The benefits to syncing up your team’s schedules are evident (more visibility, better coverage, etc.), but truly getting your team on the same page reaches next level when you focus on optimizing your collective calendars. Once you’ve mastered the sync-up, you can book more clients, make more money, retain more employees, and we’re just getting started. Want to supercharge your scheduling powers? Keep reading to learn how you can stay more booked and busier (but still balanced!) than ever before. 

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Better Serve Clients

An optimized schedule doesn’t just make your life easier, it creates a better experience for your clients. When there’s more visibility around who’s around and who can do what, your team has more opportunity to ensure that everyone’s bases are covered. Not only does that mean each menu item is always available to suit client needs, but also that someone is on board to service walk-ins. Of course, this starts by syncing up your calendars. When everyone is connected through GlossGenius, clients have the option to book specifically by the service provider. That way, everyone on staff has the chance to build a solid roster of regulars and those regulars can trust that they aren’t taking a gamble on whoever happens to be free. 

Consider Personal Calendars

Work-life balance might be the most obvious benefit to getting the team’s schedules aligned, but it's also one of the most important. Nothing hurts a business’s ability to profit more than burnt-out employees, bad attitudes, or messy scheduling mishaps. Everyone should feel empowered to take full advantage of their time off in order to spend time with family, celebrate milestones, or just do absolutely. With a smooth system for scheduling in place, it’s all but guaranteed that everyone gets to enjoy their off days in peace and there won’t be any scrambling to cover them while they’re out. 

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Vacations and recreational commitments aren’t the only reasons to cross-check calendars. Other personal or professional obligations that could possibly interrupt the workflow should also be considered. That might range from having to take a recurring therapy appointment to driving across town for business-related banking. In that same vein, don’t forget to make time for housekeeping as well. Whether the cleaning and laundry are handled by a third party or split up between your crew, those duties should be accounted for on the calendar too. 

Maximize Your Revenue

The intention of strategically staggering schedules isn’t just for your sanity. It also offers clients more availability for specific services. In turn, that’ll also help you max out your revenue potential. If you’re creating individual schedules for your team or negotiating hours with those who rent from you, consider your clientele and your common peak periods as you plot out the workflow for the week. Let’s say you have a lash extension professional who can work 20 hours weekly and a nail tech that can do 30. If it’s common for clients to book lash extensions as an add-on to their mani, make sure those two professionals are working in overlapping time frames so it's always easy for clients to snag a back-to-back slot. With smart scheduling, you’ll be able to exponentially maximize bookings based on who’s working when.

The case for optimization begins with looking at how the hours, days, and weeks stack up, but it gets next level with the understanding of your average ticket number. This number tells you how much money you are earning per client visit and can inform you of how to best balance your team’s time. When you think about how much money you want to make annually and start dividing that by the hours everyone spends with each client, you can start to see where your rates or bookings need to be each day, week, or quarter to hit your goals. Maybe you need to bring on more service providers to meet the demand or maybe you need to make cutbacks. Either way, the answer is in the analytics. 

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Minimize Foot Traffic 

You want to be savvy about having all the right people in place at the right time. What you don’t want is a salon overrun with staff who either have nothing to do or are doing too much. It’s also not pleasant for clients when your space is always so crowded that they can hardly hear themselves think. 

Internally, this is especially important if you have staff members who share booths. Nothing is quite as awkward (or unprofessional) as double-booked providers fighting over who gets the chair. Set your team up for success by getting everyone aligned on the whens and wheres of their appointments to avoid any slip-ups. 

Make The Most of Your Marketing Opportunities

Full visibility of your team’s schedule is just as good as having psychic powers. It gives you the data to start noticing patterns so you’ll know in advance exactly when to deploy strategic marketing measures. That might mean setting up an email or SMS campaign to announce open slots or pushing out a promo for notoriously slow days ahead. If things are really buzzing, you’ll also want everyone to set up a Waitlist feature. That way, no one on the squad finds themselves in a no-show lurch. Plus, clients have the comfort of knowing they’re queued up to grab any upcoming openings so they’ll be less inclined to search elsewhere. 

In addition to finding and filling the gaps, you can also embrace that ‘dead time’ by using it as an opportunity to plan ahead. Keep that time blocked out for you and your team to make website updates, draft up social posts for the week, update your retail merchandising, or brainstorm upcoming holiday promotions. Time is on your side when you can see into the future. 

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