Okay, guys. It may be difficult not to judge me on this one. But it’s not my fault, how was I to know!? Of course this kind of thing doesn’t come up during the booking phone call.
This was back in cosmetology school. A group of older ladies walk in, ready to get done-up for a family members wedding. I walk over to the group of ladies to take my client back, and when I ask who wants to go first, two ladies stand up together, arm in arm. I politely ask which would like to go first, and one (we’ll call her Clara) says she will. The two are still walking together, so I’m sure the lady helping Clara could see the confusion on my face. She said, matter of factly, “Oh, she’s blind”.
This took me by surprise. I’ve never been taught what to do if you encounter a blind client. The first thing that came out of my mouth was “Oh, okay! Sounds good!” Yikes. A thunder of laughter erupts from all Clara’s friends. My peers at the front desk that have been watching this exchange are looking at me like omigodshedidnotjustsaythat. Clara’s friend looks at me with amusement in her eyes and says “Well, I don’t know about good, but I guess you could say that”.
What made things worse is that Clara was not always blind. She became blind just a few years before from having some sort of sickness/disease. She was a very kind lady, and the rest of the service went well. Here’s what I learned from this experience:
- When a client informs you of a condition they have, it’s best to respond with a more neutral response. Instead of saying “Okay, sounds good!” To a client being blind, I should have said “Okay, thanks for letting me know. Can I help you with anything?”
- Another thing to think about in this situation- we always are asking clients if everything looks okay. “How does that length look for you?” “Do you have a photo of what you are wanting?” Making sure the client liked what I was doing was tricky for me. I put a lot of thought into how I was going to go about that issue during Clara’s service. I ended up periodically asking Clara how she felt. Giving the client an experience is almost as important as giving them the final product. I made sure she always had water, coffee, whatever she needed. I made sure she felt comfortable.
- I always let Clara know what I was doing. I explained to her how her hair looked. She told me that she just wanted volume, so I explained to her the steps I was doing to achieve that.
- Throughout the service, I went to ask Clara’s friends what they thought of the style. Hearing her friends approve of the style helped Clara feel more confident about how she looked. By the end of the service, I had a happy client, and dare I say, a new friend.
Please comment with questions and thoughts. How would you go about this situation? What could I have done differently, and what did I do well?