How Salon Software Helps Create a Consistent Client Experience

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December 19, 2022 Business

The hair and beauty industry has arguably the most complicated, diverse, and demanding clients. Everyone has a unique taste, hair type, skin type, product preferences, class, and style. Sustaining an audience in this industry is hard. To retain clients and create a loyal client base, it is demanded that you be consistent in terms of marketing ideas, business vision, workplace rules & culture, customer relation policies, service delivery, and personality. Consistency is mandatory for each interaction you have with clients.

That’s not all. You also must provide emotional consistency in order to earn the trust of both clients and employees. Emotional consistency means being on top of your emotions, from how you talk, your body language, and your empathy, to how you solve conflicts in the salon. Last but not least, you need to be consistent in how you communicate. If you make a promise, it is of paramount importance that you keep that promise. The tone of your social media posts, emails, appointment reminders, and other marketing messages also has to be consistent if you are to create a recognizable brand identity.

As we can all acknowledge, creating a consistent client experience isn’t the easiest thing to do. The only ray of hope here is that salon management software can help you create this consistency. Let’s explore 6 ways how:

1. Guaranteed access to appointment booking

One way of providing a consistent customer experience is to minimize the frequency of staff-client interactions. The more time a client spends at your front desk, for example, the harder it is for you and your staff to keep them happy and entertained. Hair salon online booking helps you minimize these interactions by enabling clients to book and manage their appointments on their own. It will enable you to publish (on the booking platform) answers to the FAQs that clients often call your front desk to inquire about. What’s more, clients update and manage their own profiles on the booking platform. They fill in their personal and contact information, hair and skin treatment preferences, and favorite products. In summary, the booking platform helps you bypass all pre-booking interactions that could bring unwanted staff-client friction.

Online booking also fosters a consistent client experience by availing your front desk services to clients outside of your business hours. Clients book appointments at their own convenience, at any time of day, and they are assured of a seamless appointment booking process every single time. That is a huge upgrade from over-the-phone appointments where clients are never sure of how long they will be put on hold, or the mood the receptionist will be in. Phone appointments are also prone to unwanted miscommunication and misunderstanding. Online booking eliminates this confusion by putting clients in charge of the entire appointment process.

A big section of your online traffic comes from social media, notably Facebook & Instagram. You need to create a consistent customer experience for this traffic as well. Your software will help you with that. Firstly, it provides you with links to your online booking platform that you can share with clients during your everyday social media engagements. The link redirects users to your booking platform so that they can schedule their appointment without any assistance. Secondly, it helps you make the process a lot simpler by enabling you to integrate “Book Now” buttons into your social and Google My Business profiles. Clients are happy when they don’t have to leave the comfort of their social media profiles to book appointments.

2. Up-to-date client databases

As we mentioned above, your software puts clients in charge of their own profiles. They fill in their personal data, tastes and preferences, and contacts. The software then collects all that data and saves it in well-organized, secure, and easy-to-access databases. On your part, you can update the database with each client’s appointment booking history, payment history, product purchase history, and simple notes on how to optimize each client’s experience. All this data helps you create a consistent client experience in so many ways:

· It helps you identify, prepare for, and find the perfect approach to each client’s unique needs and requests. You are able to always customize services to each client’s taste. If there is a specific stylist a client likes, or who is best skilled to handle a specific client, you can easily organize the employees’ schedule so that everyone gets their most suitable stylist. If there is a specific product that a client needs or likes, this data helps you avail of necessary products.

· The software uses this data to recommend products to clients based on their preferences.

· Clients record their full names and preferred nicknames, so you always call repeat customers by their names. That makes them feel known and appreciated in every single visit.

· Clients also record their cell phone numbers, home phone numbers, email addresses, home addresses, and social media handles. That way, you easily contact each one of them whenever you have special loyalty programs or discount services. No client feels left out.

· You can ask clients to record their birthdates, and then use that information to create consistent birthday month promotions.

· You can record personal notes in the database, notably a client’s allergies and pre-existing health conditions. That way, you are able to reorganize your space between appointments to make it a little more comfortable when the client checks in.

· The salon software allows you to create online questionnaires, review forms, and surveys that clients can fill out during the booking process. Clients feel a lot more comfortable giving feedback and opinions to an online system rather than expressing themselves to your face. Feedback helps you identify weaknesses in your team or your management style, so you fix them before things get out of hand.

3. Automated appointment reminders

Clients share their contact information while scheduling their appointment online through platforms like Fresha. You can then use this information to create automated appointment reminders. The software customizes the reminder message for each client and sends it via text message and/or email. These reminders are more reliable than phone reminders because, with your busy schedule, you can easily forget to make a call. Phone calls can also be quite uncomfortable and annoying too. Texting is always better.

4. Employee performance reports

Employee performance is the backbone of your salon’s client experience. It is unfortunate that you don’t have the time or the energy to monitor the performance of each one of them. But there is hope in salon management software. The software allows you to define your most important KPIs and run employee performance reports against each KPI. This helps you identify trends, strengths, and weaknesses in each employee, so you can work with them to improve their weaknesses before it’s too late.

Final word

You will be doing your salon or spa a big favor by investing in management software. On top of injecting consistency in customer experience, it will also help you make up for lost revenue during the pandemic.