Building a loyal customer base can mean distinguishing between a run-of-the-mill and successful aesthetics practice. Unfortunately, customer retention is not a natural occurrence—you need methodical strategies.
Before racking your brains on how to improve your bottom line, first look at your biggest asset: returning patients. One study even alluded that retention rates are responsible for a 25% to 95% increase in revenue based on industry.
Why is this so? Repeated customers already have a relationship with you, fostered on a foundation of trust. So, logically, it would be more effective and cost less to sell treatments to these patients than to new leads.
Here are four patient retention strategies to help you nurture existing relationships.
Firstly, it’s essential to treat your clients as respected and valued people, not as potential sales. The best way to do this is by personalizing their experience and showing them you care.
Try sending out ‘thank you’ messages to them post-visit with an immediate review request, offering follow-up support or information. That way, you convey your practice’s investment and effort in their outcomes.
Clinic staff can also reach out for client feedback and insight to tailor the customer experience further. When patients feel like their business is valued, it increases the chance of them coming back.
Keeping in touch with clients between visits through conventional methods can be a hassle. With patients going about their lives and your staff taking so many calls daily, it’s likely to miss each other.
Well, improving the ease of communication is made possible with a cloud-based system like Aoikumo, which keeps clients informed of their visit details and subsequent appointments. Online systems are one of the best customer retention strategies and are especially convenient if your clinic comprises a small staff team.
As we’ve touched on, it’s better to introduce new treatments to existing patients who you know would benefit from them. Consider offering vouchers or discounts to your current customer base for their following appointments.
For instance, you can tempt them with a free consultation for patient education on how the treatment might be suitable. Or perhaps offer a 10% discount for two treatments with upfront payment.
These deals and updates on the latest industry innovations will make your existing clients feel rewarded for their loyalty.
Special offers aside, sharing packages may also entice customers to sign on with your clinic long-term. This is one of the most effective patient retention strategies to bring in multiple repeating clients.
Not to mention, families are critical customers for aesthetic practices to appeal to different demographics. Gaining the loyalty of families could increase the lifetime value of your clients, their satisfaction, and ultimately, your clinic’s profits.
At the end of the day, we live in a modern age where customers are well-informed and empowered. There’s more to patient retention than providing good service, so don’t hesitate to test these strategies!
The first step you can take is converting to Aoikumo’s all-in-one POS Scheduling System, and the rest is sure to come easy.
In the aesthetics business, the first consultation is everything. It’s where practitioners and patients feel each other out, developing a mutual understanding of goals and managing expectations.With the availability of patient video calls and online consultation, booking appointments have entered a whole new ballgame. There’s no more fighting for reservations over the phone, getting through traffic, and waiting in a crowded room.
Now, practitioners can simply assess a potential client’s needs through an online consultation. Not to say that virtual consultations have never existed, but the COVID-19 pandemic has further cemented their place in the modern world.
Isn’t it crazy to think communication modalities have evolved so much that your patient is just one video call away? Thanks to the rapid advancement of technology, online patient conferencing might be the golden ticket in the aesthetics industry.
While there is much to gain from it, three key benefits are indisputable.
When running a clinic, you always have to think bigger. Your clientele could expand beyond your immediate vicinity, and virtual consultations can help you remove these locational restrictions.
Today, cosmetic patients can easily browse through the web for their ideal procedures and top practitioners anywhere. They are also unlikely to travel long distances for in-person appointments when there’s uncertainty about your service’s success.
Providing online consultation can allow you to address a prospective client’s needs and required treatment whilst accommodating a broader demographic. Plus, cosmetic patients are finicky in finding the right practitioner for their procedure and may only be willing to make the trip once you’ve positioned yourself as so.
Despite our eagerness for things to return to normal, we’ve grown accustomed to certain conveniences, such as online services. We expect these day-to-day conveniences to prevail, and your patients are not exempt from such expectations.
Thus, patients who have busy work schedules or children to care for are more likely to engage your services with the ease of a patient video call. Your clinic already has a competitive advantage as long as you offer services that barely disrupt their daily existence.
Moreover, the increased convenience might even be a deciding factor for whether a client schedules the initial consultation.
Online patient conferencing tends to be cheaper than in-person consultations. Aside from the convenience, patients can also cost-effectively access your expertise.
Charging a small fee for online consultation would help weed out no-show patients or unmotivated buyers. This practice saves you valuable staff time and money to cover your overhead.
Additionally, it conveys your clinic as established and could even increase the conversion rates of potential patients. Use the consultation time to build trust and showcase your knowledge, assuring aesthetic patients that their desired results are achievable.
Your patients want to feel like their time is valued and their investment will pay off. A patient video call can be productive and remarkably telling as to whether you’re a good fit.
That said, consider converting to Aoikumo’s all-in-one POS Scheduling System, where the benefits are limitless for aesthetic industries. Schedule appointments and track your patients’ footprints with ease.
Working in a beauty salon, aesthetic clinic or spa and wellness centre, you’d be familiar with the nightmare that is seasonality. These businesses experience high and low periods, and peak seasons can be nothing short of frantic, especially around the holidays.
Whenever your high periods are, it’s essential to prepare for the upsurge in customers. A cardinal rule for beauty salon owners and managers is to ensure customer experience does not take a dive.
Many businesses lose loyal customers during peak seasons because they fail to deliver the same experience as during slow seasons. Thus, what you do ahead of such times will impact your business tremendously.
Here, we offer you some tips on how to ready yourself for the busy weeks to come!
In the hush before the storm, you can take the opportunity to expand your client base. Merely promoting your business via social media might not be enough. If your posts aren’t enticing, it’s down the newsfeed they go.
Instead, you can focus on attracting clients with an intro offer, i.e. providing new customers with a discount on their first appointment.
It should not come as news that customers prefer to do business with those who make the process trouble-free. Unfortunately, this is rarely the case during peak seasons.
As stated, customer service tends to decline as staff members become overwhelmed with the record-high influx of clients. Customers are bound to get angry and search for alternatives when their calls aren’t answered.
To avoid this, you can consider equipping your salon with a mobile app to help simplify the contact process. Your clients would be able to book, pay, and set reminders for appointments digitally without waiting time.
You should always consider incentivising new customers to come back, even before the peak period hits. After all, having returning clients during low periods would only benefit your salon and business success.
Beauty salon owners can accomplish this by offering tempting rewards, such as loyalty points, package redemptions and more.
Understandably, schedules can get disorganised when staff are already in a frenzy. Be sure to utilise a full-featured and convenient scheduling system to manage your appointments effectively.
Aoikumo’s POS & Scheduling System allows you to allocate distinct colours for daily appointments. With an overall view of your beauticians and room availability, you can easily manage your appointments without overbooking.
Our all-in-one POS & Scheduling System is perfectly designed for the beauty and aesthetic industry to achieve all of the above. Once you’ve converted to our navigable module, rest assured it will keep your clients and staff alike happy.
More importantly, your business can run smoothly even during the busiest of times. Your customers’ data, transactions and appointments will be live, alongside automated reminders on their smartphones, so they never miss appointments.
Learn more about Aoikumo’s digital solution for beauty and wellness and get your salon or clinic ready now!
For businesses everywhere, the transition to a paperless practice has already begun. Generally, a paperless system refers to the process of transferring and replacing your documents, records and files into a digital format. However, it’s more than just digitising documents; it’s changing the way your company works.
Aesthetic clinics and beauty salons know that prioritising customers is key. A great customer experience relies on smooth operations, efficient record-keeping and quality services. The move to a paperless practice is definitely worth the effort, but how exactly does this strategy benefit your business?
You can’t put a price on the value of efficiency in a competitive market. That is why companies are embracing the transformation towards a digitalised establishment. For a better understanding between a paperless practice and a traditional one, we only need to look at several standard procedures.
The first interaction a potential client makes with you is during bookings. By calling to make an appointment, clients place their trust in you that a slot will be available at the agreed time. However, every time a staff scribbles down booking details on paper, they subject the company to the inevitable – human error.
Anything from misheard contact information to missing details can ruin the prized chance for a good first impression. Not to mention the dreaded cases of double booking! With a digital system, you can easily view the available slots and check bookings with just a few clicks.
Migrating to a paperless system means that everything you need is in your hands. And when you think of ‘paperless’, that literally means no more papers, pens, printers, ink and more! The change to a more sustainable company is just that easy.
Customers and employees alike will be happier to see you taking part in greener initiatives and reducing your company’s carbon footprint. Now that you no longer need to print and copy documents, you can save your expenses and focus more on improving your services and facilities.
Apart from receipts, aesthetic clinics have other documents like patient consent forms and treatment records to deal with. A digital software can take over most of the admin duties such as filing, sorting and updating patient info.
Additionally, you clear up storage space and reduce office clutter with digital management of your documents. The automated records help you save time when onboarding new patients as well as retrieving existing client information.
A practical advantage of going paperless is that all consultation notes can be made digitally. Not only is it easy to make amendments to notes, but a paperless software could allow clinicians to capture patients’ treatment photos.
With everything from digital consultation notes to anatomy templates and photo comparisons available on one device, clinicians can track treatment progress with ease. And because they’re not physical files, care providers can easily access multiple client records and move from customer to customer with all the data on a single device.
How can you grow if you don’t have an accurate picture of how your business is doing? It can be difficult to analyse, especially when you’re bogged down by day-to-day operations.
Digital systems generate key insights and reports automatically. While conventional documentation requires you to manually count, compile and update records, a paperless system does it for you. Owners can keep track of everything from inventory to staff and sales, all at their fingertips!
Paperless systems help your beauty brand excel at what you do best. While you keep your customers happy, a paperless system keeps your business running smoothly and efficiently. Aoikumo is a revolutionary all-in-one, cloud-based POS and scheduling system designed for aesthetic clinics and beauty centres.
Discover how Aoikumo can be your solution to a paperless practice. Browse our website or contact us to schedule your free Aoikumo demo.
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