Onboarding Under Pressure ⏱️
What is our target maximum time to go live?
30 Days
A colorist says, “I've been doing hair for 20 years. I know how much color to mix.” How do you respond?
Don't challenge their expertise. Explain that Vish uses their experience/data to help improve consistency and accurately understand usage and cost.
A colorist can tell you every step but doesn't perform them during a real service. Knowledge issue or adoption issue?
Adoption/behaviour issue.
Engagement: 96%. Reweigh: 96%. Cost per service is increasing. Why would the CPS be increasing?
They are not mixing from history.
Your training went perfectly. Everyone participated. The owner loved you. Two weeks later, engagement is 50%. Was it successful?
Not yet. A positive training experience did not translate into sustained adoption. Investigate where the post-training behaviour broke down.
What is our target time to value?
90 Days
One influential stylist refuses to use Vish and others are starting to follow them. What's your priority?
Understand and address the influential stylist's objection before it spreads further.
True or false: If the entire team attended Colorist Training, you can assume everyone knows how to use Vish.
False. Attendance does not demonstrate competency.
Metrics change dramatically immediately after three new employees start. What's your first hypothesis to investigate?
Whether the new team members were properly trained and are following the workflow.
The manager tells you not to train one senior stylist because “she'll never use Vish anyway.”. What should you do?
The stylist should still be included. Excluding a resistant/influential user can reinforce resistance.
A salon is trained but adoption remains low two weeks later. What should you investigate before simply retraining them?
Where/why the workflow is breaking down
A salon is following the Vish workflow but isn't seeing the ROI they expected. What's your first move?
Pull a data sheet for the last 365 days.
A colorist asks a question you don't know the answer to. What's the best response?
Tell them you'll confirm the answer and follow up rather than guessing.
A salon says everyone is using Vish, but several colorists have little to no activity. What should you investigate?
Why do they have so little activity? Are they new and still building clientele? Are they refusing to use it?
You're halfway through training and the owner asks you to spend the next hour troubleshooting an unrelated problem.
Acknowledge the issue and arrange an appropriate time/resource to address it without sacrificing the scheduled Colorist Training.
You're halfway through onboarding and the customer's main point of contact leaves the company. What's your first priority?
Identify and align with a new internal owner/champion so onboarding doesn't stall.
A manager asks you to send them a list of their “worst” Vish users so they can call them out at the next team meeting.
Provide useful performance insights, but recommend addressing individual performance constructively rather than publicly singling people out.
One colorist is struggling while everyone else is ready to move on. Should you continue holding the entire group on that topic?
Not necessarily. Keep the group moving and provide individual support to that colorist.
A salon's numbers were strong for months and suddenly declined after a management change. What's your first area of investigation?
Whether the change in leadership affected accountability, expectations or workflow reinforcement.
The owner says: “We're paying for Vish, so I want you to make my team use it.”
What's wrong with that expectation?
The educator can train, coach and support adoption, but salon leadership must own accountability and reinforcement with their employees.
The customer wants to cancel Kick-Off and “just start training.” Why is that a problem?
Kick-Off establishes expectations, goals, responsibilities and the onboarding plan needed to set the implementation up properly.
The owner wants product charges implemented. The manager wants lower waste. The colorists want to feel confident they won't run out of color. Whose goal should guide the onboarding?
Align the stakeholders around the agreed business outcome rather than optimizing exclusively for one person's preference.
During hands-on training, one confident colorist keeps completing the steps for everyone else. What's the problem?
You aren't actually confirming that the other colorists can complete the workflow independently.
The owner says Vish isn't working because the team keeps running out of color. What should you investigate before concluding there's a product issue?
Are they mixing off of the scales? Are they selecting the right products when mixing?
During training, the owner repeatedly tells the team they don't actually have to use Vish if they don't want to. What's your move?
Speak with the owner privately and realign on expectations. Training can't create adoption if leadership is actively undermining the process.
The customer asks to move go-live because one colorist will be on vacation. Do you automatically postpone?
No. Determine whether that person's absence actually prevents the salon from successfully launching.
The owner and manager give you completely different explanations for why adoption is low. Who do you believe?
Neither automatically. Validate what's actually happening through the data and the team's workflow.
A colorist makes a mistake during hands-on practice. Should you immediately stop them and correct it?
Not always. Give them an opportunity to recognize and correct the mistake themselves before stepping in.
Two salons have the exact same Vish problem. Should they automatically receive the same solution?
No. The same symptom can have different root causes.
The owner asks you in front of the entire team, “How much money are you going to save us?” What should you avoid doing?
Promising a specific result that isn't supported by their data
A customer says, “We haven't had time to use Vish since training.” What's more useful than immediately scheduling another training?
Find out what's preventing them from using it. The issue may not be training.
An owner wants to make a major change based on one week of data. What do you do?
Vish is a 4-6 month process. Our recommendation is to wait at least 30 days to identify a meaningful trend before recommending a major change.
True or false: A colorist who has used Vish before doesn't need to participate in training.
False. Previous experience doesn't guarantee they're following the current/correct workflow
One colorist's performance suddenly changes after being consistently strong for a year. What should you NOT assume?
That they suddenly forgot how to use Vish. Investigate what changed first.
The owner tells you privately that one colorist “is terrible with technology” and asks you to spend most of the day helping them. What do you do?
Give the colorist appropriate support without sacrificing training for the rest of the team or assuming they won't be capable.
The customer wants to change their entire onboarding plan halfway through implementation. What's the first thing you determine?
Why they want the change and whether it affects their ability to successfully go live.
A customer asks, “What are your best salons doing?” What do you do?
Share relevant best practices without disclosing another customer's confidential information or presenting another salon's results as a guaranteed benchmark.
You find the exact week an account began declining. What's more valuable than immediately recommending training?
Finding out what changed in the business during that week.
The owner tells you, “If Vish doesn't reduce our waste by 20% in 30 days, we're cancelling.” What do you do?
Don't guarantee the outcome. Identify what behaviours and measures influence the result, set realistic expectations and establish a plan for measuring progress.