Your Facebook page has a lot of followers. Comments and inquiries from potential customers flood your inbox day and night.
You’re hoping that this translates to foot traffic. Because despite your savvy online presence, visits to your nail salon remain scarce.
Fret not.
Have you ever been into a CrossFit gym? Before you can attend the class you have to book an appointment in a specific schedule to make sure that the coach can accommodate the number of students and at the same time the space is not too cramped to do the workout. Usually, these gyms use an appointment software like Wodhopper or Wodify.
Same goes in a nail salon.
A nail salon appointment software is like having a receptionist 24/7 to take in appointments from your customers and to answer their questions. But instead of having a real person to do the appointment setting, you’ll have an application that will present available schedules and record all the appointments in just a matter of few clicks. Having this appointment software will definitely give you a much-needed boost to your business.
Using an appointment software can dramatically make everything easier for your nail salon retail. And here are some of the surprising (and compelling) reasons why you should start using an appointment software now!
1. Know Your Clients
It’s a sad fact that most salon owners (and their service staff) do not know their clients by name. But, you will certainly stand out if you are the only salon around that can greet them by name.
Having a nail salon appointment software is one way to have that edge of knowing your customers by name. It will also enable you to get to know who are your loyal customers and create targeted promotional activities for them.
Not only that, You can work on improvements in your business – just by looking at the demographics of your customers!
Know the products that they usually reserve, and improve on them. If your customers typically go for a specific service combination, why not bank on that? You can innovate and add products (and services) that would improve your existing promos.
2. Hassle-Free Booking For Customers
The booking process will be more reliable since they can see what times are already booked, in contrast to asking for a schedule through a receptionist and getting rejected. Convenience is an aspect often overlooked by service businesses. And if competition is immense, this will definitely give you an edge.
3. Get Real-Time Updates
An appointment software can automatically send data to you. This will enable you to make decisions regarding which service is more in demand on what days, among other things.
Trends of data will be useful in the long run. For example, if you find out that on Valentine’s day demand increases thrice, then will make you move ahead of time to hire part-time employees. It will also make you a better manager of resources with regards to employees and opening hours if the forecast is correct.
4. Collect Customer Information Easily
Don’t just rely on posting on social media. Sending out a promotional invite through your page feels different as compared to sending them individually to your patrons.
The keyword here is to give them the VIP treatment by reaching them out one by one.
Thus, you should think of ways of continuing to provide excellent service to your regulars.
What better way of providing better service and engaging your patrons than sending out promotional info straight to their inbox?
If you have an appointment software, send out a message will be a breeze. You don’t have to sort through a manual database just to find out your most frequent patrons.
5. Monitor Your Store’s Most Requested Nail Technicians
If you want to be more hands-on in monitoring your staff, having an appointment software can help lessen your work.
Knowing who are the most requested technicians can help you train your other staff. If you know who among your team is preferred by your customers, you can duplicate these attributes to all your staff. This way, you can assure your customers of uniform service across the board.
Knowledge-sharing and improvement of existing best practices can be arranged among your staff using this knowledge. Thus, you can access this specific knowledge through your appointment software.
6. Reduce Wage Costs
Having a software to keep track of when and who is going into your business can be a substitute to having an additional receptionist, with benefits and compensation sometimes not matching up to the productivity of their work. Aside from that, the system can accommodate inquiries and bookings even after office hours.
Since some of your customers are working too, they might not find attractive calling within those hours. They will feel tired and stressed after a long day, so being a click away to book when they feel this way is an advantage.
7. Optimize Business Operations
If you have a problem with customer turnout (despite having full bookings), purchasing a centralized nail salon appointment system can do the trick. Manpower can be increased and decreased based on existing appointments during the day.
You can lessen the number of idle staff during off-peak hours. Having idle staff lurking around can be problematic. You want your customers to have the impression that your business is booming, right?
8. Have Subtle Advertisements
If you have an appointment software on your salon’s page or website, this will pique your customers’ interest. They would certainly be more inclined to book an appointment online than to go to the salon on the day they plan to get a service. By doing so, customers will not be unsure about the availability of their preferred staff.
Moreover, you may also tweak the software to include subtle advertisements. After a booking, you may inform your customers about upcoming promotions that are not too distracting. Displaying ads on your appointment software can help with your sales since 54%of customers do not click ads because they don’t trust them. But since they are already your customers, click through rate for such ads will be higher.
Having the luxury of adding your own promotional material at an opportune time is beneficial for your business. There are customers that are on the lookout for amazing deals. Hence, you’ll increase sales by having ads up and running.
9. Technological Advantage
Shifting immediately to the digital sphere gives a wow factor to your brand, aside from the useful reasons stated.
Why?
Having an appointment software will enable you to leave a mark on your consumers as a business that hears the consumers’ needs. If the customers are complaining about the manual system of booking with other salons, they will be amazed if they get to use your system.
In an instant, they will choose you as their new go-to nail salon.
They will not have handful of troubles if they book an appointment through your system.
Your nail salon will be marked as different from the rest. A nail salon that is not afraid to innovate.
This will lead you to..
10. You Can Get Ahead of Your Competitors
The fast pace of the world today means a lot for businesses. You have to be at least a step ahead of your competition if you want to remain relevant in this business.
Thus, technological advancements, such as appointment softwares, should not be ignored.
This is an innovation that will help you upgrade your business operations.
If you’re serious in getting more customers for your salon, you have to step-up your game.
Appointment softwares are developed to help not only salon owners like yourself but also your respective customers. This automation will save precious time and resources to make rational decisions with trusted figures based on secured appointments.
Also, it will provide you with more income while saving on labor costs and marketing costs. You will even have a guaranteed decline of customers’ complaints for waiting too long or wasted foot traffic because of unavailable staff. If it helps you to achieve your goals, why not give it the benefit of the doubt?
With these reasons, you should not think twice about getting that appointment software you need. You will definitely see the stark difference in your business operations!
