As our salons and spas start to re-open, many will be under strict guidelines regarding how many people can be in the salon at once. We’ve added some new options for businesses that use online booking to help manage the flow of people that work with several existing options in the program to provide a seamless experience to the customer, the front desk, and the service provider.
For our salons that use online booking, customers will now have an option once they log in to Check In for their Appointment on the day of their appointment. If they click that option, it will automatically mark them as checked in within the SpaSalon Manager. If you’re using the paging feature in the program, the service provider will get a text to let them know that the customer is waiting. If you’ve asked your customers to wait in their car outside then the service provider can either go to the door to let them know when they’re ready or if your parking lot does not permit that and you have the customer’s text message information you could text them from the Customer Display screen in the program once you’re ready for them to come in. This feature is already on for any businesses using Online Booking and our Cloud software. For businesses using Online Booking but not Cloud this option will be available after you’ve installed the most recent update.
In addition to this, we’ve added the option for customers to receive a link directly to this check in option within their Email Confirmations. While the link can not be included in text messages due to limitations with certain cell phone companies, it will allow your customers that receive an Email Confirmation the ability to click the link in that email when they arrive for their appointment. This option is available even if you don’t allow customers to book online – as long as you have the Online Employee Access option you can include this link in your outgoing emails. To turn this feature on just give us a call at 800-682-2998.
As always, don’t hesitate to contact us with any questions. Between these options, the paging feature in the program, and the ability to send text messages to customers from the Customer Display screen, we hope this will provide businesses with a seamless approach to handling customer flow in the coming months.
Lastly, for our salons using integrated credit card processing, remember that you do have the option to ‘vault’ a credit card which can remove the need for your customers and staff to handle credit cards when they’re being checked out for their services. This process can be done over the phone within the program as well as online for our customers using ChargeItPro and Online Booking.