From fauxhawks to ombre locks, you’ve optimized your salon’s website with keywords and photos, so potential new clients come to you when they want to copycat celebrity-inspired hair trends. Likewise, you’ve made sure your menu of services shows up in a wide variety of local search engine results pages. You even overhauled your site to make it more mobile friendly, whether clients visit it via smartphone, tablet, or laptop. But what good is any of that if clients can’t book services at their convenience? Enter, SalonProPOS.
In case you haven’t researched salon POS software since you rocked the Rachel cut in the ‘90s, today’s cloud-based platforms do more than process payments. They help with marketing, inventory, customer management, and appointments. But unlike some systems, SalonProPOS doesn’t just send clients text or email reminders about upcoming appointments. It enables them to schedule and cancel them with a couple of clicks. Here are five ways online booking will transform your salon the way your stylists transform clients.
1. Online Booking Will Grow Your Business
“[O]nline scheduling should be viewed as a major component of a company’s retention and acquisition strategy,” Small Business Trends said in October 2015 – especially if you’re aiming for the age 25 to 34 demographic since millennials are rarely far from their phone.
Regardless of your target audience, Americans in general spend a lot of time online. According to Pew Research Center:
- 73 percent go online daily;
- 42 percent go online several times per day; and
- 21 percent go online almost constantly.
What are they doing? They’re:
- Working from home
- Taking classes
- Applying for jobs
- Checking email and social media accounts
- Watching videos
- Listening to music
- Conducting online banking
- Following breaking news
- Buying tickets
- Ordering pizza
- Reserving an Uber
- Getting directions
And if you’re a business-savvy salon owner, new clients are booking appointments with your beauticians whether the urge to change their hairstyle strikes them at noon or midnight.
2. Online Booking Will Cut Your Number of No-Shows
As marketing solution provider ForeUP said, “Customers who made a financial commitment by booking their own reservations are more likely to show up, thus reducing the amount of no-shows. And in the event a customer does need to cancel, [his or her] spot automatically becomes available again, which means someone else can book it.”
3. Online Booking Will Free up the Front Desk to Upsell
Imagine how much more time your receptionists would have to educate potential new clients about services and products if they didn’t have to answer the phone to rebook appointments for regulars who call every six to eight weeks. They would also have more time to protect your brand reputation by ensuring that clients are comfortable as they wait for stylists who fell behind due to late clients.
As a bonus, online booking will save you from having to hire seasonal staff to man the phones during holiday promotions.
4. Online Booking Will Relax Regular Clients and Help You Keep Them
Salons are a member of the service industry, so it stands to reason that they should provide great customer service. Forcing clients to remember what days you’re open and to call during your business hours – i.e., when it’s convenient for you – is the opposite of great customer service. You may think clients will remain loyal to your salon because they’re afraid to let strangers touch their hair, but are you willing to bet your business on that? After all, social media platforms and review sites have made it easier to trust a new stylist.
Allow clients to book appointments online, and you’ll retain globetrotters and corporate-ladder climbers who don’t want to wake up at 2 a.m. their time to schedule a trim or squeeze listening to your hold message script into their to-do list.
5. Online Booking Will Make a Great First Impression
Thanks to your SEO efforts, dissatisfied and inconvenienced clients of other salons are sure to find you. The ability to book appointments online may just be the feature that prevents them from going elsewhere.
Contact SalonProPOS for More Highlights
The flexibility of online booking will help you keep current clients and attract new ones. To learn more about how SalonProPOS will improve your salon’s bottom line, request a demo or contact us [note to client: your contact us link takes visitors to the Punchey blog, and your blog link takes visitors to a coming soon page].
Sources:
PEW Research Center: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/12/08/one-fifth-of-americans-report-going-online-almost-constantly/
ForeUP: http://www.foreupgolf.com/2016/07/02/advantages-disadvantages-using-online-booking-system/
Small Business Trends: https://smallbiztrends.com/2015/10/online-appointment-scheduling.html