Salon Owner Uses Appointment Scheduling App to 10X Shop Traffic
Meet Jana, Owner of Styles and Smiles Family Salon in Rexburg, Idaho.
Say hello to Jana Bake. Hard-working hair salon owner from Idaho. This September Styles & Smiles Family Salon will celebrate their 4th anniversary. This mother of seven {yes, SEVEN} sat down to chat with us about all the ways Bookedin has helped her shop. From reducing interruptions, saving on startup costs, and (no biggie) 10X the number of clients in her chair.
Watch now and learn how salon scheduling software has been with her since the very beginning.
Why did Styles and Smiles Family Salon choose Bookedin for appointment scheduling?
The free trial initially drew Jana in… but it was all the features that kept her. The app gave her the option to take her *salon* home without her clients experiencing any difference in service. She could see what her appointments were, what was available, and what she could schedule – it made her look professional.
How did online booking change Jana’s life?
Moving to salon scheduling software has reduced the time and effort Jana has to spend interrupting the clients in her chair to pick up the phone. The hours wasted returning missed calls & endless messages left on voicemail. Jana also no longer has to worry about micromanaging the other stylists that work at her salon. They have full control over their day-to-day schedules, giving her more time to spend with her clients and family.
Related → The 4 Best Methods for Attracting New Clients to Your Salon [2020 update]
You can read our interview with Jana below:
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Tell me a bit about how your hair salon got started.
I was a stay-at-home homeschooling Mom with five kids and pregnant with number six, and I decided I needed something more to do. So I just thought I should buy and open up my own salon because I’m just like that, where I just like to have a lot on my plate. So I talked my husband into it and opened up my own salon. I opened in September of 2016. So we’re just coming up on four years now. I feel like we’re legit now. Like, we’re not so new anymore.
What challenges were you experiencing in your business that led you to look for a solution like Bookedin?
Well, I knew that I wanted something that would help save client information because we were using paper books to book people, I wanted something that would save my client information. Where I could save their color information, or their hair cutting information, or anything that I wanted to save on the client, and their appointment history.
I knew I wanted something that would help with that, and so that’s why I was looking for booking software. That, and the fact that I didn’t wanna have to pay for a salon phone. Because local phones cost so much and you get hardly anything out of it. So I didn’t wanna have to pay for a local phone. And so I wanted something that I could do on my own phone. And so something that had an app with it that would save information.
What made you choose Bookedin over other products on the market?
I just saw that it had the features I want. I liked that it had the app, and I liked that I could do it on my phone, and it had the computer version so I could use it on the computer at the salon as well. So they do have different views, and so I like that there are different ways you could have it on your phone.
But then, kinda the biggest thing, because I was just starting out and there are so many costs of starting a business. It was because it had a 30-day trial as opposed to a three-day or a one week, or a two-week because I wanted to cut down my costs as the start-up, and then I wanted to make sure that I liked it before committing to paying for something when I was like, “I don’t know if I’ll like it, I don’t know if this will be useful.”
I didn’t wanna have to fork out that money to start up with. So it was kind of that free trial, I was like, “Oh, this one has a longer free trial than the other one.”
So that’s kind of what got me because there are so many costs that go into a business. So, cutting them out wherever I could, and just looking at the monthly price and things like that as well. Well, this one has a free trial and then the monthly fee was cheaper than maybe some of the other ones as well. So I was looking at that as cost-wise.
And then I liked it enough that I kept with it, but I wanted to make sure that I liked it before spending the money on it. And I found that it was worth it, so I kept going with it, obviously. So I’ve had Bookedin from the very beginning. It was one of the very first things that I did. I was like, I’m gonna need something for my clients, I’m gonna need something for appointments, and I’m gonna need something that I can do from home, so I can answer the phone at home and pretend like I am at the salon and schedule people’s appointments right there, so.
Even with screaming kids in the background, I could say, “Yes, I’m at the salon. Let me look after you.” So, I could just fake it, just go hide in the bathroom and book appointments.
It made it nice that way that I could have a phone at home and I could take calls anytime 24/7. And I could see what my appointments were, what’s available, what I can schedule, and just do it right there from the phone. So it made it really nice that way.
We have a website now that we get a lot of bookings [on]. And I love that with Bookedin, I could embed it right on my website instead of having a link to go to a different website. A lot of booking systems have to do that where they have to click a link and then take them to a different website, but I was able to embed it right in there.
So my other stylists get a lot of bookings from our website, but then with Bookedin, I’m able to give them each their own login so they can have it on their phone. So they can check their schedule, they can adjust their hours if they need to, if they want to schedule appointments. And then it just shows on my end who scheduled the appointment, whether it was a client booked, or if one of my stylists booked it versus like if I booked it from my login or something.
So it does show who booked the appointment, and how it was booked and stuff. And so it’s nice on that end too, that I can see that the clients did it, or that my stylists did it, but then they can adjust their schedule. If they have extra hours and they wanna come in for more hours, they can adjust that on their phone and get more bookings. Or if they have to get off early, then they can adjust their schedule that way too, so I don’t have to worry about always having to do it myself.
So it’s nice that the stylists do have their own logins so that they can do it from their phones, and check their schedules, and know that they have appointments. I don’t have to do everything for them. They don’t have to call me and say, “Hey, I need to get off early,” they let me know, but then they can adjust it or if they wanna come in early or whatever.
I don’t have to do all that admin stuff of controlling everyone’s schedule and controlling everything. We have the weekly normal schedule that they have in there, and then they can adjust it as needed. They can book their own appointments with their friends, with their family, or if they find somebody on Facebook that’s looking for an appointment, they can book it rather than just sending to our website, but they do get a lot of bookings from the website as well.
Special note on Bookedin’s customer service:
One thing that I love about Bookedin is that you guys are always asking for feedback that I get regular emails of like, what else do you guys wanna see. What can we improve on? And so I really like that about you guys, that I feel like you guys are listening to us. And it’s not just there’s a bajillion users, ’cause some of them… Like there are other bigger booking companies, but I don’t feel like when I’m in my hairdresser groups, a lot of them are like, “Oh, you guys, I’m having this or that issue,” and they’re like, “Yeah, you’re not gonna hear from their tech support, you’re not gonna hear from their… ”
But I feel like, with Bookedin, I do get heard when I’ve ever had any issues and I email in, then there’s always somebody like, “Okay, how can we work on it?” They’re visiting my website, they’re clicking on things, seeing if they can figure out what’s going on. So what I really like about Bookedin is the customer service side. And customer service is a big deal for me, so I love that there is that part of it.
Related → Three Lies and a Truth About Appointment Scheduling Software
What specific improvements have you seen as a result of using Bookedin?
I’ve actually moved on from taking phone calls, so I don’t even have my phone number listed anymore. And so rather than taking phone calls and doing the bookings from home and taking phone calls 24/7, which I did at the beginning, now I send everyone to the website.
I’ve actually had a lot of people say that they’ve booked with us because of our online booking because they could just do it from home. I’ve had people book appointments in the middle of the night when they’re thinking about it, when they’re up late, nursing their babies in the middle of the night, and they’re like, “Man, my hair really needed to be done. Oh look, I can book an appointment.”
So I have had really, really good feedback from all of my clientele that they love the online booking feature, ’cause a lot of my clientele are busy Moms or stay-at-home Moms or Moms that are working part-time or things like that.
Students—we’re in a college town, so a lot of them are young Moms that are students or putting their husbands through school or just college students—and they love that they have the simplicity. They can look, they don’t have to make a phone call, they don’t have to try and do it during business hours, they can book any time. So I’ve gotten a really good response and a lot of people saying that they booked and came to us specifically because of our online booking and how easy it was to use.
For Jana:
I can just, whatever, just send it to voicemail, the voicemail sends them to my website. And it’s easy enough that I’ve had very few people say that they can’t figure it out, but they’re more ones that are older people or ones that are not as tech-savvy. But for the most part, most people are like, “Oh my gosh, it was so easy. I just found the time that I wanted and I clicked on it, it was great.” So I’ve had really good feedback on the simplicity of it, and they love it.
What would you tell other salons who are experiencing similar challenges like you were?
Well, online booking is definitely the way to go with the people that you’re wanting to bring into your salon, the younger crowd. Everybody wants the convenience of online booking. So it’s an absolute must in salons nowadays that you have to have online booking. If you’re still using paper books and you’re scheduling everything by hand, that’s so obsolete, so you have to go with online booking.
And finding something that’s user-friendly, simple for people to use, that they can go right and find that time they need, that is so, such an essential thing in our business these days, especially where you can save all your client information so you know how many times they’ve been there, you know what they’ve scheduled for before, you know what you’ve done on them before. And so, it’s absolutely an essential thing for salons to have some kind of an online booking system. And so, to find one that’s gonna work for you, I love that we can do it from home, that we can have the apps, that everybody can see what their schedule is, that I can see what everyone else is doing, I can be checking on them from home.
And so, as a salon owner, you want to know what your stylists are doing. You don’t wanna just be like, “Well, I hope they’re not sitting around doing nothing,” because if you’re just on paper books, you have no idea what they’re doing.
So paper books are just out the window, out of the way. Nobody wants to do that. Nobody wants to have to call. If they can just go right to your website, book an appointment, you’re 10 times more likely to get that client. Especially with social media these days, where I can just have a Book Now button on my Facebook page where they just click that Book Now button, it sends them right to my booking site. Having my website link in my Instagram, so people can go to my Instagram profile, go right to my website, you don’t have to worry about getting DMs, you don’t have to worry about getting text messages, you don’t have to worry about getting phone calls and taking up all of your extra time, that your time is essential. When you’re working, you wanna be working and not being interrupted.
When you’re at home, you wanna be able to spend that time at home doing what you wanna do. So being able to have online booking is so freeing, and it’s liberating for you as a stylist, as a salon owner.
But then it also is so nice for those clients that you want to get in your chair. And you’re more likely to get them in your chair if it’s easy and effortless on their part, that they can figure out exactly what they need and just book it right there without having to jump through a million hoops of making a whole profile, log in on your website. People don’t wanna do that. They wanna just be like, “Oh look, this is what time she has free,” click on it.
And so that’s what I love about Bookedin. I’ve seen a lot of other different software, but so many of them, you can’t even see the appointments that are available unless you create a whole log in, and I don’t know if I wanna go here, I don’t know if I wanna make a whole profile. I just wanna see what time if she has an opening tomorrow, you know?
To see that quick, easy at a glance. Yeah, she’s got the time that I want, then click on it. Then you can put in your information. So I think it’s just user-friendly that way that it kind of has what people want. It has what the clients want, it has what salon owners and salons… And stylists want, so it’s definitely a huge asset in the business world and in the salon world to have this online booking.
Do you have anything else to add?
I think just the main thing is to get a booking system. That’s 100% essential, is just get it. It’s worth the cost. It can feel like it’s a huge cost when you’re looking at the numbers, but when you look at it for the year, it’s like, “You know what? How little we’re paying in order to get 10 times more people in our chair,” because that’s literally, you’re getting that many more people coming in because they can book online.
So, if you didn’t have all those butts in your chair, then… You’ve gotta pay for it, but because having it, it gets all those people coming in. So it’s definitely worth the cost, so don’t worry about it. You have to make an investment in your business, and it can be hard, but it’s definitely one of those costs that is absolutely essential and worth it, so.
Butts in the chair. That’s all we want. And have those butts keep coming back because they’re happy. But you gotta get ’em in the chair first off, so…
You gotta make it easy so that they want to, and then once they’re in the chair, it’s on me to make ’em happy to wanna come back. But they’re definitely more likely to come in the first place if they can figure out how to get an appointment rather than, “I don’t know. Do I have to call during business hours?”
I wish everything had online booking, honestly. I wish all my doctor’s appointments, dentist. I don’t wanna have to try and call during business hours, nobody does these days. We’re all so busy and on the go. If you can be sitting there at your kid’s soccer game and book your next color appointment or book your next haircut, then these Moms are more likely to come and actually do it. Because we have so little free time that if we can make things easier by just doing online booking, they’re more likely to come. So it’s definitely, absolutely worth the cost.
Ready to take online appointment scheduling for a spin at your salon? Click here to start your free trial.
