The Opportunity

It used to be that Dad took photographs with the family camera, a few at a time on special occasions. Now more than 1,000,000,000,000 photos are taken every year. Yup, a trillion. That’s also roughly the number of times people can feel self-conscious about how they look, and unwanted hair is a big part of that anxiety.

Our client was already spending significant sums to gain market share. They hired us to turn more visitors into clients; in other words, to increase their conversion rate.

The Challenge

Profit margins were initially healthy for laser hair removal, but that led to fierce competition. Some players, in an effort to make a few quick bucks, began the race to the bottom by slashing prices and offering “daily deals.”

At the same time, the topic of hair removal is sensitive. Many users don’t want anyone to know that they need or use such services. That means it’s hard to get detailed, truthful opinions about what works, what annoys users, and how to outperform the competition.

The Approach

First we conducted on-site surveys and email surveys, to capture as much information as we could from those customers that were willing to share their anonymous thoughts. (Yes, it’s possible to send emails to people but also to let them know that when they fill out a survey online, we do not track which email address completed which survey.)

Then we did some “mystery shopping”: That’s when you call your client’s business and experience the process–in this case laser hair removal–from the point of view of a regular customer. That means dealing with the call center, receptionist, clinic staff, seeing the facilities, and experiencing the service. It’s time-consuming but incredibly useful in terms of generating ideas for potential improvements to test. (Plus we are now so very beach-ready.)

We also analyzed months of call-center data to identify as many objections as possible, prioritize them in terms of effect on business, and develop test ideas around solutions.