As published in Inner Cosmetics
 

The beauty shop, salon, beauty parlor, whatever we refer to it as, we as women are all familiar with its importance.  The beauty salon has historically served as a refuge for many women, especially in the African American community.  Salons are the bastion for advice, counseling, fashion styling and tips, light politicking, networking, bragging on our children and their accomplishments and good old fashioned gossip.  Salon Voices, a non-profit entity based out of Washington, DC recognizes the many roles salons play.  Salon Voices Community Connection, Inc. established its two core goals: (1) Provide African Americans with One-Stop-Access to family service content; and (2) reduce the "Digital Divide" through placement of personal computers and web technology in African American institutions and through placement of personal computers and web technology in African American institutions and homes.

Norma Deneghy Anderson, the executive powerhouse behind the organization published www.Salon Voices.org as a platform for providing vital information to under-served and under-represented urban communities.  Ms. Anderson's vision will diminish the digital divide by providing digital access to hair salon patrons.  Salon Voices notes that 85% of African American women patronize hair salons regularly.  "This makes the hair salon a pivotal location to reach the critical mass, and the family nurturers within the black community."  My discussion with this powerhouse made me realize that salon patrons are not just customers, but rather a community of influential women with the power to effect change.  Salon Voices strives to provide African-Americans with one-stop-access to family service content.

On behalf of Inner Cosmetics, I spoke with Norma Deneghy about SVCC's core competencies.  She informed me that her vision was sparked after reading a 1996 Wall Street Journal article chronicling the fact that African Americans were losing their footing in the black hair care industry. Deneghy-Anderson noted that in addition to losing our stake in product development and distribution, the average hair salon was not keeping pace with customer service demands either.  Think about it-how many times have you vowed NEVER to return to an establishment because they were overbooked, unprofessional or services were just too long.  In today's age of PDAs, Internet ready telephones and power lunches-not many have 3 hours or more to spend in the salon.  Those days are over.

As President and Founder of the powerful Salon Voices movement, Deneghy Anderson seeks to champion excellence in service performance within African American businesses while providing a platform for bridging the technical divide within African American homes and institutions.  Eleven years in management at IBM solidified Norma Deneghy Anderson’s dedication to customer satisfaction.  Salon Voices has performed industry research that points out that salons lose 20% of their patrons each year.  Loss in number creates a loss in revenue.  “Changes can happen if we make the right decisions,” says Norma.  This mission will be achieved via efforts of Salon Voices, Inc., and alliances with organizations and institutions structured to meet these ends. 

Currently Salon Voices has 85 salons registered with the Washington, DC Metropolitan tri-state area.  Salon Voices is gifting state of the art computer hardware and software to Corn Rows & Co., a pioneer in natural hair care in Washington, DC.  The goal is that in support of battling the ever increasing digital divide, salon patrons will contribute so Corn Rows & Co. can in turn gift a computer to a fellow salon and its community.  Not only is Salon Voices reaching out and interacting with traditional service salons, the organization is currently working with two pilot cosmetology schools.  The rationale is that if Salon Voices can connect with fledgling beauty professionals while in school, the concept of customer service and a standard of excellence will be imparted to a new generation of stylists and beauty entrepreneurs.  A powerful customer demographic survey has been developed by Deneghy-Anderson which will allow salon owners to stay attuned to customer desires and wants based on customer ratings that are submitted online.  Not only will salons be able to analyze their own customer ratings, they will be able to compare their ratings to other salons in the global database—which provides a healthy sense of competition and should improve the customer service standards industry wide.

In addition to reaching communities via the salon network, Salon Voices is also scheduling various workshops and conference.  The MyND Salon & Power Lunch was developed to create an empowering experience and allow small groups of participants to listen to and interact with the workshop authors and specials.  The name MyND Salon was developed “to suggest a focus on the self as the hair salon focuses on the appearance.” A sample of authors slated to present include Patricia Elam, author of Breathing Room and commentator for National Public Radio, NBC News, and CNN to name a few; Dr. Kim Singleton, author of Broken Silence and renowned African-American clinical psychologist; and Preal Haley, American Express Financial Advisor and author of Salon Voices Beauty of Finance column.  To learn more about Salon Voices and how you can become involved visit http://www.salonvoices.org for more information.