29 March 2024

Enter Salon Emotion: Taking Salon Experience to the Next Business Level

Salon Emotion by L’Oréal Professional Products Division is a pioneering program to support the development, business growth and future success of the salon industry. Estetica has talked to Elizabeth Strusz (E Claire Salon, IL) to get an insider’s view of the practical implications of the program.

Salon Emotion is based on three key drivers: training and raising awareness of services, personalized advice, and guidance to modernize salons to re-enchant the guests’ emotional journey of the salon experience. Then, at the core of Salon Emotion, there is a seven-step plan to success: Window Presence (digital & physical), Client Reception, Consultation, Treatment Lounge, Client Service, Retail and Checkout.

When did you first find out about the Salon Emotion concept and why did you fall in love with it?
I found out about Salon Emotion a couple of years ago. It took me a couple of months of implementing it as a stylist behind the chair in my own company, before I realized why I love it so much. I was never the best at doing hair and I was never the best at coloring hair when I graduated from school. But I knew how to talk to people. But I knew how to create relationships. And what they described in this class was how to actually create a full relationship in steps, so we’re successful every time. That is why I fell in love with it and that’s what allowed me to grow so much quicker after the class.

Why is Salon Emotion program so relevant in today’s world?
We have to know what our clients are changing and what they want will change even faster moving forward. We have to jump on the train now to know what they want now so we can move with them. Otherwise we’re going to lose them. I think a lot of us are already feeling that. I think this is something we already know is happening, but we don’t know why. This program answers the why’s. It’s a lot of the experience. It’s how we’re talking to them.

There are a lot of concepts like personalization, personal experience, making people feel they can come to a salon not only for a haircut but also for a “whole” experience.
I think it’s a whole experience, not only about how we talk to them, but how do we structure a salon that feels good. Like when you walk in, where we place a station, where we greet them… These are little things may not seem like a huge deal, but how do you have someone hold your hand as a stylist to grow you into these areas, to be able to make that huge impact. In my town –I come from a small town– there are six other salons that I can throw a stone at. I can see three of them from my salon windows. What am I willing to do that’s so much different, that I know can make that impact? If I just wanted to do hair, I could probably make it. But I live off that relationship with my clients. I need to know that I am the one who gives that experience everyday and my guests have that experience that I can give them. A couple of things that just hit me right off the bat are pre-booking. So now I’m teaching people 5 months out of school to have a 70% rebook rate because of this. Our team went from roughly 68% overall to after-Salon Emotion we’re now running 86% overall in just about a year and a half. That’s a pretty large margin.

Salon Emotion touches every single areas: overall sales, retail sales, rebook…
With our retail sales we actually had a huge change in just a one-month time frame. Salon Emotion touches a couple of things. We touch what’s different in our industry, we touch on how to actually set up the salon itself, we touch on the client journey, to be able to create it as a never-ending cohesive feeling feels good to us, too. When you’re a creative soul you can’t sell things – it’s not a thing for us. It’s gotta feel great. So being able to make it cohesive makes it an ‘easy date’ – so to speak.
Setting up the salon was something I never learned in beauty school. One of the things they taught in Salon Emotion is how to make a clean, retail presentation. The month that I did that we grew 7%… just by changing our shelves and setting up some menus that was a recommendation from the program.

Now that you’re sharing the message with your fellow hairdressers, what are their expectations when they first enter Salon Emotion?
What I find most in the classroom is that we have all those little voices in our head saying that we can’t talk to guests or we’re not good enough. Those are the two things that come out in every class. By the end of the class we realize that we just have to learn how to speak to them. You have to learn some of the statistics, and then you learn how to change it. It’s such a cool thing to watch that dynamic happen… What I have seen Salon Emotion become so far has been so powerful, beyond what I expected. Both as an owner and as a stylist behind the chair.

Join the future and elevate the client journey in your salon. For + info e-mail: SalonEmotion@support.lorealusa.com or follow on Instagram #salonemotionus

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