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AI is everywhere, but where to begin? Zenoti CTO Anand Arvind says start by trying out AI tools to work more efficiently and improve the customer experience.
Artificial Intelligence, or AI, isn’t new. AI-driven applications have been around for years, from Gmail’s spam filter and Netflix movie recommendations to investment management by virtual advisors.
But AI took the world by storm when OpenAI released ChatGPT in November 2022, with Google’s Bard and Microsoft’s Bing Chat quick to follow in Q1 2023.
The intelligence in AI comes from computers parsing large data sets to “know” and predict all sorts of conditions such as which emails are likely to be spammy (Gmail), which movies you might like (Netflix), or which investment mix is the best fit for you. All are examples of machines learning from the vast amounts of data they parse.
The global market for AI in beauty industry was worth $216.12 million in 2020. It is predicted that the market for AI in beauty industry will reach $1.26 billion by 2027. The annual growth rate (CAGR) of AI in beauty industry from 2021 to 2027 is expected to be 33.2%.
Anyone can start playing with free versions of the latest available AI tools. “AI is evolving so quickly, that if you do not start learning how to use it, by the time it evolves and becomes really, really good, you’ll be left behind,” says Anand Arvind, Chief Technology Officer at Zenoti.
Generative AI is most often used to create text and images. Arvind names Dall-E from OpenAI, Firefly from Adobe, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion for image creation. The future of AI in beauty is more than bright. AI in beauty industry can change how salons and wellness spas are run. Let’s look at how it transforms customer experience and engagement.
Related reading: Unlock the power of AI in beauty & wellness: A comprehensive guide
As part of Innergize 2023, the premier beauty and wellness event, Arvind shared just a taste of what’s possible with AI. Here, we recap his insights on using AI to become more efficient and provide a better customer experience.
Research says businesses that offer online appointment scheduling experience a 30-45% increase in revenues. Additionally, with rebooking reminders, repeat appointments were observed to go up by 30%.
Your front-desk staff is not going to be able to answer every single phone call or reply to all appointment request emails in a day or week. Your business is bound to miss potential opportunities.
But with AI integration in your appointment management, not only will you not miss potential guests, but you will also be able to reschedule appointments and manage your appointment book with ease, never missing a single opportunity! AI’s role in appointment management, is in fact, one of the most impactful beauty tech trends to look out for.
Zenoti’s Smart Appointment Management identifies gaps in your appointment book, moving guests who are waiting for appointment confirmation into the schedule, and notifying them about their appointment. The system also sends out reminders to ensure there are no missed appointments.
There’s more! Your guests can book appointments any time and from anywhere and any device, and access all the information they need on their memberships, loyalty points, and transaction history.
Key Takeaway: With Zenoti’s AI-driven booking wizard, your staff doesn’t have to think twice about what’s next – all information will be available at their fingertips, empowering them to focus on delivering the best services possible. Your business, in the meantime, saves time, and resources, and boosts revenues.
Related post: Have a look at this guide that how AI can boost you salon and spa revenue
Responding to customer reviews quickly is crucial for any salon, spa, or medspa. It’s not enough to track reviews and respond fast. Showing empathy and trying to make a connection is just as important, especially when dealing with negative feedback.
Arvind asked ChatGPT to generate an email response to a positive online review for a Zenoti customer. ChatGPT’s 75-word response hit all the right notes, with phrases like “we’ll be sure to pass along your kind words” and “your loyalty means the world to us.” Arvind was also able to prompt the tool for a shorter version, more appropriate for use as a text message.
Next, Arvind gave an example of having ChatGPT generate a response to a negative review. The well-worded response included an apology, appreciation for the feedback, and an offer of a free service to make things right.
A free service to win back the unhappy customer wasn’t part of the request – and, in fact, you can specify that condition. “You could say in the prompt,” says Arvind, “‘I want to respond to this negative feedback. I want to be empathetic, but I do not want to give them a complimentary service.’”
ChatGPT can also be seen as a source of ideas for work emails and everyday situations, especially complex ones. “You’ll be surprised at the kind of outcomes you get,” says Arvind, “and how you can improve how you respond to things.”
Key takeaway: AI saves your staff time when responding to customer reviews. It quickly generates drafts they can revise and personalize.
This is one of the most critical ways of how AI is used in beauty industry - spotting the main themes in customer feedback. Simply upload publicly available reviews to ChatGPT and have it summarize why customers like or dislike your salon, spa, or medical spa. If the AI notices customers raving about your staff but struggling with scheduling issues, you can act on that knowledge. You can celebrate your staff to keep them motivated and improve appointment booking to address issues with scheduling.
Giving the AI free rein is one way to do it. Just feed it reviews and ask it to identify what customers think about your business. Or take it a step further: refine your prompts to “ask” AI to focus on a handful of categories you want to track.
Start with simple prompts to see what you get. Then, move on to more nuanced or complex prompts for information that can help you improve the guest experience. You can even refine prompts to reorder items from most to least important.
This exercise is just a glimpse into some of the most basic power of AI: ChatGPT summarizes review feedback in seconds, a fraction of the time it would take a staff member to read all the reviews, look for patterns, and summarize the findings.
When acting on feedback, however, be sure to add the human touch: give Amy a shout-out for service that led to a glowing review. Check into why appointment booking is a source of frustration for your customers.
Key takeaway: AI quickly analyzes feedback from customers to identify what they like and don’t like about your business. It helps you prioritize areas for improvement.
The Forbes 2024 State of Customer Service and CX Study found that 81% of customers prefer companies that offer a personalized experience. For 70% of them, it’s important that the employees know who they are and their history with the company, such as past purchases, buying patterns, and support calls.
With just manual effort, this kind of customer satisfaction would be impossible to achieve. AI in beauty assists by capturing guest data within the platform. Data such as purchase history, service preferences, and guests’ personal information like name, special dates, and more help get a sneak peek into what they like, helping salon staff build a one-on-one relationship with their guests. Beauty tech trend like this one truly makes AI the king of modern customer service.
Key Takeaway: AI supports salon staff by providing personalized recommendations for guests, without the latter having to repeatedly voice their preferences, thereby enhancing guest satisfaction and boosting salon revenues.
AI-powered personalized recommendations in the Zenoti Salon Software help staff speed up service requests and suggest upsells and cross-sells, boosting sales. It also helps guests make informed choices in terms of service providers, services, products, gift cards, memberships, and packages. It enables them to choose promotions that best suit them. All of it eventually translates into two things – enhanced guest experience and increased sales for the salon.
Virtual simulations will soon become the norm at most salons. Hair color simulations and AR-driven virtual makeovers are happening now as we speak. The numbers are expected to go up by 45%, providing guests with immersive previews of the desired results, be it make-up, nails, cuts, or color.
The good news is that it empowers guests to make informed decisions and experiment with their looks without hesitation. This translates to increased revenues. As guests get bolder with their experiments, they are willing to pay more as they purchase more services and products.
This may make a key question pop up in your head: can AI replace beauty consultants?
Here’s the deal – AI can never offer the human touch that guests value so much. The empathy, emotional connection, and sensitivity that a consultant offers cannot be replaced with AI. Complex skin conditions or unique beauty needs may require the expertise of a trained professional who can assess and adapt recommendations in real time. So, to answer your question – no, AI cannot replace beauty consultants. AI in beauty industry is designed to take care of data-crunching and automating routine tasks so that human interaction can take the front seat.
Key Takeaway: AI and related technologies such as AR and VR that enable virtual simulations will be the next big thing in the beauty industry, resulting in happier customers, purposeful guest engagement, and increased revenues for salon owners.
As a business owner or manager, you may not always have time to comb through every report that comes your way. To be more efficient, use an AI tool to process large documents. You could have AI summarize a 30-page document to get up to speed in 2 minutes and move on to your other to-do’s.
As an example, Arvind used ChatGPT to cull takeaways from a 45-minute pre-event meeting transcript. He quickly learned the purpose of the meeting, the event structure, and event details like team assignments, the dress code, and even an appointment to keep at the event.
Important: When using an AI tool, be careful not to upload business data that is confidential, proprietary, or contains personally identifiable information (PII). Professionals in more heavily regulated industries, like healthcare and finance, should be extra careful with using AI for content generation and data analysis.
What about PDF documents? ChatGPT can summarize those that are available online. Simply give it the path to the PDF and ask any question about the PDF. Again, as an example, Arvind used this method to make short work of a lengthy, text-heavy PDF on Covid regulations for salons.
“It’s an easy way to look at a large PDF, ask a question, and get a summary,” Arvind explains.
Key takeaway: AI summaries of large documents free up time to focus on your other priorities, helping you become more efficient.
If you run or manage a beauty and wellness brand and want to identify the most popular services or your busiest service days and times, you could use GPT-4, OpenAI’s most advanced tool, to analyze your data set.
Let’s say you have data with columns for appointment date, service name, center name, start time, and end time. You could upload the spreadsheet – with customer names removed – and ask GPT-4 questions like “What are the 10 most common services?” It can generate a table with the answer. If you like visuals, you can even have it create a word cloud with the more popular services shown in a larger font size.
You won’t have to do any parsing, categorizing, or data-sorting. The AI does it for you.
To illustrate ChatGPT’s way with data, Arvind had it generate a bar chart showing appointment volume for a salon/spa business between 10:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. In less than a minute, the tool returned a color-coded histogram for a data set with a few hundred rows.
Remember to be as specific as you can when asking questions or giving directions. When given vague prompts, ChatGPT makes incorrect assumptions.
“Because ChatGPT predicts using neural networks, it can make up facts – always double-check historical, factual information,” says Arvind. “Refrain from sharing personal, financial, or sensitive data. Use the model as a supplementary tool, not as a primary source of information.”
Key takeaway: AI analyzes guest behavior data in minutes instead of hours, giving you insights to help you staff up or down, create marketing promotions, and more.
When it comes to handling repetitive tasks, there’s nothing like some AI assistance. Artificial Intelligence-driven automation is one of the most fascinating beauty tech trends that’s set to grow exponentially in the near future.
Think chatbots handling a gamut of tasks like appointment confirmations, sending reminders, and answering basic customer questions.
As technology grows to encompass more than just using AI chatbots for booking salon appointments, we will see AI analyze customer support calls to help personalize every response and respond with text if you are unavailable. From using AI to improve customer retention in the spa industry to salon staff training and automated marketing, AI is ready to take over the backend operations, so spa and salon owners and employees face customers with 100% attention and enjoy relaxed interactions, as they should.
Can AI take care of it? If the answer is yes, Zenoti does it! It embeds an AI tool that automates repetitive tasks, freeing up your staff to focus on more important responsibilities. So from AI-powered phone lines that will transform the way every phone call is attended and responded to, and navigating our software with an AI assistant (check out Zeenie), to generating comprehensive reports and analytics, Zenoti’s AI-first platform gives you the chance to let AI take a crack at repetitive tasks so you and your employees can do what you are best at – running your business!
Key Takeaway: AI gets ready to take care of everything that doesn’t necessarily need a human touch, but the decision to override always remains with the user.
As the software platform of choice for more than 25,000 businesses across the globe, Zenoti has a support team that stays busy. Zenoti uses AI to address 25% of support tickets, says CTO Anand Arvind. The AI draws from the help document library to resolve those tickets, condensing large files into a short list of bullet points for each support issue along with a link to a detailed help article.
“We are trying to get to the point where every response can be almost instantaneous and contextual to the data,” says Arvind.
The efficiency frees up the support team to solve more complicated issues or requests. In addition, the automated transcription of support calls can help gauge whether customer requirements are being met.
The AI tool helps the support agents, too: they automatically receive personalized reports on their work. The tool can spot active listening skills, even from transcripts, helping agents better understand customer questions and concerns. “It’s an extremely good 1-1 coaching tool,” says Arvind.
Discover how Zenoti helps organizations apply AI and automation to drive more business.
Conversational AI is a type of artificial intelligence that enables machines to understand and respond to human language. The most popular examples of conversational AI are Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant. They use Natural Language Processing (NLP) to understand human language and respond in as human a manner as possible.
In business, Conversational AI is used most effectively to automate customer interactions and conversations. For instance, Chatbots that can provide instant responses to common queries, freeing up human customer service agents to handle more complex issues.
Generative AI, on the other hand, is used to create new and original content, in the form of text, images, or music. Generative AI works by using deep learning algorithms to analyze patterns in data, and then generating new content based on those patterns.
Generative AI increases creativity and productivity for a business, along with the potential for new forms of art and entertainment. ChatGPT is a great example of Generative AI.
In today’s dynamic world, AI in beauty industry enables customers to use digital tools on their skincare journey, instead of visiting a store or taking an online skincare quiz. Conversational AI is instrumental for this entire process, offering a fluid and holistic experience.
AI in the beauty industry has upleveled the quality of live chats dramatically. Using self-diagnostics, users can have precise and personalized text-based conversations, with AI crafting the perfect beauty routine tailored to their personal needs, and offering appropriate product recommendations.
Conversational AI becomes an adaptable skincare companion, reducing the need for complex databases and human customer service assistance. It can grasp real-time context, delivering personalized, technology-driven skincare experiences.
Advanced AI in the beauty industry can elevate the customer experience and drive customers to your business through the highly customer centric data it processes. Here’s how AI in the makeup and beauty industry can be leveraged for maximizing value:
Hyper-Personal Customer Engagement: The insights generated by advanced AI facilitate precise customer engagement methods. Customized product recommendations, exclusive offers and personalized communication can enhance customer loyalty and satisfaction.
Strategic Marketing Campaigns: With the enormous amounts of data that advanced AI literally decodes, makeup and beauty businesses can create impactful, data-driven campaigns. Advanced AI easily identifies optimal channels, timing and messaging, elevating the ROI of brands and retail campaigns.
Personalized Product Imagery: Advanced AI through customer data analysis, can generate tailored visuals that resonate with individual customer’s unique tastes. This fosters a stronger consumer-brand connection.
Copy Attribution and Product Innovation: Advanced AI can craft compelling, converting product descriptions. Its data-driven insights fuel product innovation, helping brands meet customer preferences effectively.
And that’s it – you’re ready for AI!
The future of AI in beauty is here; it’s now. With Zenoti’s AI First all-in-one software, we will help your salon, spa, or fitness business grow in size and profits!
Got more questions on how to implement the strategies we discussed here? Or perhaps you wish to see a demo of what Zenoti AI First can do for you?
Book a free consultation to explore Zenoti AI solutions for your business.
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