I did not call first. I downloaded the app, booked a haircut with a Graduate Stylist for ₹420 including tax, and did what a customer does: picked a location, picked a service, picked a person, paid, came back. Seven places where the journey stalled. None of them were bugs. All of them cost the business something.
The one that made it an email rather than a note to myself: the salons are rated 4.8 by over 100,000 people. The app has 27 reviews.
The email
No deck, no “solution”. The whole thing ran on one argument, sent to the person whose job included owning that app:
“Your salons are rated 4.8 by 100,000 people. Your app has 27 reviews. That gap isn’t a marketing problem, it’s structural. The app is a white-label product, so the experience is the same one any client of that platform can ship, including your competitors. I booked through your app and wrote up where the flow drops people. Happy to send it over whether or not we ever work together.”
The cold email, brand names removed
What happened
He took the call. The first two minutes were the ones I had rehearsed; the observations carried the rest. Then he said he would bring a second decision maker into a follow-up meeting.
I had prepared for one person with one problem. Now there would be two people, and the problem would have two owners: the person who feels it, and the person who would have to run whatever fixes it.
What I learned
- Using the product is the research. Everything I said on the call came from that one booking.
- Lead with the number they cannot argue with. 100,000 people reviewed the salon; 27 reviewed the app.
- A call that grows is a call that is working. When the second person arrives, do not restart the pitch. Summarise the first conversation in two sentences and hand the floor over.