Upgrading your salon or spa to an online experience helps connect more with clients, reaping the benefits of online booking. With more salons and spas moving forwards with technology and using the internet as an active business platform, perhaps it’s time you did too? Therefore, we share the ways upgrading your business’s online presence can bring it into the here and now.
24/7 access for the benefits of online booking
Many conventional businesses open from 9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m., perhaps 6:00 p.m. at the latest. That means many clients work these hours and will try to make a booking during more unconventional business hours. Incidentally, this is also when many people surf the internet.
Almost every home in the UK has some sort of internet connection and statistics show that Brits are more likely to book online than remember to ring the next day. An online booking system will allow for you to take bookings in real time around the clock, 7 days a week. This can be an effective platform if you attract clients to your website with our advice on how to surge interest in your spa or leisure business online.
Automatically create client cards
Any client that registers online with you, should automatically have a client card created for them on your system. Create mandatory fields for your customers so that you can collect as much client data as possible without actually having to do anything yourself. When your clients log back into your system, they will be able to see previous appointments they have had and with which staff member.
Control the online booking client journey
You may feel slightly anxious that your clients have free reign of your diary. With most software providers, this isn’t the case. You can specify which members of staff can be booked, certain times of the day that clients can book their own appointments and select which treatments and services are bookable. For example, any treatment or service that requires a patch test may be listed online, however the client is instructed to call the salon or spa to actually book this appointment.
Decrease your workload without losing the customer service feel
One of the benefits of online booking is that it takes out the person in the middle – you! An online booking system enables clients to browse through available appointments, choose their staff member and select an appointment time without needing to call your business. Providing you make the booking process clear, clients can then place their booking direct and pay online, before receiving a personal email confirmation. These can be personalised further using merge fields, making the online booking process even more attractive. This makes sure the client is put first, from the initial stages of how to attract clients to your website, through to your website journey and the completion of their booking.
Reducing no-shows is one of the benefits of online booking
We know some clients may get ‘click happy’. One of the benefits of online booking is that you can customise the system in how to reduce no-shows and last-minute cancellations. For example, editing the payment settings will enable options to take full payment, a booking deposit or client deposits, ultimately deterring clients from not showing for a frivolous reason. Many online systems will enable several other options to reduce no-shows too, such as providing an appointment reminder to prompt clients of their booking. Any no-shows can then be compared between different periods using a range of useful reports, helping to monitor the difference.
Should any clients repeatedly not show, then this could be listed in their client details. Check your system details, as this could be set automatically, helping to alert your team and potentially prohibit further appointments from them.
Online booking is a great way to move your business forward. For more information about Premier Software’s online booking system, please call 01543 466 580. In the meantime, watch our videos on Online by Premier Software to see how it can help.
