Every Salon owner or staff has to handle a lot of chaos daily!!
Indeed, they have to!!
They have their precious clients to look after and yes, they need to be served to the best!!
Undeniably, the clients are wholly and solely responsible for Salon’s success. If they will not serve properly then the Salon has to face a loss in the customer retention rate.
The main issue that most Salon owners generally go through is handling appointments. From sending emails, answering calls, to attending clients at the Salon, there are a lot of headaches.
Many of the Salon owners fail to delight clients with their service, as they do not have an accurate and manageable system. There comes a time when Salon businesses experience potential clients’ dissatisfaction.
Hence, it is better to choose a solution that can assist you not in managing the clients’ booking but also streamline your Salon booking operations. A lot of research has revealed that the online booking system is best known for providing outstanding results.
Why Salon Online Booking System?
The Online Booking System in the salon is not only freeing up time, but also delights the clients with their usual requirements.
As per the recent statistics, globally, the online booking software market is growing. It is estimated that 15.1% will be the annual growth rate until 2024. And, the total market value will reach $360 million.
There are 58% of the clients who are leveraging online booking as their booking medium to handle the tasks. And the rest 22% are using the online booking for appointment scheduling. Hence, saying – more money, less stress, more time and improved business growth is all you can experience with the online booking software.
Salon Online Booking Software-Defined
The Salon software is nothing but a tool that assists the Salon businesses to manage their business operations effectively. The aim of the system lies in handling the client and employee’s scheduling, Point of Sale (POS), inventory, appointments, analytics, reward or loyalty systems, and many more.
The Salon staff is generally occupied in assisting clients and handling their services that it becomes tough for them to assist several at one time. Indeed, these issues amplify during peak hours. This is where you are in need of the Online Booking System. The solution will assist the Salon professionals in managing their bookings and rescheduling their appointments seamlessly. It, also, takes the request of the new appointments that improve the profitability and effectiveness of the Salon business.
General features of Salon Online Booking System
| Appointment Management | The system allows the clients to schedule, reschedule, or cancel their booking easily with an intuitive user interface. Additionally, the clients can be notified in the form of SMS or emails when there will be any change in the appointment schedules. |
| Point of Sale and Billing System | From the software, the clients can create the bills and then, carry out the payments via several methods, such as debit cards, credit cards, cash, PayPal, Stripe, etc. From this feature, the clients can also redeem their services or gift coupons from the POS solution. |
| Marketing campaigns | The online booking system allows the clients to leverage email or SMS-based marketing to allow them to visit the Salon time and again. These marketing campaigns, usually, are membership programs, promotional packages, gift coupons or loyalty cards, etc. |
| Reporting | Now, the Salon owners can generate the reports and analytics of their Salon profitability. From here, the staff performance can be tracked and the revenue trends can also be discovered. Hence, you can easily keep an eye on the Salon growth and fix the things beforehand. |
| Staff Management | Check out the main employee metrics, like, employee availability, customer satisfaction, employee schedule. etc. from an easy and simple online booking system. |
| Customer Management | Get all the details of the customers effortlessly to get help in supporting the marketing campaigns. The solution has features, like, categorizing and segmenting customers, tracking customer spend and capturing customer feedback, etc. |
Benefits of Online Booking System in the Salon
#1. Manifest a healthy relationship with the clients
You may find it counter-intuitive at first sight, however, the fact is that it saves a lot of precious time of not only the customers but also the Salon staff and owners. From the online scheduling system, the clients can leverage the services in a seamless and effective manner.
For those who like to provide the next day or same-day session, online scheduling is an outstanding way. When there is an availability of the schedules, the clients can seamlessly secure the last-minute bookings. Improved customer satisfaction points towards customer lifetime value and boosts brand loyalty.
#2. Build and grow the Salon revenue
The appointment scheduling software is here to assist the business with an online payment feature. Allow the clients to pay from the convenient payment gateways and improves customer retention and satisfaction rate.
The Salon Software also enables the Salon owners to charge for no shows and the late cancellations. Those who are in the market to thrive, the online booking system can assist to grow and improve the bottom line.
The other best thing is that it makes it simple to create, post, promote, and market online. From the system, you can also integrate the offers or enable the clients to select the package they like.
It, in the future, improves the profitable results and enables the clients to get what they aspire for. The Salon industry can also use the upselling to the booking process and allow you to provide context-oriented offers to the aspired customers.
#3. Monetary Savings
When it is about monetary savings then, the online booking system is the best choice. You, surely, can get the financial gains without any extra hassles.
You can, hence, spend your precious time in carrying out the productive tasks and make the Salon the revenue-generated business. The resources that were before used in handling the appointments can be used to establish the operations to do the sale-oriented tasks.
With the appointment scheduling software, you, also, do not need to hire additional staff or eliminate the need to work more while managing the Salon appointments. It can probably give rise to a considerable amount of annual savings.
Of course, the time savings could be converted into the monetary savings because, both the staff services and time are converted into the revenue or expenses, correspondingly. And new salon clients convert into regular ones.
Also, the automated appointment alert system also generates monetary savings by lessening the chances of no-shows. This is the situation when the customer fails to appear to their appointments on the respective timings. It is estimated that these reminder types reduce the no-show’s occurrence to almost 50%.
#4. Centralized Information System
The online booking system for the appointments incorporate customer management as part of the features. The Salon can generate one centralized information system from where the details of the customers can be saved, updated, managed, and examine.
The reporting, recording, and monitoring of the information assist in managing the customers to a great extent. Also, it can eliminate the burden of handling the documentation and the time it usually takes to handle the manual data.
Additionally, it offers easy and quick access to the essential business data which offers support to the daily and long-term imperative decisions for the Salon. The redundant entries about the same customers can also be avoided.
Furthermore, the ongoing records can get updated on time when the appointment gets booked and makes the information available for fast and easy access in one place.
#5. No More No Shows
Despite the type of Salon you are in, there are the customers that regularly cancel, rebook, and no-show their appointments at the last minute itself. With the automated SMS and email reminders, the Salon owners can track the regularity of the booking cancellation.
From the solution, the Salons can monitor the scheduling or staffing for the week, according to the number of the appointments they attain.
From the SMS and email alerts, the influential and essential opportunities can be prevented. Therefore, a lot of hassle of canceling or rescheduling can be eliminated. Assuredly, the booking software is a helping hand here as well. By enabling the customers to reschedule their booking online, you are making it simple for them.
#6. Email And SMS Reminders
Same in the case of how you do not like your work getting disturbed with the customer calls, with the SMS and email reminders, the customers cannot get disturbed in the day to revert back to the calls.
The advantages of using the online booking software with the booking reminders or alerts not only is beneficial for your business but, also assists the clients in the best way possible.
Certainly, not every customer spends their day near the phone or the computer. The SMS or email reminders notify the customers about the upcoming appointments to their phones despite the location they are at.
The same thing works for the service provider as well. If the customer reverts back to the appointment reminder and asks you to either reschedule or cancel, then, the notification for the same will also be received by the Salon owner as well.
#7. Valuable Insight into the Salon
Every Salon thrives to get profitable results and operation efficiency on a priority basis. Despite the size of the Salon, the comprehensive reporting from the online software helps you to obtain sound decisions.
The online booking system has the easy to use analytics dashboard which assists the Salon owners to find out the performance indicators easily and quickly. You can check:
- The percentage of the completed appointments by the Salon staff.
- The number of no-shows on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.
- Productivity comparison.
- The number of the booked meeting as the result of the marketing campaign.
- The extensive appointment history of potential customers.
The above-mentioned are some of the measures that can be observed. Many online booking systems enable you to check out the reports on daily or periodical sales and customers. This easy and quick access to the important business data is helpful in supporting the longer-term and regular imperative decisions for the Salon.
#8. Save the Salon Staff time
The Salon customer service staff spends most of the time managing the phone calls, describing options to the customers, and handling schedules; this all can be automated easily.
The time-saving advantages work in a similar way for the prospects. The users who like to schedule appointments with you do not need to commit their part to the busy schedule to ask you for the appointment.
They can carry this out easily while executing their particular duties. If the schedule is free on the mentioned date, then, the customers can select the options, choose the date and time according to the need.
The software then sends the SMS or email confirmation when the appointment is scheduled. This all can be handled without needing any of the human participation.
It, also, frees up the staff to carry out more essential things on time. This, of course, is a huge benefit to the online booking platform, the essential one is that it benefits your business.
Final Thoughts
The online booking system is gaining steam. Several reasons are there that make it essential to embrace. The features it accumulates allows the businesses to generate a seamless system for generating, managing, and booking as well.
The scheduling software is more customizable, flexible, and includes a plethora of integrations. Tweaking them at some point is possible to satisfy the particular requirements. So, if you can manage it to the best, then, your Salon can get the guaranteed results.
We hope that this article is liked by you. If in case, you have some doubts then let us know in the comment section below. Also, if you are using the online booking system, then, share your experience with us.
Thanks for reading!!
