The dollar value of valuing your customers
You value your customers. But do you demonstrate this at every opportunity?
Demonstrating that you value your customers is key to creating long-lasting relationships.
It’s theoretically easy to show this appreciation: be respectful, be kind, offer excellent service, and listen. But no matter how hard you try, it can be hard to stay on top of your customer service game in a busy spa or salon environment. Online booking can help you do that.
Here are three ways that offering online booking can help you show that you value your guests -- and magically transform them into your greatest evangelists.
Respect your customers’ time
Time is a precious commodity. We all only have a small amount of it. Respecting your customers’ time is key to showing you care. According to Forrester’s Trends 2016: The Future Of Customer Service report, 73% of customers say that valuing their time is the most important thing a company can do to provide them with good service. In this day and age of big box stores and call centers, where customers are constantly made to feel as though their time matters to no one, showing that it matters to you will set you head and shoulders above the competition.
One of the easiest ways to do this is to allow your customers to book appointments whenever and wherever they want, with online booking.
Book4Time’s internal data showed us that 9.6% of customers are booking appointments outside of business hours and that 6.1% of revenue is booked when the spa is closed. (For the average spa with a potential to do $1.5M in annual revenue, this represents $91,500 in lost business when the spa is closed.)
Today’s consumers are sophisticated, demanding, and accustomed to getting what they want at their convenience. They hate waiting. When Amazon analyzed its sales ratio to its web performance, they found that with every page-load delay of 100 milliseconds there was a one per cent reduction in conversions. That’s fractions of seconds. Similarly, Walmart saw a two
per cent increase in conversion rates for every one-second improvement in page-load times on their ecommerce site. Given this information, it’s unreasonable to expect a customer who decides they want to book a massage at 11 pm, to wait a full 10 hours for you to open at nine the following morning. They won’t. Not when they can go book elsewhere with someone who offers online booking.
Pay attention to the little details
Remember personal details and preferences. How nice is it when someone greets you by name, and knows what kind of tea you like, that you prefer sparkling water over flat, that you love lavender but hate rose, that you love Bach but find much Mozart trite?
Dale Carnegie famously said that “a person's name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.” Add to that remembering their details and their preferences and you will make a profound impression.
Book4Time’s online booking software allows you to take important guest details at the point of booking by allowing them to create a profile, choose their therapist, and even leave notes. So, you have all that information in one place. You can then use this information to personalize the guest experience by offering exactly what your guest enjoys, including little extras, making the experience memorable and perfect.
Ask their opinion
When you ask someone what they think, it shows that you value their opinion. After a guest leaves your spa or salon, ask them about their experience – what did they enjoy, what could be improved upon, what suggestions do they have for you?
With Book4Time’s cloud-based spa software, you can use the details provided for the booking to send a survey immediately after their appointment. You can also add promotions, points, or products once they complete the survey. These gifts are another way to show your appreciation.
Show that you value your customers, and you will make friends for life. Everyone wants to feel that they are appreciated. Don’t you?
Fortunately, Book4Time makes it easy to show you value your customers, offering a secure cloud-based spa software solution to help spa and salon management handle online spa booking, spa reporting, and much more all in one place. Learn what all the hype is about. www.Book4Time.com