people. So this whole thing of luxury, I think we're in agreeance. It's the people. They're the ones that move the needle. If you're a salon owner and you're listening to this, if you're behind the chair and you're listening, if you're front desk, if you're in insurance or whatever area you're in, what moves the needle and focus on that?
Yeah. Cause if you move the needle, it's going to move the needle of connection. It's going to move the needle of profit, which then when you move the needle of profit, you have more income and you can actually go and purchase the nice chair. Talking about experience. We have a treatment room in our salon and it's all on the experience.
It's all on the luxury. But if we had a team of people that did not do consultations, they did not come in with a good attitude. It would, they, you have one person, it will come back to this. One person can change the whole [00:10:00] experience. How about if we just got a person yesterday that, Maybe it was not their top performer, it was just bottom of the barrel.
What if the manager's yeah, we probably, I'm trying to, I'm trying to move her out of the company, but we just really need her right now. That changes the whole experience for us. And there's a lot of salon owners that are holding on to people that they know are not fitting their culture and they're actually going against the culture.
And if you have all these nice amenities, you have all these nice things, but you don't have the right people or person. You have one person that's going against that. Our treatment room is a dud, right? It's a dud because we have the consultation and they're getting colored. They're getting the color on the color bar.
They're meeting people. They're getting a drink and then they go into the treatment room and now it just took it up another level. That's what luxury is. It's having great front desk people. Who smile [00:11:00] and who love to connect
Christopher: with people, connect and care, and I think that was the one thing from this morning that was really visible to me was everyone's awareness.
I, I we had some great conversations. Evan and I are both terrified of snakes. Come to find out please keep me away from them. But the part that I saw as I was watching in my peripheral, I was watching a lot of them have awareness of each other. Because here's the thing, the, we've all been at that place that they check in at the wrong time and they check in too often.
They really have this figured out and being that, we were there for about 40 minutes, maybe something like that. So the fact that they had six different of their front end team moving in unison together, that was one of the parts that I was most inspired by most. And, if I can give a little shout out to our team, What it reminded me of was our coordinators, and this is something that, that we just always try and say, like, how can we better service our team?
And one of the things that we've really realized in the salon [00:12:00] was, some of the time, it may be a complicated rebook, right? And that, and our artist wants to do that rebook, so then, the coordinator, they're up there, they're there to handle that process. What we've actually started to do is we're like, okay, cool.
If the artist would rather rebook the service and they want to be hands on with their client, as they're moving through retail and things of that nature, our coordinators will go out and reset the station so that it's that idea and just general awareness. Like you could sit there and just pause.
You're going to, you're going to go about 90 seconds of time. That's going to just get, vanish into the ether or on the other side of it, you can say, how can I provide value right now? And the thing that I think you see is, that client that's checking out. They're still being serviced by the artists, but every other client that's sitting in the salon, that's watching one of our other team go up, reset the station.
That's the thunder that whenever, so our building is built on shipping containers. Yeah. This is the first time you heard
Evan: that. Hopefully I'm going to try to edit so they can hear that. But if you didn't hear it, it was like, sound like [00:13:00] somebody ran into the side of the building. You didn't have even a bit.
My heart dropped.
Christopher: I saw your face. To give full context of that. Our building and maybe in the video, we can add in a clip of the outside of it. So we have two 40 foot shipping containers that go up in the air and we welded on these ones to make 11s on the slam. Every time that pops, it's the slope of the one getting heated up by the sun.
So it pops just a little bit. So this happens about once or twice a day. And I always say like when it happens and we're talking about something that I'm charged about, the building is just affirming it. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. No, to go that back to that awareness piece of it, though, like that's something that some people have it naturally, but I do genuinely feel that in a luxury experience.
What we're looking to do is curate a process that just works without sometimes even being asked, right? I didn't see any of them saying, Hey, go check in on that table, go check in on that table this morning. I just saw them moving as the way that they did. And that's, I think, when you can really tell when you have a group of people.[00:14:00]
That have a high amount of care for each other that understand that Hey, we are a luxury salon. You could go 0. 2 miles down the road and get a similar service. And the idea of I'm just going to call a haircut for a minute. Not saying they're going to do it the way that we do it, but it is a haircut.
You can go 0. 2 miles down the road and I imagine you could probably pay somewhere in the space, 30 to 40 percent of what you pay here. So when we look at that, our team has to have the awareness of okay, why are, why is our customer coming here? If you think about, you go into a Porsche dealership or a Louis Vuitton store obviously those, both of those things are going to land in the luxury class.
But if you think about the experience that you're having in the store and the attentiveness of those humans, that's all part of that process. If you don't have that, you don't feel the same way when you walk out of there with the Louis Vuitton bag, right? You don't feel the same way when you leave the Porsche dealership and they're maintaining your car, right?
And I think those are just things that like, when you study it. Great service in other areas or you've watched for great service. It can just sharpen your own saw
Evan: [00:15:00] Louis Vuitton Porsche all their hiring They have the same hiring pools as we do. Yep, because they are looking for Specific people and in the salon industry.
We need to be looking for specific people You can't just hire anyone If you want the great culture, we'll end on this. I wanted to get back to awareness. The diner this morning was, you think about in the morning, people get coffee. When you run out of coffee, you're like, come on, fill it up. And they were, I wonder if behind the scenes, they're like, look, no customer gets to the bottom of their cup.
On the call on coffee, like they just went around and around till I was finally like, all right, I'm done. I gotta drive And It's a different environment then I wonder what that crew would do if [00:16:00] it was an upscale place Like would they I think they would have the same mentality, but maybe they would Just instead of asking to fill up.
They just fill it up. Exactly And There's different environments, but the care and the awareness and to connect with people is all the same. And it, I was like, we just got a report podcast on this because the technical skill in salon world is definitely it's there, it's out there now, if your people are getting it or not, that's a whole other thing.
But I think a lot of salon owners are like, wow, stuff. Why am I stuck? And it comes back to culture. It comes back to leadership. If you're a salon owner listening to this the bad thing is that you don't like about your culture, it's your fault. The good thing is, you can actually do something about it.
Here at the Refined Network I know we've been slowly launching this out, but we are a coaching [00:17:00] network. We would love to help salon owners And we do one on one coaching. We do in salon coaching. We do in salon workshops. We have two salon leaders retreats coming up this fall. We have one in April, but it's already sold out.
And there's something else that I'm missing that we have coming up.
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Evan: that
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Evan: the Artist Academy. Ah, Artist Academy. That's the big three is one on one coaching, Artist Academy, and Salon Leaders Retreat. The artist academy. We are in the process of building an artist academy that's going to train your new staff, your new artists from day one to six months, and it's going to be a lot of work on our part, but we are so excited because the industry has never seen anything like this.
It's going to give you structure. It's going to where everyone gets trained the same exact way in [00:18:00] your company. And when that happens, Christopher has done this and. And I've done this, the company starts, see it just starts to move all in unison when everyone's trained the same exact way. So go to the Refinedatwork.
com if you love it, let Christopher know, if you see any errors, just let Christopher know hey, we're in this thing, we are building this thing. We haven't went out and hired a bunch of people to build websites and do all this stuff. Like we are in this. So we are salon owners. We work in the salon.
We were in the salon every day. I had somebody asked me, they're like, Oh, so you're doing the coaching thing. Are you going to be, are you going to be stepping away from the salon? I'm like, no, like that's my baby. The salon's our baby. We do this because we want to help salon owners. We're not doing this because we need to.
We both have successful salons and we just want to, we know what it's like to build stuff. A hundred percent. And so we're not. [00:19:00] Geniuses, we're not the people with all the answers. I teach from all the mess ups that I've done. Yeah, I have a whole book Awesome. Hey, thanks for joining the refined network podcast Christopher.
Thanks for having me up here Always a pleasure. Always. Thank you guys for listening
