Permanent Makeup Reviews and Social Media Statistics 101

25 Oct Permanent Makeup Reviews and Social Media Statistics 101

In the age of Social Media taking over the world, we would like to speak a little about permanent makeup reviews on social media and our practices at Halcyon Cosmetic.

While we would love to have more of our clients post positive reviews about their permament makeup treatment at Halcyon Cosmetic, the truth is that people who are happy don’t often do this. It is much more common for our clients to speak directly to us, text us how happy they are, send us their selfies, refer their friends, and to return to us time and time again for additional procedures. And, quite frankly, we are just too busy to put much effort into soliciting reviews.

Many businesses recruit their friends, or offer incentives for their clients to post positive permanent makeup reviews online. At Halcyon Cosmetic we don’t prescribe to this practice. We would rather have one, genuinely happy, posted review than know that our multiple 5-star reviews have been purchased.

My daughter and I were away one weekend and decided to have our nails done. My daughter had always wanted acrylic nails so I decided to splurge. We weren’t familiar with the area so I used Yelp to choose a salon. We chose the one with dozens of 5 star reviews. After driving to the scariest end of town, subjecting ourselves to very unhygenic practices, and spending a fortune, my daughter came out with rounded, flat ping-pong paddles as nails. We laughed more than I had in decades, but they were awful. We ended up at a cheap place in the mall to have them removed and redone. They were redone quickly, inexpensively and looked great. The mall location had a 2 star rating on Yelp.

 

For these reasons, when we are searching out service providers, we have learned to pay MUCH more attention to the NEGATIVE reviews. Specifically, we look for the following:

1) How Many Negative Permanent Makeup Reviews Are There?

Are there just one or two? This is ideal. It implies to us that the service provider is experienced and has likely done enough treatments to achieve an accurate sampling of public opinion and, overall, clients have been very happy. We all know that in the service industry, clients may appear very outwardly happy and satisfied with their treatment, but inside they could have unrealistic expectations and be impossible to please.

Are there several? If there are many negative reviews this could indicate issues, or it could indicate that they have treated SO many clients that this is statistically still just or two out of every few hundred.

I would expect to see someone with 20 years experience have more negative reviews than someone with 5 years experience. An example of this might be a phsyician that’s been in practice for many years and sees thousands of patients per year. Statistically, I would expect to see several unhappy reviews.

In the case of many negative reviews…

2) Are the Negative Reviews Consistent?

This would be a RED FLAG for us. If many people were all complaining about the same issues, it is likely that the reviews are an accurate reflection of the situation. We would steer clear!

3) Are There NO Negative Reviews?

Another RED FLAG for us.

We believe that in the service industry it would be very unusual to have NO negative reviews. If a sampling is taken from a large enough population, there is bound to be at least one or two that weren’t happy. Our question in this case might be “Are they new to the industry? Have they provided enough treatments to get an accurate sampling of the population?”

4) Timing Of the Negative Reviews

Are there several, and do they occur regularly over a long period of time? If so, refer to #1. Or are there several but span a shot period of time, perhaps indicating someone new to the industry and a genuine issue?

5) Service Provider’s Response

Did the service provider respond to the negative review? Were they hostile or defensive in their response or were they professional and genuine? This gives a very good indication of the level of experience and professionalism of the service provider. It is one way we have learned to make a good selection.

We hope that you take our points into consideration when doing your next search on Yelp or Facebook or Google Business for any type of service provider.

We also hope that you think about these points the next time you decide to post a negative review. A negative review can be a very GOOD thing for business, but only if it is posted fairly and accurately.