Does your front line answer the phones? For too long, we did this. Had our front desk answering phones to try to save a little money.

Let's look at what we created by doing this:

A guest walks in the door and they are greeted, not by a smiling face, but by a person on the phone, totally ignoring them. Or, a guest is trying to check out and they have to wait until the front desk person gets off the phone.

I can't believe we even did this for as long as we did!

Hire the proper staff to answer phones and let the front line do their job: Making a great first impression to each person who walks in the door.

Tangerine now has a Reservation Center within our flagship salon where we have people making appointments for all three locations. We've made this an interesting part of the salon by putting a glass door and a visually appealing room where guests can see the hustle and bustle of busy phones.

If you don't have an area to take the phones from the front desk, then get two people to work there, so that chances are a guest is greeted with full attention.