Beauty salons’ phone habits risk freezing clients out
Leaving customers on the phone could cost salons business, according to new research. Audio branding specialist PH Media Group’s survey of 3,630 UK companies found that beauty salons leave callers on hold for an average of 33.56 seconds. However, previous research has shown half of callers will hang up after 20 seconds. PH Media Group sales and marketing director Mark Williamson says, “Callers are simply unwilling to wait on the end of the line while subjected to silence, muzak or beeps so firms are putting themselves at serious risk of losing business.”
Call handling in general is a cause for concern for the beauty industry. PH Media group also audited each company in the study, scoring them each out of 100 based on overall call handling practice. Beauty salons averaged just 36. Various components were used to create the score, with elements such as the time taken to answer a call, use of consistent voice and music and professional and personalised voicemail and out-of-hours messaging weighted to reflect their importance.
“Good customer service is paramount for any service sector business so it is important to evaluate all aspects of call handling to ensure calls are dealt with appropriately,” added Mark.
