Why Saying 'No' to a Client Can Be the Best Client Experience Move You Make | Ep. 47

This week on the Systems Rehab Podcast, I'm telling you about the time my hairstylist denied me a service  and how that one "no" turned into 7 years of loyalty, thousands of dollars, and my whole family becoming her clients.

Here's the thing: your client experience isn't just what happens after someone books you. It starts way before that and if you're not being intentional about that experience, you're leaving it up to when you have time, when you're available, when you feel like it. 

In this episode I talk about:

• Why my hairstylist's "no" was actually the best client experience she could've given me
• What it really means to care about the result over the money
• Why client experience systems matter even when you think your business is "too custom" for one

If you know it's time to get your client experience in order, let's talk. Head to yoursystemspro.com or DM me on Instagram @kenniqua.systemsrehab.

Let's keep the conversation going. Send me a DM on Instagram or Threads @kenniqua.lewter

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Transcript

Kenniqua Lewter (00:00)

before your clients inquire about your services, before they go through and they book a consult call, discovery call with you, before they even possibly even really truly know who you are and know your name, your client experience has already started. So I started thinking about this because the other day, about two weeks ago, I went to go get my hair done. And it made me start thinking about the first time that I had.

Came in contact with my loctiation I've actually had locks at this point for about six, seven years. So I'm in Virginia and I was looking for someone to do a hairstyle for me. I just had a loose natural hair that I struggled doing all the time.

And so I wanted to be able to put my hair up in a like a bun at the top of my hair. So I wanted to get hair added and I wanted to get a bun. Now I've had this hairstyle several times before. Like I've had someone at my old job when I was working a nine of five, she would do this hairstyle for me all the time,

So I walked into the shop and I went to my hairstyle, my now loctitian, but I went in and I asked her, I said, can you I showed her the hairstyle and I said, Can you do this hairstyle for me? And she said, No. She said, if you get that hairstyle, it's going to start pulling out your edges. Like your edges are already kind of thinning.

She said, if I do that hairstyle for you, it's gonna, it's gonna just damage her edges. And so I'm like, okay. And I'm sitting here thinking to myself, like, man, I I really wanted that hairstyle. Like I can kind of see what she meant because being that I had that hairstyle before, like, okay, I can see it's kind of thinning, but I'm like thinking to myself, like, it's gonna be okay, you know. But she refused to actually do my hair. She would not do the hairstyle. She would not. And so I walked out.

And left and I just continued to kind of do what I can do with my hair. I did not get I didn't try to go to anybody else or try to get the hairstyle or anything like that. I just went and continued to try to do my own hair. And then it was a year later when I finally decided to say, you know what? I'm going to get locs because this loose natural is just not working for me. I am not that good at doing hair. So I need to go ahead and get something where my hair can always look

Pretty good, it's very low maintenance. I want to get locks. And when I thought about going through and getting locks, I went to the person that denied me service for my benefit. And I think sometimes that is n something that's taken lightly sometimes as service providers. Because when we someone comes to us and they want to do a service, just like how I went to her.

To get my hair done. Most people, most service providers, they do the service despite knowing that it's not the best option to do for that person at that time because they're like, hey, I'm just gonna go ahead get the money. I'm not fully responsible for what happens, what's the end result of XYZ, right? In this case, it was my hair. Now, granted, does that mean that the one time that she did it, it was just gonna pull all my edges out? No. But she cared more.

About the result. She cared more about the health of my hair than actually going through and getting money. So when a year passed, and granted, she she was she didn't know that I was gonna come back ever, but she was willing to go through and say, Hey, I'm going to make sure that I do the best work and I'm thinking about the client.

That I'm not gonna do your hair. I'm not gonna do that hairstyle for you. But it was a no-brainer to me that when it was time for me to go get my locks done, that I'm gonna go to the person that denied me the service previously because I knew that her heart was in the good place.

I knew that as I went through and I got my hair locked and I was going through my lock journey, I knew that she would take care of my hair, that she would tell me stuff about my hair. She would make sure that as I go through this journey, that everything was gonna be good, despite of how I felt about it, or despite price, or despite losing money, gaining money, etc.

There's been times during my lock journey where I've had to cut my hair. If you guys have been following me for a while, you'll know that my hair it should be longer to than this. Like it's a decent length, but it had gotten to this length probably about like if you're watching on the on YouTube, you can see my hair. And my hair was longer than this a couple of years ago. Like it was like this length a couple of years ago. So

At this point, it definitely would have been way longer at this point, but I had to cut my hair because I I ended up damaging my hair because I was getting a lot of styles that had rubber bands and my hair really doesn't like the stress of having

rubber bands on my hair. But that's something that over the years, like she's like, you know your hair doesn't like stress. You can't wear those rubber bands in your hair like that that long. Or you can't tie your your when I have my hair up in a a a ponytail. She's like, you can't tie your hair in a ponytail that tight like how you do it because your hair doesn't like that pressure. So I I found someone that genuinely cared about

my hair, right? They cared about the health. And that really is all that client experience is. And it starts speaking for you way before they actually paid. And that's why this kind of example just kind of come came upon me. Because I'm like, she didn't know that I was going to be a client. But now at this point, seven years later into my lock journey, I have paid her thousands of dollars at this point.

my family members. My family has locks.

My husband has locks. He goes to her. My oldest daughter has locks. She goes to her. Right? So now this is three people just in my family that go through and we get our locks done by her. My youngest daughter is gonna be starting her lock journey probably at the end of this year. Who's she gonna go to? She's gonna go to her. Now, just based off of that one denial, that one denial.

That one part of showing that you know what, I care about the health of your hair over the money has now landed her thousands of dollars years later. And I will continue to go to her. No one in seven years has touched my hair in seven years. And they won't. I won't go to anybody else.

Client experience happens before someone lands on your website. Client experience happens before they submit that inquiry, and it happens way before they go through and pay you. When they reach out to you in your DMs, or even if you're doing, let's say, in person events and they see you in in person events and they start talking to you. It begins the moment you even kind of surface on their radar. Okay. So I really want you to kind of keep that in mind.

That if you are not going through and you're intentionally crafting a client experience that actually speaks the way you want to go through and show up. And only how you can really do that is actually having client experience systems in place. Because without client experience systems, a way to go through where it can be consistent, right? You're getting everybody's getting consistent feedback. It's a little bit different when we're talking about.

Example that I use when we're talking about hair, like yeah, I'm walking into a hair shop. This is something that she's just telling me, right? So she doesn't need a system for her to literally just tell me this. But if you're running a business where clients are going through and they're putting in inquiries with you, clients p clients want to go through and they wanna pay you.

You have to be able to go through and have a system in place because guess what? They can do this at any point in time. They can go through and they can submit an inquiry at two o'clock in the morning. Is the person who submits an inquiry at two o'clock in the morning still going to get that same level of client experience than the person that reached out to you at 10 a.m. in the morning?

It can only be consistent and show up as premium as you and your business are in the offers that you give to your clients and offer to your clients is having intentional client experience systems set up in your business. And that is exactly what it is that I do that I help each and every one of my clients with. It's implementing this into your business. And we typic start off with a client relationship management system.

Okay, this is a CRM. This is where we typically start because this is where I find that a lot of high touch service providers where they're spending a lot of time in a lot of the admin work, they're spending time sending out proposals, they're not doing the follow-ups in the in the time that they should be doing follow-ups. Like how many follow-ups

are actually slipping through the cracks because you don't have time in order to be able to do it, or there's no system to go through and remind you of doing any of those things How many testimonials or client feedback forms have not been submitted because you have no form. There is no process for these types of things, And so this is typically why we start at the client relationship management. We start there.

Now, as a client experience system strategist, honey book educator, we go through and we build upon that system. But again, this is where we start first. And this is how I go through and I help my clients. So if this is something you do want to learn more about and how we can go through and implement the unique client experience systems that's built for your particular business, When I build these out for clients, how I build out one client's systems

It's not gonna look the same. It's not gonna look the same for one client that it does for this client because the processes are going to be different. We always go through, we start with mapping out your client journey to see: hey, these are this is the client experience. This is the journey that your clients are going through.

You're creating something that's going to be unique for your business. And so if this is something that you know that you need, you've been putting it off for a while now, and it's time for you to go through and start implementing this because there's so many things that are being dropped. The balls are being dropped, you're losing clients at this moment in time. You might even at this time be having clients that are complaining.

That they're not getting the level of experience that they wanted. They're they're complaining that you're not following up. You're they're complaining that you're not sending things out in time. This is why you need client experience system. I will leave this information in the podcast show notes. You want to go to your systemspro.com and let's chat, let's have a conversation about how this can actually work for you and your business.

Or you can also go through and send me a DM. You can find it at Kenniqua.systemsrehab on Instagram as well. And I'll be happy to go through and chat with you. So this was a quick episode next week. I do want you to come back next week. we're going to be talking about naming your actual client experience standard.

This is going to be unique for each and every person. And I'm going to give you my exact framework of how to go through and do that.