How to brief your team

We’ve talked to many salons who’ve successfully introduced Colourstart into their service offering. We’ve used their experiences to create this guide to help you talk to your team about using Colourstart, and how they in turn can talk to clients about how it will benefit them.

1. Try to talk to your team early on while you make decision about Colourstart. The sooner they know what’s going on, how the rules on testing are changing and understand how Colourstart will help them and their clients, the easier it will be to introduce Colourstart into the salon service.   
2. Bring your team together to talk. That way they’ll all feel involved in the process. If you have a large team, you may want to have several sessions so that everyone is included, part-timers as well.
3. Ask us for help. We can help with training and resources. This includes our ‘How to Use Colourstart’ video. You can choose to use this to help when you talk to your team. Encourage your team to create their own content.
4. Ask for opinions. Your team will naturally have ideas and plenty of questions. Answer these openly. Include their ideas in your plans, especially on training to talk to clients (think about role-playing!).
5. Some team members may be resistant to changing how things are done. They may say they’re comfortable with the way things are done and think that clients won’t want to change either. This is where explaining your commitment to the highest quality of service and the health of your clients is so important.   
6. Your teams know their clients well, so their ideas on talking to clients about Colourstart will be very useful as you plan to introduce it.
7. Create a plan with your team for contacting clients – how you’ll do it, when and who will do it. Some ideas:
   • Contact your client base by more than one email – we have an example email that you can use or adapt to suit your needs.
   • Use your socials and newsletters to explain what’s happening and why.
   • Respond to queries promptly – make sure you have key people assigned as the contact point for queries (they can be your Colourstart Ambassadors)
   • Some clients may need to be contacted by phone – create a ‘Key Messages’ script for this to help the team respond confidently to queries. Again, we have an example for this which you can use or adapt.
   • Create a system and timeline for following up on clients who haven’t responded
   • Prepare a ‘script’ for the team to use when they talk to clients face to face when they’re in salon for a consultation or service – again we have an example for this which you can use or adapt
   • Create a bullet-point poster for the staff room/area which reinforces the Colourstart benefits and key processes.
8. Once you’ve introduced Colourstart, we suggest your team talk to clients about it so you can gather feedback on how well it’s going. That way you can make any changes that might help improve your and the client experience.
9. Tell us how you’re getting on, so we can pass on your experience and pass on tips to other salons.
10. At the same time, we’ll make sure that you’re kept up to date with the latest news and updates from us. We keep in touch with clients as well as salons, so we can monitor how Colourstart is being used and pass on best practice to the Colourstart community.

CLIENT EBLAST TEMPLATE #1

Hello. Here at [ENTER SALON NAME] we make your wellbeing our priority. For that reason, we’re making some changes to the way we skin test for allergy.

We are delighted to share the news that we’re now going to be testing all our colour clients using Colourstart, which is an advanced colour allergy screening system. This will replace the patch testing that we have been using up until now, which means you won’t need to keep returning to the salon for a patch test – you simply buy the initial test, download the Colourstart Passport app that gives you step-by-step guidance on how to apply the test, then each time you book a colour appointment you log on to the app and answer a few questions, then we’re ready to colour.

Why are we doing this?

You know we are passionate about hair colour, and we’re equally as passionate about your experience in the salon. However, we believe that the traditional skin testing method is outdated and inconvenient for clients to visit the salon purely for a skin test.

Why Colourstart?    

Well, Colourstart patch test is the most sophisticated and advanced skin testing method available. It is licensed by the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) as the only clinically proven method of screening for potential allergy to PPD (which is the chemical that causes a reaction).

Colourstart is straightforward to use and cuts out salon visits to have a skin test. It also gives us complete creative freedom on the day of your visit because if you’ve tested and had the ‘ok to colour’ result, then we are 100% sure you will not have an allergy and can use any colour in any way.

What’s next?

When you book your next colour appointment we’ll let you know how to order your test, with all the information you need about the next steps you’ll need to take. Trust us, this is super simple and is going to save you time and hassle in the future. If you have any questions at all, please don’t hesitate to give us a call.