Salons And Barbers: The Chair-Side Ask

A barber or a stylist has the best setup for reviews of any local business, and most of them never use it.

You just spent forty minutes with somebody. You talked. They trust you enough to let you near their head with sharp objects. And at the end, there is a moment where they look in the mirror and either love it or do not, and you can see which one it is on their face.

Then they pay and leave and you never ask.

The mirror moment is the whole thing

Every business has a peak moment where somebody is most likely to say something good about you. In most businesses it is hard to spot. In this one it is impossible to miss, because it happens in a mirror while you are standing right there.

They turn their head. They touch the back. They say some version of "oh that is perfect."

That is the moment. Not at the register. Not in a text that night. Right there, while they are still looking at it.

Wait until the register and the mood has already moved on to paying and tipping and getting to their next thing. Wait until that evening and you are asking somebody on their couch to go find your page and describe a haircut, which nobody wants to do.

Why this industry has thin review pages anyway

Two reasons, and both are worth naming because they are both fixable.

The first is that this work is personal, so asking feels different. Asking somebody to review a haircut you gave them feels like asking them to review you as a person. Plenty of stylists just will not do it, and I understand why.

The second is that the chair is not near a computer. You are standing, they are sitting, your hands were just busy. There is no natural point where a link gets sent unless somebody deliberately builds one.

So the ask has to be short enough that it does not feel like a favor, and physical enough that it works while you are both standing up.

What to actually say

The version that works is the one where you accept the compliment first, then offer somewhere to put it.

"Glad you like it. If you have a second, that helps me more than you think. Just tap here."

That is the whole thing. You are not asking them to help your business. You are agreeing with them and handing them a place to say it.

Notice you never say "leave me a five star review." Never ask for a rating, ever. Ask for the review and let the rating be whatever it is. Steering people toward a star count is the thing that gets businesses in trouble, and it is also unnecessary, because somebody who just said "this is perfect" is not about to leave you three stars.

The booth rent problem

If your shop is booth rent, this gets messy in a way nobody warns you about. Everybody in the shop shares one Google profile. The reviews land on the business, not on the individual person who did the work.

That is fine, and it is actually good for the shop, but it kills the motivation for the individual. If a stylist thinks her reviews build somebody else's page, she will not ask.

The fix is to tell people to name their stylist in the review. "Ask them to mention who did it" is one extra half sentence, and it changes everything. Now the review does double duty. It builds the shop's page, and it means that when somebody searches your shop and reads down the page, they see specific names attached to specific happy customers. New clients start requesting people by name off review text. That is worth more to a stylist than a page of their own would be.

Do this

1. 1Ask at the mirror, while they are still looking at the work. Not at the register, not later that night.
2. 2Accept the compliment first, then offer the place to put it. Do not open with the ask.
3. 3Keep it under ten words. Long asks feel like begging, short ones feel like a thank you.
4. 4Never ask for a star rating or a number. Ask for the review and let it be honest.
5. 5Ask the client to mention who did the work by name. It builds the shop and the individual at the same time.
6. 6Make it a tap, not a search. Somebody who has to go find your page while holding their keys and their phone will not.
7. 7Put the thing at the station, not at the front desk. The ask happens where the work happened.
8. 8Ask everyone, not just the ones you think will do it. You are a terrible judge of who will follow through, and asking costs you nothing.

The regulars trap

One last thing that catches every shop.

Your regulars are your happiest customers and almost none of them have ever reviewed you. Somebody who has been coming to you for six years is thrilled with you by definition, and they have never once thought to say so publicly, because the relationship is so normal by now that it does not occur to them.

That is a room full of free reviews you have never asked for. Not because they would say no. Because nobody ever brought it up.

Ask the next five regulars who come through. Say it exactly like the script above. You will be surprised how many of them say "oh, sure" and do it while you are sweeping up.

We built a tap card that lives at the station for this. Client taps their phone on it, your review page opens, no app, no typing, no hunting. Have a look at shop.optechsol.llc.