Aesop

Service Beyond The Counter

I recently got into men’s skincare. Some of my friends might laugh, but I’ll be the one laughing when I’m well into my 40s and my skin is lovely and supple.

Anyway, that’s beside the point.

When it comes to this oft-overlooked area of cosmetics, I’m about as knowledgeable as a shopping trolley, so I was a little bit nervous stepping into the boutique of one of Australia’s most highly regarded cosmetics brands. Is my skin

I now feel confident doing things like this!

I now feel confident doing things like this!

oily or dry? What sort of stresses do I put it through daily? Do I really need a $325 badger hair brush to shave? It’s amazing how uneasy I was before stepping into the shop, and it’s hard to put a finger on what exactly I feared. However, it was soon put to bed by truly next-level customer service.

The shop attendant greeted me politely and asked how my day was going. Pretty standard. The difference was she approached me for the conversation, removing the counter from the equation. In effect, she became a friend of mine, rather than a member of staff. We ended up having a nice chat about the weekend’s activities and of course what I thought about my skin; in layman’s terms, putting me at ease in an unfamiliar area. The cumulative effect of this approach meant that it wasn’t weird when she proceeded to treat me to a hand massage with an array of expensive skincare products!

That’s right – for a good 15 minutes, I was given complimentary professional-grade hand therapy, just so I could, quite literally, get a feel for the products and which would be best suited to me. I was impressed by the cleansers and hydration creams on offer, but what really extracted the $104 from my wallet was the service, which is some of the best I’ve seen in the retail environment. The lesson? Treat customers as people, and they’ll treat you to their custom!

-Magnus