Use Technology to Your Advantage and Grow Your Salon Fast

Salon technology in the beauty industry is a growing necessity. There is a new innovation every day, and salon businesses are gradually warming up to the adoption of these innovations. Businesses that are quick to integrate technology into their operations are pacing quickly ahead of the curve. That’s not a secret. And do you know what makes salon tech adoption so easy for so many salon businesses? Well, because it doesn’t reformulate the foundation of your business. All it does is provide you with better management approaches, so you can cherry-pick what you need based on your efficiency and convenience needs. The question you should ask yourself as a salon owner, therefore, is whether you are ready to leverage the obvious benefits of technology to grow your business fast.

How Can You Use Technology to Grow Your Salon Fast?

The short answer: By helping you increase efficiency in your operations and consequently grow your revenue

The long answer: It solves most of the challenges that stand between you and salon business success. Let’s break down these challenges and tell you how technology can help you get around them.

• Internal communication challenges

Traditional internal communication methods are, to say the obvious, frustratingly ineffective. You can have as many notice boards in your salons, or even hang as many internal memos as you want, but you will still have gaps in your communication. Phone calls can seal these gaps, but then they are costly and time-consuming.

Technology can help you foster healthy collaborations within your team by providing convenient communication tools. Thanks to advancements in communication technologies, you now can substitute your notice board with a WhatsApp workgroup, for example. This tool is supported by all smartphones- iOS and android- and is the easiest app to use. All you need is to download the app, add your employees to the Group, and start sharing communique right away.

Another internal communication tool that you should add to your roster is Slack. You can install this platform on any internet-enabled device, including smartphones and computers, for free or for a small fee for priced plans. This tool would be a great substitute for your email communications. Slack keeps an archive of all user communications for future reference. And if you intend to send communication directly to an individual employee or a small group within your team, the platform allows you to send private, individualized messages.

And then there are social media, notably Facebook Private Work Group. You can use this platform to keep in touch with off-duty employees or to build an exclusive members’ club for your loyal clients. On top of chatting with the members, you can also share photos and videos, share documents, hold virtual events, and formulate social media campaign strategies within the workgroup.

• Automation challenges

The biggest challenge to salon business success is the long to-do lists that managers have to handle every day. You can go around this challenge by using salon software technology to automate the repetitive, tedious tasks that drain your energy and jeopardize your team’s efficiency. Consequently, you are able to focus better on responding to clients’ needs, strategizing for growth, and building meaningful interpersonal relationships. Automation also helps you reduce human errors in your operations.

Among other areas, your software will help you automate:

• Booking and scheduling.

It is not enough to have a manual diary or an excel spreadsheet as your only booking platform when almost everyone these days is shopping online. And, in fact, about 45% of all internet users are active from 9 pm in the evening up to around 9 am in the morning. In other words, there is a whole 45% chunk of your possible clientele that bypass you when you sleep.

A self-service online booking platform like the salon appointment app ensures that your salon’s front desk is open 24/7, so clients can still “pass by” the salon and book their appointments even as you sleep. And, hold onto your hat, you can integrate the booking software with Google My Business and social media platforms. Clients are able to make appointments right at the very point they first come across your online marketing materials.

Once a client books an appointment, they can pay securely using credit cards or any other payment mode that your system supports. Some systems will even accept Bitcoin payments.

• Performance reporting

With a salon management program, you can manage as many branches as you can open. The software will enable you to set your preferred key performance indicators (KPIs) and- after measuring performance against those KPIs- will then give you a daily/weekly/monthly performance report. The KPIs can be the number of appointments, repeat clients, inventory sold, and/or referrals earned, among others. It will give you detailed insights on how each key personnel in each location performed over a set timeframe. You can even give staff members access to these insights so that they can analyze their own performances and improve accordingly.

• Feedback from customer

The benefits of staying up-to-date with whatever your clients say about your salon are endless. First of all, customer feedback helps you understand what the market needs so that you can tweak your services to match those needs. Secondly, it helps you counter any negative reviews before they spread further and hamper the reputation of your business. Thirdly, giving clients a platform to air their thoughts makes them feel heard and valued. That’s good for client retention. Your software will provide clients with easy-to-use feedback tools to help you reap all these and many other benefits of proper feedback management.

• Automated commission calculations

Your employees are an important part of your salon. As such, you must take their commissions and salaries seriously. You cannot afford to lose a good employee because you miscalculated their commission or hurt your profitability because you overcompensated an undeserving employee. Automating commission and payroll calculation is one way of ensuring that everyone gets what they worked for. First of all, as we already mentioned, your software will give you employee performance reports on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. That way, you always know who your top employees are, eliminating guesswork and bias when rewarding your top performers.

Secondly, you can use your software to set the percentage commissions each employee earns upon selling a product, completing a service, or selling a package. It then factors in bonuses, taxation, and discounts before determining each employee’s deserved commission.

• Language barrier

You now don’t have to limit your business ambitions to your neighborhood. Your clients don’t have to live around your neighborhood or speak your language. Technology has removed all barriers that have been preventing salon owners from dreaming big.

Take Remote Virtual Interpreting, for example. This technology enables real-time translation through offsite interpreters. To leverage this technology, all you need is a computer, internet connection, and a videoconferencing platform. From that point on, the only limitation there is to worry about is your imagination. Everything is possible with RVI. You can, for example, teach an online beauty class to a multinational audience as a way of diversifying your income streams. Another idea: You can have a remote sign language interpreter on standby in order to appeal more to the deaf and hard of hearing.

You can bet that a sizable fraction of your local community doesn’t share the same first language with you. With RVI, your salon can now serve clients in the language they understand best- their mother tongue. You will win over many of them by translating and interpreting your messages into their first language. In the USA, for example, there is a huge population of Spanish and Mandarin-speaking people that you should not ignore.

Access to affordable interpreting services is also beneficial to your online store. You now can translate your online store, Facebook posts, and other online resources in order to reach out to international audiences. And with affordable shipping, you now can sell beauty products all around the world.

Conclusion

Now you understand what makes technology invaluable to salon businesses. There are many more benefits that you will discover as you continue to integrate technology into your operations.