Repeat Customers are Everything

Miss Fluttershy

Every now and then, somepony will ask me how a business like ours can be so successful in such a small town. It's not a dumb question. Rent and supplies are expensive, our prices are reasonable, and we all need to take something home at the end of the day. I've been thinking about it more and more, and the answer just isn’t that intuitive without seeing our books. Walk into our spa and there’s nothing to suggest we’ve spared a single expense, even though everything looks fine on paper. We don’t live exorbitantly (except at work) but we do well enough. Parties, food… we aren’t misers.

It confused me at first, so a while ago I asked my sister.

Lotus was on a self-help kick at the time. She got really prissy and looked down her muzzle when I brought it up. “Las Pegasus wasn’t built by the winners, Aloe,” she said.

I know sister. I read the same magazines you do. Pretending you came up with that was really dumb, and it doesn’t even answer my question. Lotus likes to sound smart and sometimes she succeeds, but since she always just says the smartest thing she can think of… well, she isn’t always right. But I think there might actually have been something clever in that fortune cookie’s worth of wisdom she pulled out of her mane.

Las Pegasus wasn’t just built by the losers, it was built by the chronic losers.

Okay, I’m putting this out right now: we are not like a casino. I have no trouble concluding that the comparison ends there, no matter what some ponies think. But on that one front, we live and die by the same factor. Spas and casinos breathe the same air.

I'll explain. How much more valuable than the average customer do you think a repeat customer is? If you run a business, don’t answer. If you don’t run a business, take a guess.

Double it.

Double it again. You might be getting close.

Keeping customers is way more critical than it seems. I’ve been asked, ‘If all you have are repeats, how can you grow?’ Well, think of it this way: when we lose a repeat client—just one—we lose a stream of bits that might have gone on forever. One-timers and infrequent visitors may do good business, but there’s still no comparison. Last-minute bookers show up maybe seven times a year, while regulars who all have periodic appointments book at least monthly, and many do more. Monthlies alone have almost twice the value of an infrequent.

Dealing with repeats is also much, much easier. It’s expensive to run through every treatment, option, and page of paperwork with a new client if they're only going to come once in a while. Because of time and material waste, the first visit or two barely makes a profit. Advertising campaigns get maybe a couple dozen visitors each, and one or two will book long term. The cost of losing a good client is really the cost of gaining another one, and if you look at our books, you can work that out to between ten and twenty new visitors.

That’s right. Ten to twenty. If it meant keeping our best client and there was no other choice, it would still be worth foregoing twenty prospects.

Okay, so why am I writing about running a spa? Well... because I told my sister I was going to. Keep a journal about our business, that is. Or record or something. I forget what I said. If she figures out what I’m actually doing she’ll probably disown me, but I need to keep this on paper if I want to think about it.

So Lotus—or whoever is reading this—it’s just for me. Feel free to put it down now and walk away. I’m not talking to myself or anyone else, I’m writing to learn about how we keep clients and why it works. These are just my reflections on what we do. Observations. I’m surprised you don’t do this yourself, Lotus Blossom, especially since you never talk to me about it. It’s our job for Celestia’s sake, we’re both professionals, right? I deserve to be able to better myself and my talents, and that means I need to understand them!

I should back up, maybe. My sister and I are both earth ponies, so obviously no flying and no spells. Instead, we have the usual earthie connection to animals, plants, and nature. It’s really hard to describe to pegasi and unicorns.

Lotus and I, animals aren't exactly our thing (they’re cute I guess). When it comes to plants and nature, on the other hoof—a bit abstract, but whatever—we have a sixth sense. I guess we always have more or less, but it became clear to us when we found our special talent. Yes, we both have the same one.

Lotus and I can make anypony feel relaxed. It’s totally instinctive, but weirdly conscious too. What plants, mud, oil, or soap to use; what music to play, and how loud; what to say, and when to listen; where to touch, and how to touch; these little decisions have always been effortless for us. And it’s not just that what we do makes others feel comfortable. More importantly, we can sense what will make ponies feel cared for while we work on them, and then do it. I’ve never had wings or a horn, but I know how it feels to have them, and how it feels when they feel good. It goes without saying that there’s a lot more to the other tribes than wings and horns, but I can sense it all, and Lotus can too.

It’s hard to explain.

So when it comes to getting repeat customers, we’re pretty well-furnished. It takes a session or two to figure somepony out, sure, but once we do… Lotus always says something about making them feel ‘snug as a bug in a rug’. Some client said it to her once. She thinks it means they’ll keep coming back and I think she’s wrong, but whatever.

I’ll stick a picture of us in here sometime.

I might be writing for myself, but we do work together so I should think about how I can help my sister too. Both of us should work to make the most of our abilities. We’re a team, and our sensitivity to the feelings of others makes our relationship a little… teamier than most.

For now I’ll just note that Lotus Blossom is my identical twin. She’s the blue one, pink mane and tail. I’m Aloe, obviously. Pink, blue-blue. I’ve never really gotten used to being called 'identical' here; our mother tongue has a cleverer turn of phrase to explain monozygotism, so even though I get it, it still sounds funny. We do both have blue eyes, though, so I can usually get over it by pretending that's what the pony who said it meant. These little language things bug me sometimes.

I really hope she doesn’t find this.

So I’m going to write about our repeat customers and why I think they stay. None of them want the same things and they all have complicated ways of relaxing that most of them don’t really understand. We’ve been getting more bookings lately and I’m finding it harder to keep track of things, so maybe working out the details of what made our past successes successful will make it easier to do the same in the future. I was planning on Miss Rarity today—who has more bookings than anypony else by far—but on the off chance that lotus finds this tonight I’m going to write about Miss Fluttershy instead.

Miss Fluttershy was the first of Miss Rarity’s many referrals. The two still join each other for a brief weekly session, but Miss Fluttershy will come alone as well. Even though she’s a pegasus, she lives on the ground and keeps animals, so she smells like an earth pony. Her usual is a shampoo, bath, and hoof trimming, with a rasping when she needs it, and a full preen. The first time I met her I didn’t realize she was a pegasus. She was wearing a robe, and I reached for her forehead with a horn file. Super embarrassing. Thanks for the heads-up, sis.

I get the feeling she dislikes having attention drawn to her wings. When she finally booked a private session, she turned down a preen because she ‘doesn’t fly much’ (what a bad excuse), but she eventually got a basic one.

Miss Fluttershy isn’t very talkative. I don’t like to carry a conversation while I work since being the active speaker is distracting, so we usually just handle her in silence. It took a couple sessions before she really got comfortable with us, and we could tell she didn’t want to talk until that happened. Ponies like her are more open to informality once they trust you.

Trust is an especially important issue with pegasi, and preens are probably the most volatile and invasive treatment we offer, being rooted in tribal practices that predate the unification. Pegasi are always passively grooming, both themselves and to varying extents each other, much more, in most societies, than the earth ponies or unicorns do. Those twitchy ruffles, the unconscious biting, the stretching and contorting, all plumage maintenance. It's like a more intense version of the way ponies usually fix their mane and tail throughout the day. Pegasi are taught are taught from the moment they learn to fly to be aware of the wings of those around them, and instinctively nip wayward feathers back into line. It's instinct that's an artifact of the old, militaristic cloud cities: every pegasus has a little bit of soldier in her, and that means the urge to be ever-aware of wing discipline. Mutual grooming usually occurs between close friends or mates—anywhere that intimacy is expected, really—or with a professional.

Even with good hygiene, though, plumage gradually becomes unkempt. Feathers lose alignment, break, get dirty, and slip from their pattern of overlap. Pegasi also molt, and some get feather mites, and a filly can’t take care of that on her own. When that happens, not many pegasi will let an earth pony have a free-for-all on her wings, and even fewer will pay for the chance to do so, but my sister and I are special.

I usually do preens. Horns are my sister’s thing, though I can put up a fight there too.

We had her the moment I started.

Part of what makes wing upkeep hard is that pegasi lack the preen gland most birds have. They produce powder down, but the demands of modern society take more waterproofing, dirt resistance, and flexibility than that. Innate magic helps, yeah, but it’s no match for a full preen with real preen oil. Once Miss Fluttershy was gently reminded of this (she knew, of course, but everypony knows to brush their teeth and Colgate still has clients) she became a dedicated customer. I think she saw it more as a technical procedure than anything else, and that distance made it a bit more comfortable for her.

Being a beautician usually means having to see the trees and not the forest, and since even the most spectacular bodies have flaws I usually end up intimately knowing all of them. Miss Fluttershy’s first visit was bad. No lice, and her grooming was okay, but her feathers were really under-oiled. I don’t even think she’d been using wing soap, just loads of regular stuff. At the risk of belaboring the metaphor, this is roughly the same as brushing your teeth with shampoo. Miss Rainbow Dash would have been struck speechless when she realize (and might actually have been, since I don't know she hadn't).

So we had a suddenly acquiescent Miss Fluttershy on board. Preens take a long time and they're too distracting to do in group sessions, so her weeklies with Miss Rarity had to be supplemented. After the second, I got one of the most fantastic complements I’ve ever had: Miss Fluttershy told me she was flying more.

But preens aren’t a high-margin service, and there’s more room to force relaxation on introverts like her than anypony. It would be bad if she started seeing us as feather-dentists (sorry, last one) or something like that. What’s worse, the tension never left her wings when they were extended and she fidgeted every second I worked on her, which made me think I wasn’t doing enough to calm her down. That gave me an idea.

I would work her wings with my hooves—the magic behind my special talent grants me a little extra-corporeal dexterity when it comes to things like this—while my sister did Miss Fluttershy's hooves. Basic preens.

On her third visit she had a damaged patch, so I offered her a full preen. Truthfully, there isn’t much of a difference between them. It just takes longer, and ifI need to then I’ll use my mouth as a grooming partner would. It’s not that my hooves aren’t good enough; they just feel to clinical, and since I’ve already washed her wings by this point it doesn't really make a difference to me whether it's my limbs or my lips. And, I had a hunch.

This might have been a weird case to start this project with, but it’s a trick that’s worked for me before. Massages that require the masseuse to be on top of the patient can be very relaxing. The contact is more intimate, it’s easier to detect and respond to the client’s little cues, and—it took me a long time to realize this—the weight of another body can be incredibly reassuring when you’re feeling anxious. So when Miss Fluttershyagreed to the full preen, I set myself down across her body to reach her far wing from above.

Now, I’d never have done this if Miss Fluttershy didn’t know what my preens felt like. It’s not so reassuring to have somepony on top of you when you don’t expect it, but she already knew what she should be feeling, and it was a simple matter to supply that and feel her nervousness slowly peel back. Not being able to see me, she needed some other way to get the message that what I was doing wasn’t out of the ordinary, and my technique conveyed that message. When I put my weight on her and adjusted myself she tensed up immediately, but I moved on and didn’t hesitate, working at her yellow feathers with my muzzle when I hit a spot that needed it.

Explaining yourself isn’t always a good idea. Once the client has agreed to something, you have a little window to make them accept it. I’ve seen the thought-process at play a thousand times, the best thing you can do if you've accidentally (or not so accidentally) baffled someone is carry on as usual.

Her first wing was the worst. I made sure my sister was on her hind hooves so that Miss Fluttershy wouldn’t have anyone to look at, but her pulse was still elevated and her wingtips were twitching. However, by the time I was working on her other wing my sister was in front of her and neither of us had given any indication that what I was doing was unusual. She left a little ruffled that day, but she still came back for her next appointment. Asked for the basic, I offered the full. She tried to look like she was thinking about it before she accepted.

Miss Fluttershy started relaxing after that. Her warm body would go completely limp when I rested on her back. I think she even started taking my weight as a cue to release her muscles, and though I couldn’t see her face I could still hear her sigh—once—before her breathing would become really slow and deep, lifting me every few seconds. From my sister’s little smirks I imagine she looked relatively peaceful. Hay, she even fell asleep.

Twice.

Getting a pegasus as anxious and sensitive as Miss Fluttershy to start eagerly lying prone on our couch before we even touch her is an achievement I am proud of. Sending her off with shiny, flawless wings was one thing, but doing that and watching her skip away with a glowing smile was another. It’s important not to underestimate the power of simple positioning in comforting a client. Less is quite often more.

I wish my sister had remembered that on the day she almost lost us Miss Fluttershy’s account.

Okay, okay. That’s a little unfair. Really she just put all my patience and careful work in jeopardy. Miss Fluttershy will sometimes come in with her friends, and on one such occasion she asked for a preen. Full. I was a little rushed, but mostly I wanted to keep everything sociable, so I didn’t augment my technique as I usually do. To dispel any suspicions that might have arisen because of this, I made sure to take a couple quick breaks to check on her companions as well.

She was nonetheless suspicious. Not so suspicious she worked out that I was doing what I did for her benefit, but she didn’t have quite the same spring in her step when she left that day. Maybe I should have refused her, offered her a complementary visit next time or something like that, but she was distracted by her friends and I thought I could get away with it.

At her next visit, while I was settled on her back with my muzzle in her feathers, her wing tensed up. “Aloe?”

Lotus was finishing her front hooves and gave me a look, not missing a beat. Miss Fluttershy’s eyes must have been closed.

“Yes, Miss Fluttershy?” Here it comes…

“Sorry, it may be nothing, but, I—”

“No need to apologize, Miss Fluttershy.” She has a sensitive spot under her wing at the joint, and I put a little pressure on it, just in passing. Just to remind her why she kept coming back.

“Ahh, I…” She sighed, and moaned like she was biting her lip. “No, well, sorry… I mean, it’s silly, but… with my friends, the other day?”

My sister was moving for some reason, and she had the wrong look on her face. I tried to shake my head, I looked at her like don’t you dare, but she didn’t acknowledge me.

“Yes?” The wing in front of me was done. I was just working the muscle at the base, not wanting to get anywhere she could see me before I ended the conversation. When my sister’s hoofsteps stopped, I waited a beat.

“When you… ohhhh, wow.”

Judging by the ripple of tension that passed under me and suddenly dissolved, I must have timed it well. Right when Lotus should have grabbed Miss Fluttershy’s hind leg I gave the bundle of tough muscle under her wing a solid knead and her question fell apart. “Um, when you were doing my wings, you, ahh… did them from the side.”

“Yes, Miss Fluttershy.”

“Not… well, above…”

“Yes, Miss Fluttershy.”

If a client has something to say, don’t say it for them.

“Was that because you were so busy?”

If my sister was about to do what I suspected, I hoped she would wait out this line of questioning. It’s never fun to have to rob someone of the peaceful little contrivances you’ve woven for them. Granted, I badly hoped she wouldn’t do anything at all, but when Lotus gets an idea in her head…

“I was very busy that day, Miss Fluttershy.”

All of us knew this wasn’t a real answer, and Lotus and I just had to let the silence hang there like a dark cloud while we kept groping her. I could feel the gloom of unease starting to penetrate the atmosphere and thicken in her muscles and wanted nothing more than to dispel it, but Miss Fluttershy had to ask for the canned answer I had waiting.

“Is this... how you usually do this?”

Thank you. I stopped my hooves immediately and tried to sound insecure. “Oh, I’m sorry Miss Fluttershy, I have done something uncomfortable?”

Her head shot up, shaking furiously. Thank you too, partial language barrier. “Oh, no no no no no, not at all.” Five noes, I counted. Her other wing was twitching, really demanding some attention, but I just kept up a lazy massage. “I was just wondering, I mean…” Celestia, just say it. “Is this normal?”

“Miss Fluttershy,” I started, like I was reading from a brochure. “Nothing is normal. There is no single way Lotus and I work, especially for our regular clients. Everypony is different.” I rested on her more heavily, forcibly weighing on her limp torso, and she bit back an approving sigh. “If you think you would find something more relaxing, you need only ask.”

She didn’t. She just set her head down again and went soft. I slid off her back and walked around her body, sneaking a glance at her tranquil face. If my speech hadn't reassured her then her face didn't show it: her lips were parted and just barely smiling, her eyelids had drooped and only the edges of her pupils showed. They didn’t follow me as I walked.

Lotus tossed Miss Fluttershy’s big, elegant tail over her yellow leg and nodded at me, going back to working the limb. I tried to stare her down, shaking my head, pleading silently: Don’t you dare, Lotus! It won’t work!

My sister rolled her eyes. You’re being dramatic, Aloe. Why not?

It shouldn’t be you!

What! After that little speech? She narrowed her eyes and mouthed ‘you need only ask?’

‘She didn’t ask.’ I mouthed back. I did my best to glare through her resolve, but she just blew me off by signalling towards Miss Fluttershy’s other wing with her muzzle. My delay was probably getting suspicious.

I was almost done—and starting to think my sister had listened to my advice—when the body beneath me went completely rigid and Miss Fluttershy’s wing shot out of my hooves. Lotus, I swear…

You’re so lucky she didn’t fire us.

I didn’t need to see anything to know what my sister had done. Gradually massaging closer than usual and testing for a response is a typical trick (gimmick, really), but Lotus works all the way up the leg anyways and never gives herself enough room to manoeuvre and keep it from feeling too deliberate when she makes that initial contact.

There are signals, conscious and unconscious, that clients expose about their boundaries and what liberties we can take with them. To my knowledge Miss Fluttershy had never signaled an opening at that boundary. She never lifted her tail or kept her hind legs as far apart as Lotus left them. Her attention was probably afloat, maybe on her wings, and I bet Lotus didn’t do nearly enough to soften that particular patch of ground before she just went ahead and dug in.

So she found herself backpedaling—deftly, sure, but still unnecessarily—with an offhand apology and a shift to the other leg. I didn’t break step although I was more than a little angry. Miss Fluttershy never calmed down to the same degree that day but she didn’t cancel her next appointment either, so she must have decided it was an honest mistake.

When I confronted Lotus about what she thought she was doing with her hooves, she apologized. Kind of. “Yes Aloe, you might have been right.”

I was right. You should have let me do it, she’s used to you. How could you write that off?

“I know. But when she asked you about your preens and you gave that little speech about all our clients being different… Aloe, she knows Miss Rarity.”

Miss Rarity.

I hadn’t thought of that. Not a bad point, but I somehow doubt Miss Rarity would ever say anything so plainly that Miss Fluttershy would understand it. Still, if she had any suspicions it might be worth playing off them.

“I don’t think so anymore. I don’t think she likes mares.”

Oh. Okay Lotus, blame it on that. I think fewer of our clients ‘like mares’ than their behavior around us suggests.

Lotus stuck out her tongue and I shoved her a little, but I let her save face. She’s let enough of my mistakes slide.

Grudges take too much effort to maintain. We survive in this business by trusting our instincts, but even when you’ve been working with somepony forever, trusting their instincts is never as easy as trusting your own. The most important thing I know is not to push anypony too far, too quickly: far from relaxing them, it will often just make them feel confused and resentful. We got lucky with Miss Fluttershy.

Like I mentioned in the summary, next time will be porn. If I missed any mistakes could you point them out for me? I'm basically working on the world's worst computer. Also, all ownership to Hasbro, etc.

Hope you enjoyed, I look forward to writing more.