Hair salons in Mamallapuram

Hair salons in Mamallapuram 

- by Siddharth Garg (FT13172)

    

 

Once upon a time in May, I went to our beloved Mamallapuram as I desperately needed the services of a hair technician. I sought the opportunity of writing my Marketing blog on the hair salons there, and found the idea of two birds and one stone quite inviting. Soon after my research, I wrote the blog, and somehow managed to forget that posting the blog is also required. What I mean to say is : Sorry for the late entry.

With that, allow me to begin my story. I have, quite imaginatively, decided to call it “The Tale of two hair salons”. When I reached there, I started asking around for a hair salon. I soon came across “Olympic Hair Dressers”, which was on the main road itself. Upon reaching there, I started asking the locals if they knew any other hair dressers nearby. The unanimous answer to my query was “Handsome Hair Dresser”. I was even encouraged to go to Handsome instead of Olympic. My natural question was, “Why should I go to Handsome? Are they better? Or are they more reputed? Are the facilities better? Better prices?”

No, as it turns out, they do not provide any additional services to what Olympic offers. In fact, they offer exactly the same quality of services for the same amount of money. Why I was referred to Handsome was that the barbers that worked there understood Hindi.

“So what,” I said to myself. “The barbers at Olympic must still understand English.” As it turns out, they do. But barely. So I decided to check out Handsome’s apparently famous hair salon.

I must say that upon arrival at Handsome I was rather underwhelmed. It was barely a salon at all, just a bare-bones shop, and was hidden in one of the narrower streets of the city. But it was filled to the brim with customers. I waited for my turn, which took around 30 minutes. “Must be a busy day, or just a busy time of the day”, I thought. I’m from Delhi, so am used to this kind of “Rush Hour Traffic”.

When I finally sat down on the chair, I looked upon the barber that attended me. He looked North Indian. He spoke to me in perfect unaccented Hindi, which proved that my assumption was correct. I told him about my hair-cutting preferences, and to avoid over-cutting my thinning hair. “Sir aap Ganje ho rahe hain,” was his response after meticulously gazing at my scalp. So far so good.

I started asking him questions. For the sake of brevity, I will rephrase the questions and answers below :-

Q. What’s your lineage? How did you end up here? How were you recruited?

Ans. I’m from Delhi, but have worked in Mumbai as well, before arriving in Chennai around 2 years back. I got in through a “friend referral system”.

Q. Do you speak Tamil? English?

Ans. No, but there are other members of the staff who do. All of us are fluent in English as well.

Q. Is it this busy everyday?

Ans. No, but during the weekends it usually is. We have a lot of customers who would not go anywhere else.

Q. Why don’t your customers go to those Olympic fellows? They prefer waiting here for long periods of time.

Ans. You also waited, didn’t you? No comments about that other place.

Q. Who is the owner of the store? Does he sit here? Could I meet him?

Ans. No, he does not sit here. He is from the north himself. Don’t know where exactly. He doesn’t even speak Tamil. He lives in Chennai now with his family, and has other businesses as well. Don’t know the details.

Q. So there are three of you, yourself, another person from Delhi, and a Tamil guy. Anyone else?

Ans. There used to be someone from Bihar, but he’s left now.

Q. So why don’t you raise the prices? Both you and Olympic charge just Rs. 50 for a haircut. How about I tell you I’ll pay Rs. 100 for this one?

Ans. We don’t decide the prices, sir, but I’ll gladly take those extra bucks.

So what did I learn from this story? I learned that in the service industry, the employees closest to the customers are the most important. Even a trivial detail like language made so many customers choose Handsome over Olympic. Also, the friendly and jovial nature of the barbers encourages their clients to visit them again. Hence, customer retention and brand loyalty are very high. Despite having a location advantage and the same kind of skilled barbers, Olympic does not have the same customer following that Handsome has.

In this era of globalization, diversity could be a deciding factor for success. Never was this truer than at Handsome’s hair salon.