Technology - Driven Approach With a Human Touch

 

Covid impacted almost all businesses the world over, but the repercussion was most severe for Spa and Salon owners. Strict lockdown conditions meant that the customer flow dried to a trickle. The pandemic left staff shortages in its wake as well. As a result, many business operators had to downsize or shut down their enterprises. This has led beauty businesses to consistently search for cost-effective measures which can help them to remain afloat.

One of the primary ways through which Salons and Spas are coping post-pandemic is by re-inventing the front desk experience for their customers. They are doing away with human staff and replacing it with self-service applications. With the use of high-end technology, they are facilitating online appointment scheduling for customers, tablet-based check-ins, and finally online mobile payments. Retail sale of products through E-commerce portal is also on the rise. No doubt these interventions have given good short-term financial results, but beauty experts from the industry are sounding the bell of caution against going all out in long term.

If you eliminate the human touch from the front desk experience of your customer, your business will start looking very impersonal; this is what they forewarn.

The spa and Salon business is one industry that is purely human-centric when it comes to services delivered. If someone is getting a massage or a haircut done, at that point in time he or she is the sole beneficiary of the undivided attention of the service executive. This is the image that a patron has when visualizing a relaxing time in any Spa or Salon. If the entry process of availing such luxury is devoid of a human voice or smile, the entire experience may come across as very mechanical and can defeat the very purpose of the visit. Also one should bear in mind that a strong personal connection is the building block of gaining a customer’s trust. This trust later translates into maximizing customer satisfaction, promoting re-booking, or boosting retail sales.

There are other perils as well. Spa and Salon appointment booking when conducted completely online, with no help desk or front desk support, can lead to client frustration. Not everyone is completely at ease with the use of appointment scheduling apps. The older generation and not-so-tech-savvy-populace can still find it rather tedious and tiresome. They may prefer to go someplace else rather than getting bogged down by manually filling the fields in the software. There are others who prefer picking up a phone or using text messages for scheduling an appointment. If they don’t find these alternatives available with your business, they would of course move on to other alternatives.
Auto-submit options in appointment scheduling software also make you lose out on any opportunity for on-the-spot up-selling and cross-selling of your products or services. This directly impacts your prospective revenue.

Spa and Salon owners, when completely reliant on technology are also prone to scheduling errors. Most of their customers do not understand the technicalities of the industry. Hence booking a service slot completely online can result in chaos. For instance, if someone with jet black hair books an online appointment for getting blond dyed hair done in one sitting, your service executive will land up in soup!
One cannot deny the role of technology in business optimization, but if it is coming at a human cost that is core to your business, then you have to take notice. There does exist an alternative that gives your business the winning advantage on both fronts i.e. cost optimization and customer experience.
This alternative is to deploy the services of third-party outsourced call center services for Spas and Salons. These expert service providers bring a technology-driven approach to front desk services while remaining human-centric.

These Spa and Salon Call Center Services companies, LiveSalesman being one, cater to the complete range of your business needs. From Client appointment scheduling, client reach-out campaigns, cross-selling and up-selling of products and services, managing multiple marketing promotions to answering any and all client queries covering from routine to very specific. Your business is provided with a local phone number which is manned by the LiveSalesman team 24/7/365. Be it through a telephone call or live chat support, your customers get the impression that they are in constant touch with you.

Spa and Salon Appointment Booking Services of LiveSalesman can handle all the incoming calls thus freeing up the owner to manage retail customers and focus on pure customer delight. Since most of the staff hired by a spa and salon owner are specialists in their own right, wasting their bandwidth over mundane calls is often a drain on the system. If they are glued to the phone answering calls, many of which are simple inquiries, it breaks their rhythm and ebbs the flow of work once momentum is lost. LiveSalesman is here to help so that they can focus on their primary responsibilities and help you to grow the business.

LiveSalesman team is well trained on almost all online booking platforms which are prevalent and thus provide seamless galvanization of all channels. Spa and salon appointment booking services company LiveSalesman, with its fully managed service solution, is capable of booking more appointments and generating more revenue for owners. The consistent bottleneck of expenditure overheads like hiring, training, dealing with hassles of on-roll staff, equipment, and allocation of additional space internally is lifted.