We were lucky to catch up with Emily Minion recently and have shared our conversation below.

Emily , appreciate you joining us today. What’s been the best thing you’ve ever seen (or done yourself) to show a customer that you appreciate them?

Customer care and appreciation is a mindset maintained by all of our team at Chelsea King. Simply put, we could not do what we love doing if not for our customers and that fact is not lost on us. Our approach to customer service stems from a place of appreciation and we think of it as a “golden rule” approach to service, endeavouring to deliver an experience that supports how we would wish to be treated ourselves. Customer care is always an opportunity to continually and positively differentiate your company and add to the customer’s overall experience with your brand. In fact, it’s especially how we choose to engage with customer concerns that enable us the opportunity to show appreciation to our customers.

I will share a few stories that come to mind and then do my best to summarize our general guidelines on customer care below.

The first story is one that we’ll never forget. We once had a parent of one of our customers reach out to us requesting a return and refund for products recently purchased by their daughter. They shared that she had been battling cancer for years and that she had recently passed. Our team quickly refunded the purchase and offered that along with the refund, they keep her last product selections as keepsakes or gifts to friends and family. After noticing the parents had started a charity in their daughter’s name we also donated the value of all their daughter’s orders she had placed with us over the years to that charity.

Others might include customer concerns reaching out in frustration over shipping delays with third-party carriers. Although these issues are out of our control, we can still take ownership of the ‘experience’, which ultimately, for the customer, becomes synonymous with their lasting impression of our brand. The approach to care for these issues by our team has led to many 5-star reviews, continued orders and referrals. After explaining to the customer any required waiting period equal to delays experienced with a particular carrier, we assure our customers that we’ll stay in communication with them throughout the process. Following any required wait time, if the shipment still hasn’t arrived, we commit to covering the cost of a second attempt with a request that should a duplicate order finally arrive, they kindly send it back ‘Return To Sender’. We rarely experience legitimately lost shipments and most often receive back duplicate orders, along with raving reviews from customers and an increased level of trust leading to repeat orders and referrals. In leading with an attitude of appreciation and an assumption of customer honesty, 999 times out of 1000, we receive honesty in return and build on our foundation of incredibly loyal customers.

Aside from your product, the single greatest opportunity we have to positively impact our customers and set our brand apart is the appreciation we example through customer care. Most of our customer interactions are digital via social or email. These are our general guidelines toward customer care and showing appreciation, made evident in our approach.

1. Always thank them for reaching out. – Start all correspondence with ‘Thank you’. Be grateful for the opportunity to help them resolve their concern. The alternative is much worse if they tell someone else. Treat this as an opportunity to turn an experience into one that provides them with something positive to share with others.

2. Empathize. – Put yourself in their shoes. They finally got to a place where they trusted you enough to part with their hard-earned money for what you offer. Assume their concern is well founded from their perspective – and if their concern is valid, own up to it. Never make excuses. Apologize. Share how you would feel similarly in their position and commit to resolving the issue.

3. Include them in the resolution process. – Offer a few options for resolution, both of which are reasonable to offer from a business standpoint. However, both MUST also be in favour of the customer. These often come at an expense, but remember, maintaining or regaining the trust of an existing customer will cost you far less than the damage done by an angry one, plus the cost associated with acquiring a new one.

4. Resolve the concern. – Stay with this process until the agreed resolution is complete. Be the first to follow up with regular updates, never leaving enough time to pass for the customer to feel forgotten or need to follow up with you. Constant communication shows a desire to serve the customer and not leave them feeling any avoidance of their concern.

And finally…

5. Go one step further. – Resolving issues is the least we should do. Go one step further to ensure a positive experience and a building of, versus loss of, trust in the process. Put a cherry on top of it all. This can be done by offering them a free ‘extra’ with their order, or by providing them a one-time savings code toward a future purchase. Or even a code they can use themselves and share with a friend if they have appreciated your product and/or service.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My name is Emily Minion. I am the owner and founder of Chelsea King, a hair accessory brand creating products designed to protect your hair with perfect hold. Our business began somewhat by accident, with me sewing little scrunchies for my daughter and me at our dining room table. I have very thin hair, and I was tired of the damage traditional hair ties were doing to my hair. Similarly, my daughter whose hair was very fine, would always pull her hair out with the elastics when removing them. When I couldn’t find suitable scrunchies anywhere I decided to get out my old sewing machine gifted to me by my grandma and sew my own. After some encouragement from friends and family, I finally opened up a little Etsy shop and that was the beginning of Chelsea King.

Fast forward 10 years and we have an incredible team of artisans creating our designs. A wonderfully loyal and growing customer base and retail partners all over the globe. We have broadened our product offerings to include far more than the scrunchies that originally defined our brand however our core values around production have remained consistent with our company’s mission of maintaining a point of origin where ethical production meets exquisite craftsmanship.

Our products are designed with an effort towards quality first. They are known for providing all-day-hold without discomfort or the need for much adjusting once in the hair. Along with our beautiful designs and signature ‘CK Hold’ provided by our proprietary elastics, our products also contribute to maintaining hair health by reducing the kinking and breakage that is all too common with more traditional, cheaper hair accessories.

Looking back over the last decade there are several things we are grateful for. We’re proud of the fact that our business choices around production provide employment to our team of incredibly talented craftspeople domestically here in Canada and abroad in France. We’ve also endeavoured to use our company as a vehicle to give back. It’s been a very rewarding journey which has evolved into our Together Spreading Joy campaign, where we’ve donated over $170,000 in product to essential frontline workers and various causes.

I love the design aspects involved in what we do. I love the authenticity of our hands-on approach to production and working alongside our artisans. Maintaining a brand aesthetic that’s classic and feminine with an uncompromising passion for the little details. As well as the interaction I’m able to have with our customers – without whom we wouldn’t be able to do what we love doing.

Can you share one of your favorite marketing or sales stories?

Traditionally, the hair accessory space has been filled with brands doing similar things, sold with a different logo. Or those doing their best to improve the quality of products that already exist. We had a unique opportunity to innovate and introduce something completely new to the hair accessory category called – The Scrungee™.

Our partner and visionary for this new and innovative product idea is celebrity hair stylist, Matthew Collins. He came to us with the concept, and we worked with him for over a year developing prototypes until we came to the final product recently launched with an overwhelming customer response.

It felt very risky all the way to launch. We were unsure how this new concept in hair ties would be received by customers. There is nothing else like it in the market. The concept was to introduce a linear, versus circular, hair tie that maintained hair health by avoiding or reducing kinking and breakage while at the same time allowing every user to achieve their own desired degree of hold regardless of hair type. To date, this has been a limitation of traditional hair ties. We all have different hair – thick or thin, voluminous or fine. Traditional hair ties with their preset diameter and degree of elasticity simply don’t allow for a “personal” hold. You’re left having to try and fit your hair tie versus your hair tie being designed to fit you. So with that, our linear scrunchie was born which is now known as The Scrungee™. The positive response received from customers has been incredible.

The lessons learned from pushing through uncertainty and trusting our mission has been so positive. Pushing through uncertainty doesn’t always produce wins, but it always enables lessons and growth opportunities that otherwise wouldn’t have been learned by maintaining the status quo in your pursuits or simply following the perceived successes of a competitor.

We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.

Yes, we do manufacture our own products. It began with me working late into the evening sewing orders after putting my kids to bed, then waking up early before they woke up to pack and ship the orders. As the business got busier, doing it all became increasingly difficult. One of the hardest things for me was letting go of certain aspects of the business, like the making of our products, and entrusting that to someone else. The lesson for me, though, was that if I didn’t let go of certain things, and train and trust in others to support those areas of the business, we would have never been able to grow. We now have a phenomenal team, and the benefits have been huge. Ultimately we discovered sewists and craftspeople far more talented than me who have allowed us to elevate our products and deliver an experience that, in many cases, exceeds our customer’s expectations. While providing work to others, it also provides me the time to work on aspects of the business that light me up most, like directing the design aspects of what we do.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://chelseaking.shop/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shopchelseaking/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shopchelseaking/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@shopchelseaking
• Other: https://www.pinterest.ca/shopchelseaking/ https://www.tiktok.com/@shopchelseaking

Image Credits
Emily Michelson Photography https://www.instagram.com/emily_michelson/