Every business has its level of risks; though, it’s possible to mitigate the challenges with proper business planning and the adoption of a good work management system. For instance, managing a hair salon isn’t an easy task, but here are five budget-friendly and easy-to-implement tips that will improve your hair salon’s efficiency in the current climate.
1. Use an Online Booking App for Salon
Do you waste a lot of time every day managing phone bookings? What can be done in less than a minute could take you several hours with all the scheduling, rescheduling, cancelling, and confirmation calls. This drains your time as well as efficiency. A salon booking app is a fantastic time-saving tool that enables your customers to schedule and manage their hair salon appointments, without any direct involvement from your staff. Your salon’s calendar will automatically update the claimed slots and issue notifications and reminders to both your customers and employees. You don’t have to manually check your salon’s registry and follow up with each client. Instead, you can focus on making your salon the best in town.
2. Take Steps to Boost Client Retention
Most hair salon owners lack the time and budget to put in a conscious effort for retaining their existing customers. This prevents them from getting new customers who will be hesitant to walk into an empty salon. With an online booking app for salons, you can implement one of the most affordable and practical customer retention strategies named pre-booking. Allowing clients to pre-book their appointments will boost repeat business in hair salons. It’s way better than asking them to call up at a later date to book an appointment. It takes virtually no time, effort, or fee to implement this strategy. You can simply announce an incentive like a discount or an extra service for free to encourage pre-booking.
3. Roll Out Training Programs Quickly
The ability to sync with the changing beauty trends and styles will improve your hair salon’s image and popularity. This requires your staff to be well-groomed in the new genres of haircuts, styles, and fads that are in vogue. Designing a comprehensive training package could sound like a nightmare for many hair salons. A smart salon booking app features powerful integration techniques, which will allow you to link your salon software to external training programs managed by top stylists. You can also customize your salon’s online scheduling app to assign courses to your staff based on their level of expertise, track course progress, evaluate performance, and offer certifications, without letting your business suffer. Adopt a cloud-based salon booking app that will allow your team members to finish their training from anywhere, even outside your working hours.
4. Automate Your Marketing Efforts
Most hair salons lack sufficient budgets to run innovative and sophisticated marketing campaigns. This reduces their visibility in the market. With an intelligent salon booking app, you can streamline business tasks through marketing automation. For example, you can schedule emails that should reach a customer’s mailbox at respective intervals. Likewise, hair salons can manage a mailing list to which they can send newsletters and event registration links. Integrating your salon booking app with workflow automation tools and sales outreach platforms like Zapier and Yesware will help you set up canned email responses, which will boost your brand’s credibility.
5. Optimize Retail Selling
Many customers are interested in exploring the products used at your hair salon. Some of them even intend to buy the merchandise used during their appointment. Imagine a customer who wants to buy an exclusive shampoo from your hair salon and you haven’t stocked it. Asking the customer to place the order and pick it up later from your salon is a big disservice. Encourage the customer to shop via your salon booking app. The customer receives notification when their favourite merchandise is available and orders it instantly to get the product delivered to their doorstep. The integrated eCommerce store is an excellent salon booking app feature that encourages your clients to make repeat purchases. It frees your staff’s time and provides you with an additional source of revenue.
Every small win offered by your salon booking app helps enhance your salon’s efficiency. While it’s true that transformations don’t happen overnight, these tips allow you run a highly efficient hair salon, loved by every visitor.