Digital point of sale tech for salons is basically built to organize bookings, complete payments, and crunch sales figures to find new ways to make more money. They can, however, be used to create the kind of personalized experience that inspires clients to return again and again and again.
The best mobile POS systems for salons make sure customers can always see their favorite stylist, can always get the products that work for them, and always get treated like the most important person in the room.
By creating highly accessible, flexible, and robust solutions to five key features of the salon business, a mobile POS system makes time out of chaos, and revenue out of waste so that you can spoil every client.
Those features are:
- Customer management
- Data analytics
- Subscription savings
- Digital appointment schedules
- Inventory and account flexibility
By investigating a POS upgrade and modernizing the tools that power your salon, you can create sustainable growth on the back of customer loyalty.
iPads, Self-Service, and Automation
If you haven’t already investigated a modern version of a cash register with business management tools, you’re in for a surprise. The new tech is all about iPad-powered terminals that take care of everything from taking bookings to providing customer self-service and entertainment, and mobile payment devices that replace clunky registers with handheld tap, swipe, and smartphone payments—all equipped with the latest in digital data security and protection.
The new approach makes it easier to manage—and even automate—purchasing, supplier relationships, inventory, appointments, staff, and in-service niceties.
By improving just five key areas of your business, you can create a unique salon experience that every customer will brag about as their very own.
1. Customer Management: Track Visits, Count Spend, and Learn Their Favorites
Customers come to depend on their favorite salons like friends—highly skilled friends that fill them with confidence during life’s special occasions and everyday challenges alike. You can build that trust by gathering every piece of relevant information possible about a client and using it to make them feel noticed.
The best mobile POS systems for salons drive repeat visits and increased spend by tracking customer details and bringing them to the front of mind during every cut, color, and curl. With the right prompt, you can know what a customer wants before they do and provide a service that’s well above what’s expected.
2. Data Analytics: Understand What Sells and Why
Every dollar you earn in a salon comes from investment. From the products you purchase in order to use and sell, the staff you employ to impress your customers, and even the very POS system that makes convenient appointments and detailed inventory possible costs before provides.
Modern salon POS systems can now crunch all those incomes and expenditures and break down your entire revenue flow by time, product, staff member, supplier, and more so that you have a complete understanding of your business. With this information, you can maximize your resources and grow your salon—which, considering the intense competition and low margins that define the salon industry, could have a make-or-break impact.
3. Subscription Savings: The Best Software for Less
The insights provided by the data analysis tools mentioned above can level the playing field against big-name outlets that pay advisers to goose their books. You can have that advantage without any upfront cost, without committing to an outside consultant, and with the freedom to cancel investment at any time thanks to the cloud.
Cloud computing is perhaps the best thing to happen to small business this century because it removes all the technical expertise and high-end licensing fees from accessing the best financial, management, and service software and hardware.
You can effectively own a complete POS system from less than $30 a month by accessing a cloud provider, and they’ll look after maintenance and upgrades, get online, provide 24-hour support, and you can walk away if you’re ever even slightly less than happy.
4. Digital Appointment Schedules: Create Revenue from Chaos
Few small businesses are as hectic as a salon. Customers become loyal to their favorite staff members, appointments can never be guaranteed to run on time, and the whims of season and society can cause unexpected peaks and demands despite your best-laid plans.
The best mobile POS systems for salons take all this into account and provide flexibility and accessibility enough to make it all work. The trick is to balance the needs of your business and your clients and to empower both by using the everyday tech we’re all already dependent upon. You can start by making your reservations schedule viewable online and via mobile as well as in-store, so everyone can see what’s available. You can add to that by giving everyone their own control:
- Staff can block off times for longer appointments, VIP services, and training.
- Clients can provide details of their preferences and multiple availabilities.
- Managers can juggle preferences and events to maximize the hours in every service.
Customers come to trust a salon they know will not keep them waiting or switch their beautician at the last moment, so success often lurks within greater organization.
5. Inventory and Account Management: Everything in Its Right Place
There isn’t a paper ledger yet created that can accommodate all the unexpected and undefinable inventory and product demands a salon makes on its accounts. Products come from a range of suppliers and vary from free trials to consignment sales through to week-to-week staples. Services, too, can be a pick-n-mix of hair and beauty treatments, not to mention the discounts, incentives, and bundled services that come from dealing with loyal regulars, one-off events, and the unique talents of your staff.
The best mobile POS systems for salons have to be flexible enough to let you follow every potential sale and service through to its most profitable end. It needs to be digital and available on any device so you can deal with the books in your own time, but robust enough to make sure every discount is accounted for and every 3-in-1 offer is profitable. And it needs to be able to provide a live stock count so that you’re never left having to convince a customer the product you have to hand is just as good as the one they love… that you’ve run out of.
Your system should be built around your business knowledge, so the POS solution has to integrate all your tried and tested programs and accounting software into the overall approach.
As with each feature listed above, POS solutions only work when they can be tailored to suit your unique plan, approach, staff, and customers.
Mobile POS Systems for Salons Make Customers Happy
A digital POS system can make every customer feel like your only customer. When you get the scheduling right, and you understand your customers’ preferences and needs, when you know how to entertain them, and you can offer unique discounts and incentives, you create a salon in their own image.
Everyone wants a personal experience. With the organizing power and tech possibilities of a mobile POS system for salons, you deliver an experience worth returning to over and over again.
When talech helps you create a POS solution, we’re trying to bring something innovative to your customers. Our tech combined with your salon experience can result in an efficient, impressive, and rewarding environment that’s easier to manage and more profitable to run.
