With the help of SMS messages via the Lox24 SMS Gateway, a nationwide hair salon chain has reduced so-called „no-shows“, i.e. cancelled appointment arrangements, by more than 95%.
More than 30% appointments at a hair salon chain were cancelled at the last minute in German branches, or were simply abandoned without notice. However, this represents a major economic problem for the hair salons:
„On some days we have to send customers away without an appointment because the schedule is so tight, but then the appointments are not taken up and we sometimes don’t make any sales for hours at a time.“
The SMS Gateway has now helped to solve this problem.
In the beginning, SMS were intended only as a means of advertising to inform customers about special promotions; more casually, they were also used to send out information about events. SMS reminder for appointments Implemented as an additional service, the positive side effect was surprising:
„After we sent out the first SMS, the adherence to deadlines jumped significantly; we hadn’t expected that. The workload is now much higher and also much more predictable; this helps us, among other things, with personnel planning.“
Customers now receive an SMS from the hair salon five days before their appointment. This gives customers the opportunity to cancel inappropriate appointments earlier. A second SMS a few hours before the appointment serves as a final reminder. The customers find the service very positive and the hair salon chain increases its workload and thus its revenue.
Technically, the system is quite simple; the appointment book was already integrated into the cash register system in an electronic format some time ago. Now a small script has been programmed that uses an internet connection to SMS Gateway From Lox24, the SMS gateway responds and starts the SMS delivery. The SMS gateway has an interface that only the text and the recipient need to be sent to, and then the SMS is sent by Lox24 to the customers:
„For us, this was the optimal solution; our core business is not IT. We were all the more pleased that Lox24“s SMS gateway made it possible to send SMS without additional hardware or fixed costs.”
This best-case scenario shows that the benefits of SMS go beyond an advertising effect. Additional SMS services that are driven by the SMS Gateway by Lox24 By simply implementing them, they have the potential to sustainably increase sales.