Exciting Changes for Paging and Online Booking

There’s been a lull since my last post and with good reason. I’ve been working on some exciting additions to the Online Booking for the past week and I’m very excited to unveil them here!  I’d considered making multiple posts as there’s simply a ton to cover. However, since all the changes are so tightly tied together I’ll cover them in sections here. The first section will cover changes made to the operation of Employee Paging within our base software. The second section will cover changes made to both the Paging and Emailing within the Online Booking. The third and final section will cover our exciting new Online Booking feature – Customer Reviews. As always, please contact us with any questions and we’ll be happy to help you get started with these great new features!

Employee Paging

Our Employee Paging feature is a great part of our base software that allows employees to receive text messages notifying them about events within the salon.  As I mentioned in last week’s post employees can now receive text messages when they receive an intercom message, when same day appointments are booked, when customers check in, when any appointments are booked, as well as a message each morning with their starting time and earliest appointment. 

In addition I’ve now added the ability to receive a text whenever a customer cancels. This cancellation option is tied in to the appointment notifications so if you opt for same-day messages only then you’ll only get same-day cancellation notices. If you opt to receive notification on all appointment changes that will extend to cancellations as well.

Employee Paging was a wonderful feature but the more I thought about it the more concerned I became that certain employees might miss out on these great benefits because they didn’t have a cell phone that allowed them to receive text messages. To address this problem I’ve added an ‘Email’ option to the list of Text Carriers in Paging. Choosing this option will allow you to enter an email address rather than a Cell Phone Number. You’ll then receive all the same notifications in your email instead of as a text message.

Online Booking Emails/Text Messages

I’ve added a feature that was honestly long overdue – the ability for Online Booking to send out emails. Using this new ability I’ve extended the Paging feature to Online Booking. Now when customers are checked in, when intercom messages are received, and when appointments are booked and cancelled employees that have set up their Paging options will receive the appropriate notifications.

In addition, Online Booking will send notifications to clients confirming that they have successfully booked and cancelled appointments. There won’t be any more guesswork about whether they finished their booking or not – they’ll get an email right away letting them know that their changes were saved.

Customer Reviews

I can’t say enough about how excited this change makes me. The most important thing any service company can do is listen to their customers. The new Customer Review section of Online Booking makes it easy for your customers – and only your customers – to leave feedback for your business, for your employees to respond to that feedback, and for your web site to reflect the praise your customers give you! In my most recent post I covered the technical aspects of this feature. As a more simple explanation, once you contact us and turn on the Customer Reviews section your customers will see a Purchase History / Customer Review link instead of the old Purchase History link. They can click there and leave reviews for any services in their history. Employees to whom you grant access can then log in to their Employee Access and reply to those reviews, approve them, or in the case of inappropriate comments delete them. Lastly, I’ve added a highly customizable web site plugin that will allow your web site to display the reviews you’ve approved in a variety of attractive formats.

As I mentioned, I’m very excited about these changes. The ability for the Online Booking to send emails when appropriate greatly extended what we can provide to our Online Booking customers. I see that as an area that will continue to grow as we identify more needs for our salons and spas. Extending the Paging to more and more situations as well as providing the opportunity to use that service for non-cell phone users will also allow us much more flexibility in how we keep your staff plugged in to the software. And I’m hoping the Employee Reviews takes your customer service and retention to new levels. These are all exciting changes and I look forward to your feedback as I’d love to see them pushed even further - offering more and more ways to stay in touch with your customers and in control of your business!

Keeping your Employees Plugged in with Paging

I'd like to take some time today to explain a great feature we've had for some time but relatively few of our customers use - the Paging feature. Salons and Spas can use the Paging feature to keep their Employees informed about a variety of events in the salon without the noise of in-salon intercom systems, the cost of expensive pager systems, or having your receptionist running back and forth through the salon to talk to your service providers. If you have a Spa/Salon Manager email address - free for our Cloud and maintenance contract customers - and your employees have cell phones that can receive text messages then you're ready to get started with Spa/Salon Manager's Paging system.

It's a snap to set up Paging in our program. Simply click the Paging button at the top of the screen and click Assign Pager. After that select the employee that you're setting up. You'll then see a screen that allows you to fill in that employee's cell phone number and cell phone carrier. We ask for the carrier so that we can send the text messages out through your email system. This makes the process of sending the text messages completely free to you - the only costs would be for the employee receiving the text message if they did not have an unlimited texting plan.

In addition to the cell phone number and carrier our newest version has the following options:

• Send Pager Messages - This option is the 'master switch' that determines whether the employee should receive any pager messages at all. If an employee only wants pager messages while they're at work they could go into Paging and Assign Pager and turn this option off when they leave each day and back on when they come in the next day. Turning this option on turns on pager messages for same day appointment changes as well as notifications of any intercom messages received in addition to any other options selected below.
• Send Messages for Customer Check In - This option is the replacement for those expensive pagers or noisy in-salon intercom systems. Selecting this option sends the employee a text message to let them know each time their next customer has checked in at the front desk.
• Send Messages for All Appointments Booked - Some employees would like to know any time you book an appointment even if it's not on the current day. We had one spa for instance that had a massage therapist that came in on an as-needed basis. She wanted to know the moment the salon booked a new appointment so she could plan her schedule. Turning this option on would mean that every appointment booked in your column would trigger a text message notification.
• Send Messages Each Day with Start Time - If you're sending text messages to your customers to remind them of their appointment you can now send a text message to each member of your staff at the same time with their scheduled starting time in the appointment book as well as the time of their first appointment that day.

All of the options mentioned above are on an employee-by-employee basis. If I were implementing Paging in my salon I would take the time to educate my employees on the Paging area and then allow the employees to set their own options. That way they can keep their cell phone number/carrier up-to-date and can control what messages they receive. That puts your employees in the driver's seat and allows them to stay plugged in with Paging.

Gift Cards without the Fees

Almost every bank and credit card processor offers plastic gift cards for sale to salons and spas. Many do a good job at providing a quality service but for companies using our Spa/Salon Manager software that service isn't needed - you can do the same thing through our program with no fees!

The way these bank gift cards work is that they go through a separate box kept at the front desk and add/remove balances through there. Because of that, the banks have to charge you per swipe to offset their costs. When you use the bar-coded plastic gift cards offered by our company, there's no communication needed with another program. All balances are stored within the program and therefore we don't have to charge a per-transaction fee. Best of all you can even reuse the gift cards once a customer has used up their balance - as long as the card looks good you can use it forever!


All you need to get started with our bar-coded plastic gift cards is a bar code reader for each computer that will be running gift card sales. This reader is the same one that we use for inventory sales in our system so if you already have one you're ready to go. Then you can contact our sales department to order your customized cards. Judy will work with you on creating beautiful cards that you'll be excited to sell to your customers!

Web Site Design

As part of our dedication to bring more than just software to our customers we offer web site design and hosting services at very affordable rates. We're able to do this thanks to the immense talents of one of our employees - Judy. Before working for IBCS Judy worked as a graphic designer creating advertisements for customers and she's brought her great artistic and advertising talent to web design, both for our customers and on our own site.

You can contact Judy through our sales department to discuss your web site. She'll work together with you on gathering the information she'll need to provide a high-quality web site for your salon. To prepare for the process of having her create your web site it's very helpful to gather all of the information together you'll eventually have on your web site. Have your service menu with pricing and service offerings and any feature retail products (along with pictures if you'd like) ready to send to her. A bit of time writing a short bit about the history of your salon and what sets you apart can make sure that Judy presents your salon in the best light. Pictures and short bios of your staff help to add a personal touch to your site.  We'll also need salon details such as phone and email contact information, hours of operation, and the salon's address.  Finally, any logos, pictures, and information about your salon's color scheme can help to make your web site recognizable as a part of your salon.

We now have two great options for web site development. Our standard web sites are still the same amazing price they've always been - $200 for the site development. Some examples of Judy's work on standard web sites include HairExpressions.net, SydneysSalon.com, and Elon-Salon.com. In addition we now offer advanced web sites that include features such as Flash (which allows moving picture galleries) at a price of $495 for the site development. TheStrandSalonSpa.com and GrandmaToste.com are good examples of these type of sites. Whether you go with the standard or the advanced web site we still offer our low web hosting fee of $25 / month. Even better, if you're an online booking customer web hosting is free!

Call Judy at 800-682-2998 and get started today!

Custom Coding - Making our Software Work for You

No software program is perfect for every single person that uses it. As a developer I strive to write software that makes my customers' jobs easier, that does what they need without coming between them and their customers, and does all of this while maintaining an aesthetically appealing appearance. Obviously though every customer is going to have different needs and sometimes those needs don't fit into our base program. That's why we offer a great service to our customers - Custom Coding.

The first step in making the software work for you is contacting our support department. Bring your suggestions for the program to us and we'll discuss the best way to accomplish your goals. Often there's a feature in the existing program that will already handle what you need done. Even if there's not, we're always looking for great new ideas to add to our base program. There's a good chance that an idea that would benefit the majority of customers will find its way into the base program. There's no charge for any of this - it's just our hands-on way of providing a quality program.

There are times though where an idea is worth adding but would either add too much confusion for businesses that don't need the feature or it could be an idea that would make a huge difference for one particular company but isn't applicable in other businesses. In that case there's still an avenue available to getting those features into the software - Custom Coding. We charge $95 / hour and will tell you up front what the bill for a feature would be. We've customized the software for many different business and we know our program well so once we have a detailed description of the new feature we can let you know whether it's something we can do and if so what the price would be for the addition.

One major area I've seen our Custom Coding service help salons is in pulling customized reports. Adding a custom report - especially one for which all of the information is already available on other reports - is one of the easier projects for us to do and therefore it's often inexpensive. I've seen several businesses that struggled with the process of filling out forms for accountants, suppliers, or any number of other third parties. Once we took the time to provide them with a customized report they took a couple minutes to print the customized report, emailed it to the person, and saved hours a month on pulling up several reports every week and filling in paperwork by hand.

Whatever it is that you need in the software never forget that we're not just a software company - we're here to make the software work for you. Our Custom Coding service is just another way that we can help you run your business efficiently and keep your focus where it belongs - on your customers.

Switching to Cloud

For those of you not already familiar with our Cloud software, take a minute to read my previous blog post Why Cloud?.

It's been less than two years since we released the Cloud version of our program and it's taken off beyond even our expectations.  At this point almost 20% of our current customers are using Cloud! There are far more salons and spas out there that could benefit from our Cloud program but haven't made the decision to switch yet. Hopefully this post will help remove some of the roadblocks to making the switch.

Many salons feel that they don't have the time to switch over. We remove almost all the work though by setting up our server ahead of time for you. We'll transfer your backup after you close for the day, prepare your log-ins ahead of time, and in about 5-10 minutes per computer we can have you up and running on the Cloud. There's no wait - we can have you switched over in time for your next business day.

Most existing peripherals (printers, receipt printers, etc) work with the Cloud. Pretty much any Windows-based printer will still operate correctly. The Epson Receipt printers as well as the cash drawers that integrate with them will work. And you can even use your Pin Pad devices with X-Charge's credit card processing.

The ACH billing for the Cloud software is safe, secure, and much less of a hassle for our customers than credit card-based billing. You don't have to worry about letting us know when you get a new credit card or a card is expiring. The billing happens automatically every month without any extra work on your part.

The costs of our Cloud software are more for some of our customers - although I highly recommend taking the time to contact our sales department for a custom quote to see if the Cloud costs more for you or not. Even for the customers that would be paying more though the benefits to going Cloud have made it worth it for a large number of our current salons and spas - a number that's growing every day.

Online Booking and Employee Access

Ever since its release 12 years ago our online booking has been helping salons and spas reduce the workload at their front desk while at the same time increasing customer satisfaction. We have many satisfied salons and spas using the online booking now, both to put up that 'Open Sign' 24 hours a day 7 days a week as well as to increase their own employees access to their appointment books. I'd like to take a moment to explain the benefits and dispel some of the perceived pitfalls of online booking.

The number one concern I hear from salons and spas looking at the online booking relates to privacy. They want to make sure their customers won't know when they're in, when they're not, or how busy they are. Our online booking never shows that information to your customers. Instead, customers pick their services, dates, and if desired a requested employee and are given a selection of times that would meet their needs.

The only other barrier for most salons is the price. For customers using our installed program the price is $65 per month and for our cloud customers it's $30 per month. When you consider the amount of time savings involved - the reduced calls to the front desk, the reduction in number of computers needed to support a staff that can easily view and book their own appointments on their smart phones or home computers, and the possible reduction in necessary front desk staffing during slower times of day - you'll end up saving far more than you spend on the online booking fees.

So why use the online booking? The high level of customization offered ensures that you only give your customers and your staff the level of access you want them to have. You keep complete control of your book by opening up only the options you want people to have. At the same time, there's a huge amount available to both customers and staff.

You can enable your customers to book and cancel their own appointments. You can allow new customers to join your business's mailing and email lists. You can send interactive confirmation emails that mark customers as confirmed only if they click the confirmation link in the emails.

For your staff you can have them view their schedule, book and cancel appointments, adjust their books to mark off or open time up, and can even allow them to do those things for each other. The online booking is secure, flexible, and gives your customers and staff the ability to stay connected to your business whenever they need.

Lastly, we've made many improvements over the years to the look of the online booking. We can now make the online booking a seamless part of your existing web site and provide your customers with the same quality aesthetics you have in your current site. And for salons that don't already have a web site we can develop one at a very low cost and then host it for you at no additional charge.

Contact us to get started today!