Increase Your Rebooking Rate In a Few Easy StepsJune 7, 2020As far as first impressions go, salons take it seriously every time a new client walks in for a service. However, despite service quality and customer care, clients fail to rebook appointments with the same salon. No matter how well you revamp your salon space or how attractive your promotional offers look, you always need clients to sustain and grow your business. And having one-time clients doesn’t help your business in the long run. Good sales on a lucky day are not a marker of success; but salon rebooking rate is. Working on salon rebooking rates is crucial for businesses because it saves them a lot of precious time and money that goes into marketing to new audiences. Converting your present client-base into regular customers is a better way to minimize costs and maximize sales. Many salons confuse rebooking with customer retention. Even though both are part of the same process, they don’t exactly mean the same. Rebooking refers to salon clients booking another appointment while they’re paying for their current one. Retention is the long-term goal that rebooking helps achieve by widening the client base. Here are a few ways to increase your rebooking rate. Create A Rebooking Culture If you want to introduce a system of rebooking as part of the salon culture, there is a three-part process to achieve that: Training your team Motivate your team Assess their performance Team Training It’s possible to increase your rebooking rate if your team upgrades their consultation skills. A client most likely decides whether or not to book another appointment while getting consultation. Your team should learn to offer consultation that is convincing enough to make clients rebook. But make sure to not come off as too sales-y because that can be a deterrent for rebooking. Make your body languageconducive to comfort. Unless your client feels comfortable, and stress-free in your salon environment, chances are that they’ll turn down your offer to rebook. Clients look for personalized experiences that make them feel important and acknowledged. It’s important for your salon team to refer to their clients by their name so that they can form a personal relationship with them. The body language of a particular stylist also plays a major role in making a client feel welcomed. A happy client is more likely to confirm a rebooking than an unhappy one. When requesting a client for rebooking, pay extra attention to the way you articulate your request. If you phrase your question such that it seems like a formality, the client is most likely to say For instance, a question like: “Do you want to book another appointment?” can easily be turned down. This is because it sounds hasty and impersonal. However, if you word your request better and make it sound personal, you’re more likely to get a positive response. Something like: “It’ll be best if you get a trim after 2 months. That’s enough time for split-ends to grow. You’re working 5 days a week so would a Saturday be more suitable?”is hard to refuse. Inform your regular client if you’re going to be out of town or on a holiday anytime soon. If they’re comfortable with you, they’d want to be attended by you. Offer them an option of rebooking so that they get their preferred slot. Even if they were reconsidering earlier, they wouldn’t want to miss out on their preferred timing. Team Motivation If you want to up your game with rebooking, staff training alone will not suffice. You’ll have to motivate your team to bring that training to good use. It’s important to make the team realize how much your business needs higher rebooking rates for better bonuses and appraisals. To incentivize your team better, you can introduce a reward system which gives the individual with the highest rebooking rate a prize. Turning it into a healthy competition within the team will motivate everyone to try their best. Performance Assessment During assessment of your salon’s rebooking performance in a given month, it’s important to look at both, micro and macro aspects. This means it’s important to measure overall customer retention and also compare rebooking rates for each stylist. Why focus on individual workers? This is so that you may be able to gauge who’s better able to retain clients and who isn’t. This can either be due to their services or their attitude towards the rebooking culture. If someone falls short of the benchmark you’ve set for the workforce, address their problem separately. It’s important that a salon be known by its name and not just any particular stylist. Get Client Feedback No matter how much you polish your skills or groom your team, if your clients are not getting a wow-experience, it’ll all go in vain. If you want to turn every new client into a regular one, make sure you offer them your best during their first appointment. As a rule, it’s safer to send your new clients to the more warm and welcoming staff members who are capable of charming a new person. It’s also important to take into consideration the client’s budget and special requirements, and suggest a service or a stylist accordingly. No one likes to pay bill that exceed their estimated budget without being told about the prices beforehand. So make sure you state all your prices and policies upfront and demand only what’s due at the end. Clients always prefer complete transparency over hidden prices. Incentivize Rebooking When requesting a client for rebooking, make sure to bring them onboard with all the benefits that come with rebooking. This shall include: Preferred time slots and days Preferred stylist No last minute scavenging Better maintenance of self-grooming Stronger bond with the stylist Unless the client knows all these benefits, they wouldn’t be able to make an informed decision. However, if they do, they’ll reevaluate their decision and might even change their mind about not rebooking. If the client still doesn’t agree to rebook, DON’T pester them with more requests and accept their refusal gracefully. It’s important to make them feel that any decision they make is going to be respected. Although there’s no harm in following up with them once they leave your salon. Ways to follow up include offering an online booking option, follow-up marketing through text messages and emails, and social media updates. Looking for consultants who can guide you on how to increase rebooking rates? Salon Income Boosters help make marketing strategies, investment plans, income generation tactics and much more to assist salons fare well. We’re here to assist budding businesses and even successful salons in improving their rebooking rates. Our consultation covers all aspects of your business and will help you kick things up a notch. Contact us if you need our experts to help you get out of a crunch.