Case Study: Great Clips Scales Brand Trust and Customer Engagement Across 4,400 Locations with Yext

Great Clips is the world's largest salon brand, with over 4,400 franchised locations across all 50 states. As a retail service business built for everyday people, the brand delivers millions of haircuts annually — with speed, affordability, and consistency at the core of the customer promise.

But behind that in-person experience is a carefully managed digital infrastructure designed to connect customers with salons at every moment of discovery. Whether a new customer is searching for "haircuts near me" or a loyal one is checking hours before walking in, Great Clips is committed to making the right information available.

For Great Clips, visibility starts at the local level.

"Great Clips is everywhere, but corporate can't be everywhere," explains Steve Hockett, former CEO of Great Clips. "Each salon needs as much visibility as possible, regardless of the market. That's how franchisees succeed".

But maintaining visibility and consistency across thousands of salons is no small feat. Before Yext, updates had to be managed individually— creating higher risk for errors. At the same time, online reviews were becoming a critical part of the customer journey, with no scalable solution in place for monitoring or responding.

And now, with discovery shifting beyond traditional search into AI-driven experiences, Great Clips needed more than just coverage. They needed structured data, scalable workflows, and a digital source of truth that could help them keep pace with how customers were finding and engaging with their brand.

Great Clips turned to Yext to help power its full location network, making sure that all franchisees could benefit from consistent, accurate listings and customers could get the answers they need (no matter where they search).

Every location now has its own page on greatclips.com, powered by the Yext Knowledge Graph and connected via API to major publishers. Core details like address, hours, pricing, and waitlist data are updated in real time. Customers can even check in directly through the salon's Yext-powered page.

The brand also uses Yext Reviews to centralize and streamline reputation management. Instead of asking 630 franchise owners to manage responses independently, Great Clips handles review responses at the franchisor level — driving brand consistency and quick turnaround times.

The decision to use Yext rather than build an in-house solution was strategic:

Great Clips' long-standing partnership with Yext has become a cornerstone of their digital strategy. Today, all 4,400 franchise locations are managed from a single source of truth. Updates to business details — like hours, pricing, and waitlist information — are made consistently and synced across greatclips.com and major platforms like Google, Apple Maps, and Bing.

This helps make sure that customers always find accurate, real-time information wherever they search. Review management has also become more efficient, with the franchisor team handling responses centrally to maintain a consistent brand voice and respond quickly to feedback.

As a result, franchisees trust that their data is accurate and accessible, and customers experience the kind of seamless discovery journey that builds confidence and drives foot traffic. "Customers are looking for hours, salon wait times, and services. If it's not there, or not right, they go somewhere else," says Hockett.

With Yext, Great Clips is well-positioned to appear not just in traditional search results, but also in AI-driven answers. Structured data and consistent updates allow the brand to show up wherever customers are asking questions. By keeping all of their brand information structured, clean, and current, Great Clips has built trust before the customer even arrives — and that trust helps convert new visitors into repeat customers.

With Yext, Great Clips has gained more than listings management. They've scaled a consistent, customer-centric digital presence that supports both existing customer retention and new customer growth.