Client trends have changed hugely over the past couple of years, making it important you refresh your business practices ahead of the New Year. With each year bringing new client behaviours following the pandemic, such as 40% of consumers booking more spa treatments than before, it is vital to regularly review your own business practices. Therefore, we have outlined several areas you should evaluate to prepare for the New Year.
Review business goals when amending business practices
In order to refresh your business practices, the first step is to review your business goals over the past year. Your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) will provide a good benchmark for how close you are to achieving these goals. Running any performance reports will help monitor these KPIs. You can then start to plan for the next year, taking forward any goals that are still applicable, as well as tweak any relevant practices to help you achieve these.
Your business goals should be a mix of short-term and long-term targets, with the short-term covering the year’s first quarter. One short-term goal could focus on attracting clients for January, meaning you may choose to focus business practices on marketing for the New Year. In comparison, some of your previous long-term goals may carry over into next year to remain a focal point, such as retaining clients. To help you finalise your plans, we have come up with five steps to achieving important business goals in the New Year.
Evaluate business policies and practices for the New Year
What policies do you have in place at current? You may wish to review these if your business has experienced an adverse impact from client behaviour, such as using their phones during a spa session, or low staff retention following the spa recruitment crisis. Whatever the case, now is the ideal time to review important spa policies and etiquette that will elevate your business. You could do so by adding further details to your cancellation policy, such as a variety of refund methods on top of any cancellation windows and fees. These policies will ensure clients know what to expect to avoid any disappointment later down the line.
Review business practices for staff New Year
Another key area to review is your business practices for new and existing staff. Focusing on your present team, are your current business procedures working effectively for them? For example, you may wish to look at how regularly you amend staff rotas, or tweak them to suit new business practices based on quiet or peak periods from the past year. This will ensure you will always have resource during the times when your business requires it most.
It is also worth looking at business practices for managing and maintaining staff. Part of this may be reviewing how staff wellbeing is important for retention, or how and when you offer training. This ensures staff are trained to keep up to date with the protocols of popular treatments, or to simply refresh their skills. We outline more in how you can update your staff procedures with these five key steps in preparing a staffing plan.
Embrace business practices for technology
Staying up to date with the latest technology is hugely important for several reasons. The largest of these is its ability to automate jobs and streamline staff tasks, saving you time and money. For example, an online booking system will enable clients to review and book whenever is most suitable for them, saving that initial call to your team. Implementing this may change the procedure for bookings, but in the long-run will save admin time that can be used elsewhere.
A digital system can benefit your business practices in plenty of other ways too, such as storing client data in a GDPR compliant system, amending pricing structures, setting staff rotas and more once you have a procedure in place. A new system may mean updated practices across the board, but the benefits will improve the business long-term.
Core by Premier Software® has a wealth of functions, including those above, that help implement new business practices and procedures for your short and long-term goals. As well as online booking functionality and cancellation policies through to measuring business performance, Core’s modern functions ensure your business stays ahead. To find out how Core can help your business, click the button below.