As a grooming customer, you may be sitting at your desk happily sipping your mourning cup of coffee when the phone rings or in comes a text message from your groomer. Buffy’s grooming appointment is going to have to be rescheduled. For a customer, the first and most natural reaction is anger. You might think or even say out loud “What the heck!” This is not rocket science. Why can’t you just set a date and stick to it?” It is a reasonable question! This article explores the dynamics going on behind the scenes that impact schedule adherence as well as a host of administrative tasks that the mobile groomer must execute well in order to support the work on time, as planned. Finally, we will look at the nature of the work and how that impacts quality.
Getting the Van and the Groomer to Your Door
The first thing that needs doing is getting the mobile groomer to your front door on the right day at the right time. A number of things can get in the way of this happening and the groomer will want to keep track of how often things get off-track. To do this, the groomer will carefully track and measure her schedule adherence rate.
What is schedule adherence? A groomer’s schedule adherence rate is the percentage of time an appointment is delivered on the date and time promised. Because we are working with human beings and machines, no groomer can maintain 100% schedule adherence. A good measurement is in the high 90’s. That is, once an appointment is scheduled there is a 95%, 96% or 97% chance that the grooming appointment will take place exactly at the time and date planned.
The dynamics at play that will negatively impact schedule adherence are staffing and mechanical breakdowns. Other aspects of running the business have to be supported as well. These include cleaning, maintenance, scheduling, and customer service.
Getting the Groomer into the Van
Staffing. Unless your mobile is a sole proprietor, someone has to find and recruit the talent who will drive and run the mobile salon. For the past five years, there has been a talent shortfall in the grooming field where the number of people entering the field is not keeping pace with the demand for more groomers. This drain on available resources is exacerbated by the number of groomers leaving the field due to injuries and/or burnout. The result is a hot and competitive market for grooming talent. One grooming company will steal resources from another company, effectively outbidding the groomer’s current employer overnight with the promise of fast cash. A groomer may expect a hefty hiring bonus and other perks as these have become common in the marketplace.
So, let’s assume the grooming company has the recruiting aspect down pat. They have found and attracted a great groomer, but the truck can’t pull out of the driveway yet. The talent still has to be validated through a test groom, onboarding and training has to take place, and then there is a period of stabilization as the groomer learns the ropes. After that, all is well. Appointments get completed, relationships begin to form, and everything is working great — until the groomer gets sick. Or has a family emergency, a sick child, etc. Any of these will cause your appointment to be rescheduled.
Getting the Van in Front of Your House
Mechanicals. For the Head of Maintenance, or the groomer’s husband, or the business owner, no call is more dreaded than the groomer call from out in the field: “My water pump stopped working.” “The generator just shut down and I have no power in the salon.” “The dryer isn’t working.” Grooming vans are basically RVs, and it is in fact RV mechanics that groomers turn to when things are not working. Think of the grooming van as a recreational vehicle minus the bathroom and the oven. Everything else is very similar.
If you’ve ever owned an RV, you will know that they have 10,000 great little features and gadgets and that every one of them breaks down over time. The owner has the choice of learning fast, figuring things out, or calling in the repair man. Once again, though, the labor market provides a constraint. RV’s and generators are complicated mechanically and hard to learn and there is a shortage of trained people in the field. This can lead to wait times and high repair bills for the mobile groomer. A serious generator issue can take a van out of service for weeks, creating rescheduling events for 20-50 scheduled appointments.
Not that mechanicals are restricted to the salon aspect of the van, though. That salon sits on top of an ordinary vehicle which can generate its own repair problems at any time (radiators, engines, shocks, struts, transmissions, flat tires…). When the mobile grooming van has a vehicle repair it has to be taken out of service — affecting 5-6 appointments every day.
Keeping the Vans Healthy
A good grooming van is well-maintained and clean. There’s quite a bit of behind the scenes work that keeps the vans in good condition.
Maintenance. Maintaining a van involves everything that you do for your own car (tires, oil changes). The grooming company will set aside “off” days to do this work. The off days protect precious time to do this work which works great unless the off day turns into an “on” day when the scheduling team is trying to find a new date for appointments that were impacted by personnel or mechanical calamity.
Cleaning. Off days are also scheduled for cleaning. Cleaning a van involves a four-hour process where every nook and cranny is vacuumed, rinsed, and sanitized. This deep cleaning needs to be done on top of the appointments and end-of-day cleaning that the groomers perform throughout the week.
Finding the Right Date for your Appointment
Scheduling. A good portion of the groomer’s time is spent receiving, recording, planning, and committing to specific times for various grooming events. For a sole proprietor, this work has to be handled on the fly as the day unfolds, at the grooming table or the gas station. Or it has to be handled at night or on an “off” day. For multiple-groomer companies, the work is more complex. This groomer only works on these four days. This other groomer will only handle dogs up to 49 pounds. This other groomer has to be done by 5pm so that she can pick up her kids from daycare. That groomer’s van is out of service due to a mechanical problem, and no one else’s van is available until … you get the idea.
Keeping High Standards for Quality and Safety
There is a customer service aspect of the grooming business in which groomers take care of customers where a quality issue has arisen.
Grooming Quality and Consistency. In one sense, having your dog’s hair done is a bit like going to your own hairdresser — you might not get precisely the same cut every single time. Close to the same, but not perfectly the same. Groomers are working toward the same cut every time — just like your hairdresser — but the groomer’s work is performed a moving target. As the scissors close, the dog might jerk its head 1/4 of an inch and now the shape of the ear is off just a tad. For balance, the other ear has to be adjusted. The same thing can happen with a leg, or a foot … once the dog is back in the house, the overall look can be good each time but not necessarily identical each time — it’s just the nature of the work. The customer might not like how the ears turned out compared to what they usually look like and a conversation ensues.
Injuries. In spite of every precaution, an injury might happen — a toenail is cut too short, a clipper gets too close to the skin, a nick occurs with the scissor’s edge. Even if it is extremely rare, an injury can happen. Working out how to resolve these issues takes time, effort, patience, and fortitude.
Conclusion
As you can see, a lot of things have to happen harmoniously in order for your groomer to roll up in front of your house exactly on the date and at the time specified. The van has to be up and running. The salon must have power and all its equipment must be functioning as designed. The groomer has to be well. The appointment before yours has to have gone smoothly. The traffic situation has to be without issue. Once these conditions are in place, the stage is set for a great mobile grooming experience for you, your groomer, and your pet.
