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Salon Software Buyer's Guide
Table of Contents
Salon professionals often have a hard time managing multiple customer appointments in their routine, and it gets more detrimental during peak times. Salon professionals can utilize the salon software to make their work easy and manage appointments, accommodate requests for new ones, and schedule and reschedule appointments to make their business more profitable and efficient.
What is the meaning of salon?
A salon, by definition, is a facility that offers a variety of beauty services to women and men. Whether it is a haircut, a hairstyle, personal grooming or skincare, there is a wide selection of salon services available for people. People visit salons when they want to pamper themselves and feel rejuvenated.
What Is Salon Software?
Salon Management Software is the solution that helps salon owners and independent styling professionals in managing their daily business operations. The software automates a variety of tasks that include bookings, scheduling, and confirmation of appointments, inventory tracking, customer interactions, secured data storage, staff management, and implementation of marketing campaigns.
What are the Features of Salon Software?
The web-based salon management software is an easy-to-use solution that gives users of the beauty industry to adopt the technology. This helps them to optimize their customer relationships, increase productivity, and driving profitability. The software offers complete industry-specific solutions and integrates with less effort and efficiently into your salon and spa.
The platform’s intuitive interface offers you stress-free navigation of features for more efficient business handling. If you decide to install a quality salon software, then it is good to consider all the basic and key features to investigate before investing in one.
› APPOINTMENT MANAGEMENT: You can book, schedule, reschedule, and follow up on appointments easily online and through mobile apps. The best salon management software allows you to confirm appointments through SMS text messages.
› CUSTOMER MANAGEMENT: The software allows you to capture useful client information to support your marketing campaigns, makes easy for you to reach your audience. The software should enable you to segment and categorize customers, track client’s spent, and collect customer feedback.
› STAFF MANAGEMENT: The software makes it easy for you to track your employee’s metrics such as employee schedules, availability, and customer satisfaction as well as retention.
› ACTIVITY DASHBOARD: With the hair salon software, you can keep a track of your daily appointments and activities ensuring you never miss anything. Your free dashboard displays up-to-date bookings, cancellations, online bookings, and client notifications.
› REDUCE NO-SHOWS: The software should send automated reminders and customized messages to your clients regarding your appointments and inform them of any changes.
› ONLINE BOOKINGS: Your software should allow customers to book, cancel, or reschedule appointments through your website, or social media, or with a mobile app.
› REPORTING: The software should generate customized reports regarding your employee performance, measuring marketing campaign's effectiveness, measuring customer satisfaction through stylist or service categories, and evaluate revenue trends.
› BILLING AND POS PROCESSING: You should be able to generate bills and process payments using common payment methods such as credit and debit cards, cash, and e-wallets. It should allow your customers to use a POS solution to redeem gift coupons.
What are the Benefits of Salon Software?
Salon software is an innovative tool that helps salon owners to automate their business operations, generate more revenues, and control the business. The more customers you have, the more business opportunities you get and increase your revenue. More benefits come with the use of salon software.
› MARKETING CAMPAIGNS: The software enables you to carry out SMS and email-based marketing campaigns to attract customers. These campaigns can offer loyalty cards, promotional packages, membership programs, and gift coupons.
› MOBILE ACCESSIBILITY: You can oversee your salon or spa operations remotely with the use of the salon software. Meanwhile, your stylists can also manage bookings and appointments, check their schedules from anywhere and anytime. The platform interface is designed for easy navigation on any mobile device for effortless use by the users.
› STREAMLINES APPOINTMENTS: You can eliminate the risk of double bookings with the use of the software. It allows you to schedule and reschedule appointments easily, and confirms it to your clients saving you time.
› SOCIAL MEDIA INTEGRATION: You can integrate the software with your social media business pages, where your clients can book or cancel appointments. You can also reach your clients with special offerings, rewards, and discounts with this opportunity.
› INVENTORY MANAGEMENT: Your software alerts you when you run out of a product, so you can restock immediately and serve your clients without a delay. With the best salon management software, you no more encounter bottlenecks in your operations that impact your customer satisfaction.
What is the Cost of Salon Software?
Salon and spa business owners are using web-based salon software to automate their business activities, increase work speed and profit margins, and eliminate silly mistakes. You can multiply your salon business when you carefully use the salon management software. When you decide to install a salon management system into your business, it is important to see how experts evaluate the software’s in their reviews. And find out if the owner's satisfaction level, who bought the software before. With this information, you must prepare to make an informed buying decision that you won’t regret later.
You can shortlist a few software and request for a demo and quote. If you are not sure if the software is useful for your business needs, you can use a free trial of that particular software. If you feel the current software is not suitable for your business needs, you can try another software’s free version. The salon software costs range from $9.90/month with limited bookings and features, to $59/month for unlimited bookings and features usage. Once you finalize on one product, ask that vendor the level of support they provide. You should ensure that your employees should get adequate training to learn to use salon software.
Questions to ask a vendor when buying Salon Software
1. How long have you been in this business?
2. Who are your clients? Can you share a few case studies with me to have a better understanding?
3. Can you give me a working demo?
4. How will your salon software help manage my appointments? Will it automate the process completely?
5. Does the solution offer email integration?
6. How will the system aid in managing relationships with customers? Does it include means to increase customer engagement?
7. Does the software facilitate social media marketing?
8. How user-friendly is this system to use?
9. How much time will it take for a person with zero technical background to understand and navigate the solution?
10. Does the software offer functionality to manage my salon’s retail line?
11. What are your data safety standards?
12. How secure is your software?
13. Does the software come in with mobile support?
14. What kind of insights and analytics will the software provide?
15. What level of customization is possible with this system?
16. Does the solution offer easy collaborations among team members?
17. Can it provide timely alerts and updates?
18. When was the last software upgrade?
19. What is the installation process?
20. What is the training period?
21. Will I get a dedicated point of contact for support?
22. Are support and maintenance included in the subscription?
23. Do you offer a full-featured free trial?
24. How scalable is your system?
Conclusion
Organizations, regardless of their size, have their unique needs and requirements. Try to find an ideal software that fulfills all your business needs. Making a smart decision by customizing the software for your special requirements, budget, staff member skill levels, and other factors that help your business to grow. For this reason, do not rush and pay for the best salon software. Do your homework and shortlist the best salon software products, contact the vendor for clarifying your doubts, and settle for the product that suits your needs.