How to turn first-time clients into lifelong customers

Getting a client and retaining a client are totally two different things. As a barber, it is easier to get a client than to make the same client come for your services over and over again.

There is something we call first impression and once it fails, you won’t see the client step foot at your shop again. The only easy way to retain a first-time client is to follow his instructions and shave him exactly the way he wants, nothing much.

Telling a man to change a barber is just like forcing him to take poison and most of them become loyal to an extent that despite moving houses far away, they would still find themselves coming back to the same barber.

Take for example a client such as Ian. I started shaving him while he was still in primary school and I can recall one evening he came over for a haircut after school and the electricity went off when I was halfway.

By then, I still didn’t have the rechargeable machine that we now use as a substitutes when there is no electricity and we would sit with Ian waiting for power to resume. We waited and waited and I called everyone that I know who works at Kenya Power but in vain. It was getting late so I offered to give Ian a cap to put on and go home. I told him to come back immediately when the power was back. He declined. We had to wait till 9 pm and still no signs. 

I gave him an option to miss school but he said he had exams the following day. There was a section that wasn’t affected by the outage, so I told Ian to go there and get shaved but he insisted that I take him. So we got into a random barbershop and Ian refused to be shaved by anyone else but me. “Yow, this ain’t my shop. They have their own rules.” I told him.” “No I can’t allow anyone to shave me while you are around. Never,” he replied.

The barbershop owner did not have any problem and he allowed me to shave Ian. The loyalty didn’t end there as Ian would later join high school and one day he reported back to school after the holidays without shaving and he couldn’t be allowed in so he had to take a matatu back to my shop just to get a haircut.

When he finally cleared high school, he decided to grow dreadlocks but it was short-lived because there was a day he attended a friend’s birthday party and unfortunately they got arrested, taken to the police station and his dreadlocks were cut off.

Immediately after being released, he came straight to the kinyozi with his jacket wrapped around his head and I thought he had gotten an accident. Kumbe, he was hiding his unproportionally shaved hair.

They were arrested very far away from my shop, but Ian would still not trust anyone else to do his hair but his personal barber. So if you are a barber and you still don’t have loyal clients such as Ian, who you can be away for more than two weeks but you will come back and still find them bushy just waiting for you, then you have a lot of work to do.

Retaining a client does not necessarily mean that you charge a lower fee than your competitors but being consistent and good at what you do by putting clients’ needs first before anything else is just enough.