Business and Beauty: Texting with Your Salon or Spa

Hold. Music. Those 2 words, in succession make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Listening to that disturbing melody playing in your ear for what feels like hours.  Voicemail isn’t a word that I hold any dearer to my heart. The thought of being able to text my favorite salon or spa to schedule any appointment or service that I require gives me the warm and fuzzies. Texting is legitimately the most-used smartphone feature. The most widely used  feature, even surpassing email. Let’s face it, most of us read our texts within minutes of receiving them. You text your kids, your family, and now you can even text your favorite business. This can be a highly effective tool for bringing in and retaining customers.

How can texting create an upsurge in customer satisfaction?

Schedule an Appointment. Ease is the name of the game. Texting allows your customers to be impulsive. If your customer suddenly has an event scheduled, a simple text to your salon to schedule an appointment for the next day is much more appealing than calling and waiting. They can even schedule a service from their desk at work  for  later that evening. Beautiful convenience.

Increase Engagement. Coupons are an excellent way to to attract customers into your business. They increase sales, as well as retain customers. By regularly texting special offers and promotions, they can encourage customers to return to your business time and time again. Polls are another way to increase customer engagement. People love to express their opinions on virtually anything. From what their favorite color is to how they feel about cheesecake, polls create much engagement. If the polls are fun and funny enough, your customers may even share them with their friends and family- creating much more buzz.

Send Alert Notifications. Your salon may be situated in an area that gets hit by heavy snowfall in the winter and you close frequently. What better quick way of notifying your clients than via text? You can communicate necessary and pertinent information to your clients with a simple text to ensure that no one is caught off guard by anything that life throws at you.

Human Touch. Your clients will appreciate the personal interaction that texting provides. The immediate response they receive when they text your business number, as well as have any questions they need answered in a timely and refreshing manner.

Keep in Contact. If your customer is running late for his/her appointment, you can bet your shirt that they would rather text you and notify you, than call you. No one likes waiting on hold or getting voicemail. Texting allows them to send a message efficiently, and have them know that it has been received and tended to.

Keep your Front Desk Busy with Other Tasks. A receptionist for a busy salon/spa can spend most of their day simply answering phones, booking appointments, and responding to customer queries. Texting frees up your front desk to allow them to carry out other duties. You can also assign them the task of responding to customer texts to ensure that one person is on top of it at all times.

The Salon/Spa industry is one that is ever changing and evolving. It is also an environment where customers appreciate answers to their questions quickly in order to plan accordingly. Texting is a new  trend that will be “just another norm” soon. Use it to your advantage. Your clients as well as your employees will enjoy the comfort it provides.