At year’s end, Skin Laundry will count 60 locations throughout the United States, United Kingdom, Hong Kong and Dubai. While the leading laser facial company definitely is in growth mode, its CEO GreggThrogmartin is quick to point out that many of its everyday business challenges are not unique to a large-scale operation. 

As part of our Innergize Leadership Huddle series, Throgmartin talks to SALON TODAY’s Stacey Soble about the future of AI in the beauty realm, and how he’s already seeing it alleviate the stress on the frontline team, improve the client experience and help the brand identify the strengths of individual team member for the collective gain. Throgmartin also shares his enthusiasm for being a guest speaker at Zenoti’s Innergize conference, held in Las Vegas, October 13-15 at the MGM Grand Hotel. 

SALON TODAY:How do you see AI affecting salon owners and the beauty and wellness industry?

Gregg Throgmartin: “It’s going to touch every facet of business, from your logistics to every single customer and employee touchpoint in the very near future. I think there are some things that will get written about but maybe take longer, and some things that are happening today that might not be the flashiest, but AI will make your jobs of your frontline employees so much better and make the client experience significantly better. We’re on the cusp of putting a lot of these things in place now, and we’re seeing them change and adapt dramatically. 

“I think the people who will have the most success with AI understand that the partnership has to be on both sides. AI is only as good as the data and feedback it receives. A lot of times you create something you think will be amazing, but maybe it doesn’t translate to the employee or to the customer experience. I think the areas AI will improve immediately are around scheduling and rescheduling. Even pre-COVID people got sick, right? Whether you’re in a hair salon, a nail studio or a business like Skin Laundry, staff members get sick and can’t come to work. For us, that could mean 60 appointments we have to reschedule. It’s a horrible day for the employee and not super convenient for the customer when you have to go through that whole dialog…‘Well, do you have Tuesday at nine? No, I have Tuesday at 11? I can’t do that. What about…’ We’ve all lived that, right? I can tell you from being on the front line and the one who answers the phones, AI can make your day a lot better, and can make the experience for the consumer a lot easier.”

SALON TODAY:What do you think will be the most dramatic improvement?

Throgmartin: “I really think AI will shape the entire course of business, but I’m most excited about using AI to elevate the consumer experience. For example, with Skin Laundry, depending on the location and the day of the week, we could see 80 clients, and each one is at a different step in their skincare journey. Is it their first appointment as a member and we need to cater around that, show them how to check in and where to put their personal belongings, or is it their 50^th visit? Are they at the stage where they are really seeing dramatic results? With 80 clients, I don’t care how good of a clinic manager you are, you can’t process all that data as to where every client is on their journey and be able to customize their experience. 

“For example, AI can tell me that Mary is coming in for her fourth appointment and at her last appointment she commented that her friends and family are seeing a difference in her skin. The action item might be to talk to Mary about that. How good did that feel? That kind of personalized conversation encourages Mary to keep it going. Now, staff members know exactly what to do for each client, because they are armed with the tools to be able to give that kind of individualized service.”

SALON TODAY:How are you using AI today?

Throgmartin: “Today, we’re really using it a lot with regards to inbound calls—things where there’s high frequency, but really repetitive tasks. If you have a client checking out, and two or three people call at the same time, it’s not a great experience for the client in the salon and it’s stressful for the employee. Those calls can be answered and often a smart bot can walk them through what needs to be done. 

“There was a very interesting example that came up in a meeting with our software vendor Zenoti because they were talking about their product Zeenie and really using AI to answer questions by tapping into large knowledge bases. We had just come off of redoing our employee handbook and we have approximately 400 employees. In one day, we can have 20 employees asking questions about parental leave or the details of our PTO policy, and someone is having to sit there and answer that same questions 20 times a day. With AI we could have that live, active knowledge base where employees can ask questions and they don’t have to wait for HR to get around to answering it. That can also lead to a better client experience. For example, a team member could ask something like, ‘How do I check a client out who is using a gift card?’ I think it will speed the time to proficiency for new hires, which leads to a better employee experience.”

SALON TODAY: How has Zenoti’s HyperConnect AI improved your customer experience? Were there any unexpected benefits or advantages your team discovered?

Throgmartin: “HyperConnect has been a real game changer for us. It really takes a lot of the heavy lifting off the front of the house. They can really concentrate on the personal aspects of the relationship with the consumer. It’s allowing us to get better at communicating with our customers. We’re in the very early innings with this, but with voice AI, every call we have can be recorded and analyzed for consumer sentiment. That really changes the way we train, because it’s no longer ‘you’re a good employee or a bad employee.’ With a sentiment score, we can see where we ought to change the way we are explaining something. 

“You also can use AI to get the analysis of what questions consumers are asking the most frequently. Think of it as a Word Cloud. You can use that information to make changes to your business where maybe clients won’t even need to be asking those questions anymore. Should the information be more prominent on your website? Is it something you now know needs to be mentioned when someone signs up? Should there be signage about it? AI can help us understand where there is friction for the consumer, and we can figure out how to take that away.

“When a client calls in, Zenoti’s HyperConnect can pull up their history where there’s a document of everything. So, if you talked to a client on Monday, and I talk to her on Wednesday, I’m completely up to speed and that makes for a seamless client experience no matter who is working. But again, it also allows us to start to analyze what solution worked or which one didn’t. So, some of these things take time for AI to test a number of things, but it’s really like AB testing on steroids like we’ve never seen. Coming from somebody that’s kind of a data geek, this is incredibly exciting for me.

“One of the things we take pride in is being a good partner. So, our team works directly with Zenoti’s team—the documentation our team brings to them is phenomenal—screenshots, videos, quotes from employees. And we do that selfishly, because we know if we give them better, clearer data, they will be able to add features and make improvements faster.”

SALON TODAY: When you were taking about the ability to analyze every client call and see how each employe dealt with a situation, I imagine that ability can help you discover real stars who may have better methods, and you in turn can use that information to coach the rest of the employees better?

Throgmartin: “Absolutely. You know, there’s the story about McDonald’s and how their filet of fish sandwich was born. There was a franchising partner in Ohio who lived in a Catholic community and at Lent his business would just tank, so he created the fish sandwich. It’s a great example, because McDonald’s is a clear leader in that market, and yet there somebody operating in Ohio was doing something better and that ended up impacting the company globally. AI can help those great ideas from your team bubble up faster, because sometimes they don’t even know to tell somebody. In our organization, I think this is going to have some people become real stars with the things that they’re doing in their individual clinics.”

SALON TODAY: We hear that you’re a speaker at Innergize. What will you be speaking on?

Throgmartin: I’m going to share a few examples of areas of business where we’ve had early success with. That’s important, because everyone likes to talk about the exciting things that are going to happen in the future. But as a business owner, you’re really trying to grow and improve your business, and I want to leave a conference with some ideas that I can talk to my team about right now. So, we’ll talk about some real-life examples of things we’ve rolled out, and also share when we didn’t have early success and how we changed it until we did. I really appreciate when someone shares the full story, not just the end, but the journey. Because not everything is perfect Day One.”

To learn more about this year’s event, go to www.Innergize.me.

For more information on Zenoti, visit www.zenoti.com.