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Getting the MessageAutomated texting may be the silver bullet to your booking woes. By Carolyn Silveira

For many of us, it’s practically second nature to send a quick text message to let someone know we’re running late, ask them a simple question or share a piece of juicy gossip. Increasingly taking the place of emails—and certainly phone calls—texting has become a seamless part of how we manage our relationships, our schedules and our lives. According to U.K.-based Portio Research, people worldwide sent an estimated 8.3 trillion text messages in 2015 alone.

Now let’s take this down to more relatable num-bers. If a recent USA Today article is correct, your average client is spending about 23 hours per week engaged in texting activity. So the question is, are any of these texts coming from you? If not, you’re missing out on one of the most effi cient means of fi lling book-ing holes and avoiding no-shows, among other things.

Traditionally, appointment-based businesses have given a single staff member the time-consuming and

monotonous task of making confi rmation phone calls to clients a day or two ahead of their appointments. Many of these businesses have replaced the personal calls with pre-recorded phone messages or emails. A text message, however, is less intrusive than a phone call and can prove more effi cient than an email.

It’s natural that each time a new technology or platform emerges, business owners will ask them-selves: Do I really need this? Will my clients like it? What is the actual ROI for doing this? You may once have wondered whether you really needed a website or a Facebook page. However, there’s no question about this overall societal trend: People are moving ever mobile-wards. And now that texting costs have come down and phone dependency has gone up, using automated text messages to confi rm appoint-ments and send reminders may be the next great thing you can do for your clients and your business. ©

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HOW TEXTING DELIVERSAccording to Jim Bower, founder of Lombard, Illinois-based Rosy Salon Software, when Rosy’s custom-ers use both email and text message reminders, “it virtually eliminates no-shows and late arrivals. They’re almost unmeasurable.” He estimates 20 to 30 no-shows for every 15,000 to 20,000 appointments booked. “The vast majority of people don’t want to miss their service,” Bower adds. “They meant to be there, and just forgot.”

Bob Maconi, a vice president at Millennium Systems International in Parsippany, New Jersey, and owner of nearby Elysium Salon and Spa, saw dramatic results after adding appointment confi rmation and reminder texts to his business. “Our salon went from 10 to 12

no-shows a week to three to fi ve,” he reports. Hei-di Hoblou, director of operations for Bellagio Spas & Salons in Orange County, California, is thrilled at the way automated texts have eliminated hours of phoning and, thus, no-show clients’ protests of “I never received your call.”

Texting functionality is frequently offered as part of an overall computer software service package. If you already use such software to manage bookings, schedules and a database of clients, you may fi nd that you can set it up to send automatic texts that confi rm upcoming appointments and provide day-of remind-ers. All you need is your client’s cell phone number. When they receive and read your message, they can simply type “yes” or even just the letter “c” to confi rm their appointment in your system.

The automated system also saves time at the front desk. Hoblou, who has been overseeing salons since they used physical books, uses Shortcuts, a Hunting-ton Beach, California-based software company to manage operations at Bellagio’s three large locations. Every morning, the staff logs into the system and dis-patches confi rmation texts to all of the clients booked for the following day. The texts are confi gured to show the service provider’s name, details of the ap-pointment and an option to reply. If a client indicates that they can’t keep the time, a Bellagio employee will then call them to reschedule. “Things run much more smoothly now,” says Hoblou. “A spa owner’s entire business relies on confi rmation.”

Because text templates are customizable, Hoblou’s model suggests a best practice you can easily put in place to avoid the kind of back-and-forth texting that would otherwise be hard to manage. Madeline Maguire, marketing manager of Shortcuts, uses a similar strategy. Shortcuts’ texts “are auto mated, but

completely confi gurable,” enabling spas and salons to tell clients, “Reply ‘yes’ to confi rm or

call to cancel.” Convenience is king, but you don’t want to make it too easy for guests to

bail at the last minute. Managing automated texting isn’t diffi cult. Acquiring and keeping

good client data is, however, vital. Maguire suggests making con-

sistent and accurate data col-lection a priority at the front desk, and adds that some spas use rewards or com-petitions to incentivize staff in this area. That’s where third-party tex-ting services can come ©

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Hi Sarah,Just a reminder that you have an appointment tomorrow at 10:00 am at Zen Spa for a massage. Please confi rm by replying to this message.

Looking forward to seeing you. We also have a special going on this week for pedicures. Call us to learn more.

Thank you for the reminder. Confi rming that I will be there.

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in handy. Roze Wiesler, salon manager at Ginger Bay Salon & Spa in Kirkwood, Missouri, employs the third-party texting service from Demandforce, a San Francisco-based marketing, automation and repu-tation managment company. “What I like about Demandforce, from a business perspective, is that we can see if and when the communication was delivered, if it was read, or if it was undeliverable, which would tell us that we may need to update the client’s information,” explains Wiesler. “We can also see what action the guest took when they received the confi r-mation text: read it, confi rmed the appointment, or no action, which would indicate it was unopened.”

Otherwise, the system generally runs itself. “In the morning, you hit a button and your appointment list for the whole next day has been contacted,” Hoblou says. “By 6 p.m., we’re only calling people who didn’t reply.”

ARE THEY TEXT-READY?“Our guests comment about our texts all the time,” says Rowena Yeager of Studio Wish Salon in Twinsburg, Ohio. “They tell us how much they enjoy that feature and wish their doctors’ offi ces offered it too.” But will your clients feel the same? Despite all the statistics

that prove the huge popularity of texting, you can’t assume that everyone is ready to conduct their spa business via this method.

So, before you take the fi rst step toward an auto-mated system, talk to your regulars. Ask whether they’d like to receive emails, texts or both from you. “Some clients have strong preferences for one or the other,” says Maguire. “The courtesy of offering that choice is great customer service.” PH

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Those preferences evolve as technology—and our personal tech habits—change. When texting was fi rst introduced, reading and re-sponding to text messages seemed unworthy of the hassle. Now that we rely more on online and mobile communication, phone calls have started to feel intrusive. As Maguire points out, some clients may be especially sensitive about communi-cations regarding their services and appointments. Waxing customers, for instance, appreciate the discre-tion inherent in texting.

If your clientele skews younger, they’ll likely be enthusiastic. Millen-nium backs up that statement, citing data from Demandforce that indicates 85% of millennials prefer dealing with businesses via text. “We did have some pushback from our older guests at fi rst, but more of our guests like it than don’t,” reports Wiesler. “We get a call from time to time from someone who’s not thrilled that they received the text confi rmation, and we just opt them out at that point.”

But age isn’t the only factor. In this era of information overload, all consumers have become re-sistant to nonpersonal communi-cations, especially anything that appears ad-like. However, adds Wiesler, “Overall, I feel our guests truly prefer an electronic confi rma-tion. It’s less disruptive to their day and it’s just the world we live in now. We do still have to call a hand-ful of guests, but it’s not many, or even every day.”

Love them or hate them, there’s no denying the convenience of text messages. There are innumerable situations in which a person doesn’t see an email or can’t answer the phone, but a text is hard to miss.

From a business perspective, you could say the text message speaks for itself.

Carolyn Silveira is a writer and consultant

based in Brooklyn, New York.

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Software SourcesFor more on incorporating text messaging into your spa business, check out the

following software providers:

• Demandforce, demandforce.com

• Growthzilla (Uzeli salon software), growthzilla.com

• Millennium Systems International, millenniumspasalon.com

• MINDBODY, mindbodyonline.com

• Rosy Salon/Spa Software, rosysalonsoftware.com

• Shortcuts, shortcuts.net