Streamlining booking, client prep, service, and payment to make clients happier than ever — while boosting your bottom line

Think about every touchpoint a potential client may have with your beauty business. Is your booking process as efficient and helpful as it could be? Does your staff have all the information they need to serve your clients before they even walk in the door? Is your payment process fast and convenient? 

There’s always room for improvement — and we’re here to help. Read on to learn more about the client experience blueprint: a recipe for creating more efficient, higher-quality processes that will increase client satisfaction while generating more tips for your staff and more revenue for your business.

The client experience blueprint

While every client will have a unique interaction with your beauty business, virtually everyone’s journey will follow these steps in the client experience blueprint:

• Find and book: Your new clients may have heard about your business from a friend, driven past it on the way to work, or seen one of your ads on their favorite social media platform. However they found you, they’ve taken the first step to book an appointment.

• Prepare: Once clients book their first appointment, it’s time to prep so your team can provide an experience that caters to their needs.

• Welcome: The client has arrived, checked in, and is ready to receive service.

• Service: Your team provides a stellar service experience. They’ll also maintain a profile to track clients' preferences over time.

• Send off: When clients pay for their service, you’ll also have an opportunity to set them up for their next appointment and suggest retail products they can add on at checkout.

• Nurture: Encourage repeat visits through loyalty programs and email or text-based marketing.

Enhancing the client experience

The first step toward improving how clients engage with your beauty business is understanding that each step in the journey does not exist in isolation. A holistic approach toward booking, managing client profiles, and generating marketing campaigns won’t just help you provide a better experience — it’ll make your employees more efficient, allowing you and your team to serve more clients and make more money. 

Client experience platforms like Boulevard can help you tie everything together to make it seamless from start to finish. We’ll show you how.

Find and book

Clients love booking online. It gives them a chance to check out your whole menu, take in the vibes of your website and beauty business photos, and find a time slot that works best for them — and it lets them do all of that at their own pace, whenever they want.

To cater to these evolving needs, you need a website that is both informative and features a responsive design that works just as well on a mobile device as it does on a desktop. That’s why Boulevard’s such a powerful booking tool — it’s fully customizable and optimized for a variety of devices, allowing you to boost your online booking rates by up to 28%. Online booking even helps bring clients back for future visits — according to our Official 2023 Salon Industry Client Retention Report, nearly 80% of clients who booked their first appointment online will set up a second appointment with your beauty business.

Prepare

Online booking isn’t just a great way to lock in that first visit. It’s an opportunity to give your staff a headstart on prep so they can ensure their appointment is a truly special experience.

One way Boulevard can help here is by integrating your booking process with Precision, automatically assigning the employees based on their skill and experience as appointments come in and filling gaps to keep your calendar optimized. Another way is by making it easy for clients booking online to select from various add-on services. Beyond the immediate benefit of a higher ticket value (63% higher on average), 25% of clients with add-on services return within 90 days. 

You can also use your online booking process to gather client information — like color and style preferences, allergies, desired service experience, and other considerations — and then filter these details into your client profiles. Before your client’s first appointment, your team can consider this information and get the perfect experience ready before they even walk through the door.  

Welcome

Oftentimes, client check-in is the first in-person touch point they will have with your beauty business. If their first impression is a crowded, chaotic front desk and long wait times, they may start to rethink their decision to come there. 

To help alleviate these bottlenecks, consider implementing a self-check-in station so low-touch clients can alert your staff that they’re here and ready for their appointments. Your client management software should then automatically alert your specialists to minimize downtime between client arrival and client service.

Service

Here, you’ll lean on the client profiles you’ve built up during the booking and preparation phases to provide a high-quality and personalized service for each client. Don’t forget to update client profiles during service, too. Sometimes, clients may reveal new information about their medical history or show you a TikTok video with a hairstyle they’re excited to replicate — logging this information now will help your team meet these needs in future visits or find retail products to recommend.

Send off

Like check-in, payment should be seamless and frictionless. Using a payment device like Boulevard Duo gives clients a wealth of fast and secure options to pay, from tapping or swiping cards to using Apple Pay and Google Pay with their mobile phones.

You can also use the payment process to lock in any follow-up appointments or suggest hair or skin care products to pick up based on their client profiles. As always, your client experience platform should assist you during this process, from recommending tip amounts to suggesting products or next steps that will be most beneficial to your client.

Nurture

The client experience doesn’t end once they leave your beauty business. Regular reminders and encouragement will incentivize them to book their next appointment, deepening your relationship over the long term.

For example, Boulevard’s built-in Loyalty Programs make it easy to build out special rewards for your most dedicated clients and track usage across all of your locations. Couple that with regular, personalised text and email marketing campaigns, and you’ll keep your beauty business top of mind to lock in that second appointment and beyond.

Optimize your tools

The client experience blueprint is designed to be a cycle. As you nurture clients with marketing and loyalty programs, they’ll book their next appointment and continue through the process once again. 

Building your beauty business doesn’t stop there, though. After you’ve seen a few clients move through this blueprint, it’s time to examine your reports to figure out the best ways to improve client satisfaction — along with your bottom line. They’ll highlight crucial performance metrics like how many bookings you’ve processed, how many no-shows you’ve experienced, and the tips your staff earns. Looking at these figures alongside your blueprint will help you determine where current or potential clients experience friction, allowing you to make adjustments that make booking, prep, and service a more seamless process.

Constant iteration on the client journey — alongside the efficiency your client experience platform provides — will set your beauty business on the path toward providing better service for more clients, giving you a chance to achieve long-term, sustainable growth for years to come.