It is almost crazy for me to think about how customers react to the world of strip clubs and strippers. It's like they don't understand that the world of strip clubs is actually a sub culture to their own world, and therefor must operate by the same set of rules that any other service oriented business adhere to.
Case in point: The customer that wracked up $300K on his AMEX and somehow figured that the club charged him for items he didn't purchase.
Dude, at $500 an hour per girl (he had 4-5 girls at all times) before tip and $1500 per bottle of champagne, getting up to that level is entirely possible in a high end strip club. What's even crazier is that he would even step up and admit to being in such a place, on the company dime and in the public sphere.
Today I took 2 calls that demonstrated the disconnect between how the industry sees what is going on and how the customers perceive what is the common acceptance of strip clubs and strippers.
The first call was a positive one. A customer had visited a club with his friends last night and wanted to call and say what a wonderful time he had and that he wanted to recommend the cub to everyone, but google didn't offer reviews of the club on their consumer reviews page. I laughed and said that google doesn't accept reviews for naughty businesses like strip clubs, but suggested that he may want to check out strip club list or the like to leave a positive review of the club.
The second call was from an unhappy customer. She had a male strip-o-gram scheduled for this afternoon, but the stripper refused to go because the location was a daycare center, and was open for business at the time he was supposed to be performing. The customer assured me that the kids were going to be in another room.I'm not sure what she was thinking, but when I told her that I was refunding her money, she came unglued and gave me a 5 minute tyraid about how we are a horrible agency and how she was planning this party for months and that she is going to sue us for the cost of the party food and decorations because we ruined the whole event.
Of course it won't go anywhere because of the circumstances, but I just have to wonder how mainstream stripping has become that a business manager of a daycare center sees absolutely no issue with a male stripper performing at that location?? WTF?
My point is that if we have been mainstreamed, we have to deal with customers requiring the kind of performance and service that is offered in other non-stripping industries. Dancers with bad attitudes will reflect badly on the entire club. Ignoring customers, over promising and under delivering, not making an effort to look the best she can (hair, makeup, nails, outfits etc.) will all cost the dancer in the short and long run much like a restaurant that has crappy service, the customers will go elsewhere.
I don't lay the blame at the dancer's feet, though. A huge portion of the problem is management. Little to no hiring standards are issue no. 1, but following that is the lack of training of the dancers, the "I-could-give-a-fuck" attitude of most of the staff members of the club, and not taking customer complaints seriously when voiced in a legitimate fashion (I'm not talking about the guy complaining that he was bounced after trying to finger a dancer or anything). There is also the issue of flooding the floor with too many girls for the client base to support. You can bet that if each dancer was getting paid by the club rather than paying the club to be there, that the club would set some standards and actually think about how many dancers should be on the floor at any one time.
There are a few clubs that have gotten with the program, but the vast majority are still being run as if visiting a strip club is a shameful activity that a customer would never publicly complain about a poor experience. I have a feeling that we are going to see a steep decline in customer activity in these seedy back-alley places in favor of the more mainstream places. I love a dive as much as the next girl, but the dives that are operating on the edge of the law are going to have a rough go of it ahead.




Reply With Quote






Bookmarks