More Google reviews for your hair salon or barbershop

A new client in a street with three salons side by side looks at the screen first, not the window display. Rating, review count and how recent the latest review is together decide which door she walks through.

According to FCR Media, just over a third of Belgian internet users choose a salon based on reviews. For a salon that runs on regulars from the neighbourhood, that means any new name walking in has already looked at your page before setting foot inside.

• Rating: the average shown next to your name in the list.
• Count: how many clients back up that rating.
• Freshness: is the latest review from last month or three years ago?
• Photos: clients who add a picture of their colour or their cut.

At the counter, which doubles as the till in most salons, the stylist is often still holding the hand mirror just used to show the back of the cut. The client pays on the card reader and takes one last look in the big mirror at the same time.

1. 1Put the QR code by the till or stick it on the edge of the mirror.
2. 2Take payment as usual, with nothing extra said.
3. 3The client scans while waiting for change or her card back.
4. 4One tap on "happy" takes her to your Google page.
5. 5If something went wrong with the colour, she can write to you there and then instead of letting it sit.

The great majority of registered hairdressers in Belgium work entirely alone, with no staff. The same person does the cut, takes the money and books the next appointment in the diary. Between two clients there is not a second to ask anything.

Even among clients who are genuinely happy, only a small share leaves a review unprompted. According to FCR Media, that is around 2 percent without being asked. Staff costs weigh heavily in this trade, so all the attention goes to keeping the chair filled.

That same pressure explains why a no-show stings more than an average review: Treatwell calculates that five no-shows a week can cost a salon roughly 9,000 euros a year.

Of every kind of complaint, a botched colour hits a stylist hardest. A wrong dish gets sent back and forgotten, but a colour that turned out too brassy gets worn to work or to a wedding. That makes this kind of review more visible and more personal than most complaints in the trade.

What you do not do in public is replay the conversation from the chair. You cannot explain that the client asked for a lighter balayage herself and that you warned her about the risk of brassy tones, because that conversation was private and the reader only ever hears one side. Respond to what is written now, not to who was right.

A public argument about who asked for which colour is not won by anyone. The reader only remembers that there was an argument.

For a freelancer renting a chair, this matters even more. Her name on Google travels with her if she moves salons, and the owner of the premises no longer has any say in it. Reply yourself, always, even when the review is posted under the salon’s name.

• QR code: one sticker at the till or on the edge of the mirror. No app needed for the client.
• WhatsApp or SMS: for regulars whose number you already have from a booking or an earlier visit.
• Follow-up: one reminder after a few days, then it stops on its own.
• Team: if several stylists work in the salon, everyone can follow up, even without your phone.

Nothing changes about your appointment book or your till. The QR code gets added, the rest of your day stays as it was.

Nobody scans in large numbers after a cut, and they do not need to. The difference comes from repetition: a salon that puts the same QR code in front of every client collects all year, while a salon that remembers occasionally gets spikes and long silences.

Set a target you can keep up alongside the cutting itself, and measure it against your own previous month rather than a fixed number. Google names prominence as one of the three local ranking factors, alongside distance and relevance, and your reviews are the part of it you actually hold.