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Clients come to your beauty business to de-stress and leave feeling refreshed. Part of what your clients are paying for is a sense of ease, not only during their service appointment, but throughout the process from booking to checking out and paying.
Hassle and inconvenience when canceling, rescheduling, or paying for services impacts your clients’ experience and may send them to your competition.
For salons and spas with a large staff or multiple locations, delivering a cohesive experience across all client communication is a complex endeavor — and an opportunity to build loyalty. The way you handle client communication impacts your clients’ impression of your brand, their decision to return, and the likelihood they’ll recommend you to their friends.
Here are some key tools that can help every beauty business owner efficiently manage their client experience from the first interaction.
Automate client confirmations with Square Assistant
An automated SMS messaging tool like Square Assistant enables your clients to confirm, cancel, and reschedule right through text message — without having to make a phone call. This creates a more convenient customer experience and streamlines the workload and phone calls for your administrative staff.
It also helps to reduce no-shows with automated reminders through SMS. Responding to a text reminder is quick, convenient, and enables clients to answer on their own time. Clients that receive automated reminders from Square Assistant are seven times more likely to successfully reschedule their appointment. Because Square Assistant can respond at all times of day, it’s accessible for your clients on their own schedule, without impacting your team’s workload.
Allow clients to book themselves with Square Appointments
With Square Appointments, your clients can book their appointments online based on your business’s availability, without requiring manual effort from your staff.
This tool makes the scheduling experience seamless for clients. Rather than taking time to make a phone call, and possibly wait on hold to set up their next visit, they can access your scheduling site and book themselves in an open time slot. They will receive automatic appointment reminders, and they can easily reschedule directly from the reminder email.
Booking app Square Go also allows clients to discover, book and rebook with Square Appointments sellers easily, and it’s free to use. The app saves time by eliminating the traditional scheduling back and forth over the phone. It also sends booking reminders that have helped lead to a 23% increase in rebooking.
For your staff, this reduces time spent booking client appointments and inputting information. Your scheduling team can set and update your availability on the back end of Square Appointments, so calendars stay up to date. Email reminders are automatic, so no one has to manually send them out. This frees up time and energy for your team members which they can spend delivering more personalized care to your valued clients.
Give your team a full picture of each client with Square Advanced Access
Square Advanced Access is designed to help business owners manage large teams or teams across multiple locations, all in one organized place. Within your Square Dashboard (or Retail app), you can control what different employees can access, and which actions they can take, by setting up team members and creating permission sets across locations.
When it comes to improving client communication, the Customer Directory within Team Management will be your team’s best friend. This feature allows you to create customer profiles, groups, and more to stay organized and gain insight into your most loyal clients. All relevant team members will be able to see a centralized view of each client’s status, history, and past interactions with your business. This empowers your team to achieve more consistent communication, no matter who is helping the client at any given moment, keeping the experience smooth for the client and hassle-free for your staff.
Take advantage of digital contracts and centralized information with Square Dashboard
Square Dashboard is your team’s hub, especially for those who interface with clients all day long. Within Dashboard, relevant staff can view the business’s calendar, upcoming scheduled appointments, and services booked online and, if you use Square Appointments, your business’s public availability for clients.
This helps keep everyone on the same page across locations, shifts, or departments. If a client needs assistance, the team member helping them has access to all of the same information as their colleagues. Your administrative teams can manage the flow of appointments throughout the day and monitor your online booking site in real-time.
Square Dashboard also enables you to use digital contracts and e-signature functionality. This is faster for clients than signing paper contracts and more efficient for your staff who don’t need to spend time scanning and uploading printed copies. Square even offers preloaded contract templates so you don’t have to start from scratch with every contract. Start with a template, then customize it with your own logo and branding, individual clauses, or original copywriting. Your team can send contracts out to multiple people at once. This way, signatures are taken care of smoothly and you can get back to focusing on the luxury experience.
Improve your client communication beyond the front desk
Customer service doesn’t just happen when clients are standing at your reception desk; it’s happening at every touchpoint where your beauty and wellness clients interact with your business. Disjointed communication can muddy the otherwise luxurious experience clients have at your business.
Digital tools for smooth client communication help your clients feel taken care of throughout the whole process. With advanced tools from Square, communicating with your clients about confirming, rescheduling, and other logistics can become smooth and seamless. Automating the workload also saves a lot of time and effort for your team, so they can focus on delivering the high-quality service that keeps your clients coming back.
