When running a salon business, your time, energy, and budget always seem inadequate. You cannot waste any of those three resources if you wish to compete effectively with elite salons in your location. And we tell you what, most of the elite salons that you compete with use salon management software to optimize the three resources. That is why their energy and time are always well-spent, operation costs are low, their teams are super productive, and their operations run efficiently even in times of economic turmoil.
If this is your first time using salon appointment app, we can tell you for a fact that this is hands down the best salon technology you will ever acquire. If you utilize it right, you can bet on the software to boost morale in your team, increase customer satisfaction, give you a competitive edge, and increase your profitability. You will achieve your business goals faster and more effortlessly from now going forward.
But then the question is this: What is the right way of utilizing your software in order to optimize efficiency in your salon? To answer this question, here are 4 tips you can implement to increase the efficiency of your salon operations and management using salon management software.
1. Inject efficiency in appointment scheduling
The single most important function of any salon software is online booking. Your software will take over the duties of managing calendars, setting appointments, and configuring product requests from online clients. It will synchronize with your calendar to display on your booking page available slots in your salon. This prevents double bookings, appointment overlaps, and unwanted errors during clients’ check-in processes. The culmination of all these benefits is increased efficiency at the front desk.
There are several strategies you can deploy in order to optimize appointment scheduling for added efficiency. Some of these strategies are:
· Invest in software that allows clients to schedule multiple salon services in a single appointment. Quality software should also allow clients to easily add on more services to their initial request, reschedule, or cancel appointments before the appointment date. That way, clients don’t have to keep calling you every time they need to revise their requests. Fewer phone calls mean minimal time wastage at the front desk.
· Allow employees controlled access to clients’ appointment requests in order to help them plan their weekly schedules more effectively. Your stylists should know beforehand how much time they will ideally spend with a given client, the time they are free to take in extra appointments, and the beauty expectations each client has. Informed stylists are sufficiently prepared and optimally efficient.
· Review your salon schedule every morning and encourage your stylists to do that as well. If your software is cloud-based, you can access appointment information from anywhere. So, when taking your coffee in the morning or stuck somewhere in traffic, use that downtime to review your schedule and familiarize yourself with the appointments booked for the day. Get yourself mentally prepared for your workday long before your first client arrives. That’s how you will minimize time wastage between appointments.
· Use your software to create a clear communication flow with your clients. You can, for example, create, customize, and send friendly appointment reminders to clients using your software as a way of decreasing missed appointments. This is also a proven way of building rapport with your clientele.
· Create flexible schedules in order to accommodate walk-in appointments.
· No-show appointments lead to lost revenue and time wastage. Use your scheduling software to create a no-show protection policy. Advanced salon scheduling software will allow you to create a formula for charging clients’ credit cards a small fee for appointment cancellation, no-show, or late coming.
· Invest in software that has a secure, comprehensive, simple, and quick online payment processing system.
· Integrate the customer profiles on your software with social media so that your salon can connect with its clients on their favorite social media platforms. This is a powerful way of encouraging more bookings and executing promotions.
2. Inject efficiency into customer interactions and relationships
Another key function of salon management software is Customer Relationship Management (CRM). This feature helps you collect, store, analyze, and segment customer information in terms of clients’ age, home address, skin/hair/nail type and treatment preferences, and purchase history. It creates a database that you can then utilize to add efficiency at all the touchpoints that clients have with your business. Added efficiency helps you close more deals, accelerate conversions, retain more customers, and grow your business revenue.
How can you utilize your CRM feature to optimize efficiency in every customer interaction?
· Gather as much information as you can about each client. Before every appointment, read up on the next customer’s appointment history in order to know the customer better. When you or your stylist go to the styling chair sufficiently prepared, you are able to jump right into it without needing to interrogate the client first.
· Use your client database to create custom services and offers for each client. You will achieve more marketing success with customized marketing approaches, saving yourself tons of time and energy.
· Utilize your software to segment clients and create the most suitable packages and promotions for each segment. Some of your clients want cheap and affordable beauty products while others don’t mind paying a little more for better value. When you create packages & promotions that suit each segment, you will need only a few minutes to successfully upsell or cross-sell your retail products.
· Your CRM system provides you with automatic reports and analytics on sales, inventory, employees, etc. Use these reports to streamline your decision-making process.
· Utilize your software in email and SMS marketing. Your CRM system knows your clients by name, nickname, birthdate, and tons of other personal data sets. The system also has the ability to customize and send emails and SMS messages. All you need to do in order to benefit from this ability is create a customizable message and feed it into the system. The system will do all the heavy lifting for you.
3. … And salon inventory management
You don’t have to waste time counting bottles anymore! Advanced software comes with inventory management features such as integrated ordering and running-low alerts. That’s how it ensures your shelves are always stocked with exactly the right amount and types of beauty products that you need for your in-salon use and retail sales.
To inject efficiency in your ordering process and inventory management:
· Set clear and well-detailed reordering parameters. Specify on the software how low products need to get for it to alert your local distributor. That allows your suppliers to automatically replenish your stock even without your active involvement.
· Use your software to segment inventory data in terms of product name/size/cost/, manufacturer’s name, product groups, and retail prices. That makes everyone’s job a whole lot easier.
· Leverage your software’s powerful suggestive selling feature to market retail products to customers based on their purchase and service history.
4. Manage staff more effectively with salon software
Your team is made up of different personalities who are talented, committed, and skilled differently. Managing these people has to be the hardest aspect of your job as a manager. Your software will take most of your employee-management tasks off your hands.
To manage staff more effectively and efficiently, deploy your software in:
· Managing individual staff calendars: In a quick glance, your stylists can see which clients have requested to be serviced by them specifically, the tasks you have assigned them, and a summary of their weekly schedules. Everyone knows where they need to be at any given time.
· Roster each appointment’s start and finish time: It is easier to track an employee’s availability when their hours are well highlighted on the software.
· Payroll: You can key in staff payroll details and commission structure into the system and the software will calculate and tabulate each employee’s earned commission, bonus, and salary.
· Clock in and clock out timesheets: You will manage your staff and clients more efficiently when you keep track of the time worked by each staff member.
Final word
Your salon software injects efficiency into your business in a multitude of ways. There are no limitations here. Above all, it will help you improve how you connect and build relationships with clients. It is up to you to know how to utilize your software well in order to reap all its known and unknown benefits.
