Van Michael: Zenoti cuts no-shows, boosts comms and guest experience

We've been in the Atlanta area for 34 years. We have eight locations in the Atlanta area now. We have a barbershop concept and then seven full-service hair salons. We're using Zenoti so many different ways for day-to-day operations but it's really changing every aspect of the business.

A customer is a customer no matter what location they go to. So, we can follow their history, their notes. The service providers really have a way to communicate, especially because we are departmentalized. So, they [customers] go to one service provider for cut, a different provider for color, and they can fully integrate the service for the guests. Our service providers and our guests are so excited that they can reach us at any time. And so, that's so new and so exciting.

And our service providers – it's always been a thing in the salons, you know, where you don't want the service provider to have access to all the data. But now, them having access to the data helps us move in the same direction together.

With Zenoti, we launched a no-show and cancellation fee, and we've recouped over $100,000 for the business in lost revenue to no-shows. It was easy to say, 'Oh, we're losing money for no-shows,' but when you see $100,000 coming into the bottom line, that's huge. And it was more than that.

I ended our relationship with our last software company and started our relationship with Zenoti because, like I said, if we continue down that path of missing out on what technology could do for us, then our business wasn't going to grow. And so, for a lot of years, growth looked like more locations, more providers – but now growth looks like really focusing on our processes, and our business, and what Zenoti and Van Michael can partner together to accomplish with all of the goals that we've talked about for so many years. I feel like the partnership with Zenoti just gives us so much opportunity with where the business could possibly go.

I so appreciate that Zenoti has a dedicated department to the salon and spa space because we are so different. It's not a one-size-fits-all when it comes to software, and so many different softwares that I looked at were missing key components. While Zenoti might not have had those right out of the gate or right out of the box, Zenoti is constantly changing and evolving and meeting their customers where they're at and then trying to take it to the next level.