On any average day, salon owners and managers are responsible for a host of activities. From managing booking and scheduling appointments to meeting guest expectations and strategizing on marketing plans, the list of activities is endless. Thus, it is no surprise that they’re often complaining about never having enough time. However, it doesn’t have to be so. Instead, salon owners and managers, by deploying an online salon booking system can harness the power of technology and make their lives simple. When implemented correctly, a salon booking software streamlines the operational procedures, maintains accurate records, eliminates redundancies, cuts costs, boosts revenue, and help you expand your footprint. Here are the 7 amazing benefits of deploying a salon booking software.
Superior Guest Experience
Modern day guests treat each visit to a salon like an experience, and the journey of that experience commences from the time of booking an appointment. For this reason it is important that your salon should be equipped to both respond to guests, at all times, and offer them the convenience of booking anytime, anywhere. A salon booking software helps you in achieving that goal. For example, Zenoti salon booking software utilizes its single sign on feature, it empowers guests to edit/ update personal details, book / modify appointments, manage subscriptions, redeem loyalty rewards, shop for products, and gift cards, settle invoices, provide feedback, and share referral codes with friends and family.
Improved Operational Efficiency
A salon booking software vastly improves the efficiency of your business. By streamlining the administrative processes related to appointments, payments, employee management, inventory management, marketing, it removes the redundancies of manual procedures. Further, by automating all the repetitive tasks such as scheduling appointments, preparing shift rosters, syncing employee calendars, raising invoices, and accepting payments it saves you and your team precious amount of time, which can be better utilized in accepting more bookings, delivering excellent guest experience, and strategizing on marketing.
Minimize Downtime
Did you know that a salon appointment booking software can reduce your business’s downtime by upto 80%? The software tracks each and every confirmed booking and automatically sends reminders to both the guest and the provider. Some software seek secondary confirmation of the appointment, such the existing booking doesn’t turn into a no-show one. Alternatively, many salon booking software also allow you to incorporate a feature which requires guests to make a certain deposit in form of card payments to confirm the booking, thus giving guests another reason to show up. Additionally, by offering guest who aren’t particular about the dates, to waitlist themselves for any given day, the software ensures that any last minute openings in the calendar due to rescheduling / cancellation aren’t lost and the vacancy is filled by a waitlisted guest.
Increased Revenue
We know that it sounds too good to be true, but perhaps the most surprising benefit of a salon booking system is that it helps you boost your revenue. It does so by leveraging analytics. By analysing your sales data, the software ranks services based on popularity, price and seasonality and helps you come up with a healthy mix of service offerings which not only improve your revenue/hour but also keep the activity fun for your staff. One such example is the smart scheduling feature in Zenoti salon booking software that helps you in scheduling high margin services during the peak hours and low margin services for non-peak hours. As a result, your business earns better revenue and your team doesn’t experience any lull period.
Better Data Security
An often ignored benefit of a salon booking software is the security of business data. Since the software becomes the central repository of information, it eliminates the need of both maintain either the paper trail or the excel spreadsheets. Further as most salon booking software, now, use a cloud based storage system, the security of data is further enhanced. Moreover, as the cloud based systems also come with features such as role based data access authorization, you can be rest assured that no business data is being lost due to theft.
Moderate Online Reviews
In today’s time when guests engage in conducting a thorough review prior to patronizing any business, having an online presence is more than essential. In other words, having online reviews is vital to creating your brand, and a salon booking software can help you in the process. By automating the process of sending survey emails to collect feedback, the software encourages guests to leave positive reviews on Google, Amazon and other websites. In the eventuality of your business receiving a negative review (which invariably will happen once in a while), it automatically tracks the same and prods you to respond such that you can take prompt corrective action.
Detailed Insights
Hands down the best benefit of a salon booking software is its ability to provide detailed insights on every aspect of the business. Whether you need the information on a particular guest or the overall performance of the business, a salon booking software makes it easy to collate and comprehend the data. Salon booking systems such as Zenoti offers a state of art reporting module, which allows you to generate on-demand reports and create customized interactive centralized dash board, which lets you understand the both micro and macro picture of your business.
A salon booking software offers many more additional benefits. It can help you easily manage your inventory and your employees, run your marketing campaigns and your loyalty programs and help you in taking your business to the next level.