MISTAKES TO AVOID WHEN CHOOSING A SPA SOFTWARE

The mantra to ace the competition, which exists in the beauty and wellness industry, rests primarily on two premises; the quality of the service delivered and the overall customer experience. While the quality of the service can be ensured by hiring skilled workforce, delivering a superior customer experience requires businesses to ensure that the customer has a seamless experience. So, how do businesses achieve this? The shortest answer is by leveraging technology. It is therefore, hardly surprising that increasing number of medical spas are choosing to deploy a spa management solution, popularly known as med spa software. Considering the crucial role that the software plays, it is important to ensure that you select the software that aligns the best with your business’s vision and mission. In this blog post, we help you understand the common mistakes that first time software buyers make and help you prevent them.
- Jumping for the free tool
Often the most popular way to lure potential customers, the software companies advertise their product by stating that its free for use. This is where as a business owner you must dig into the details and ask what is available for free? In many instances it is likely to turn out that the free version would involve just a few basic tools such as appointment booking and / or scheduling. In order to utilize all the features of the medical spa software, you maybe required to subscribe to a paid or even a premium version. If you have a multi store operation, you may be required to subscribe to the premium version. Alternatively, you may be required to pay a certain fee / commission from every payment transaction processed through the software. A wise decision here would be add up all such costs to ascertain the true cost of deploying the software. Alternatively, instead of choosing a free product, it would be better to seek a med spa software solution that has full features and is available for free demo use for a month.
- Selecting a rigid system
Another common way how software marketing people reach out to potential customers is by giving them a product with a host of features, at a fixed price. Often known as bundled marketing, the trick deployed here is to lure the customer by presenting a scenario that they are getting more features at a lesser cost. However, as a smart buyer you must be able to discern and ascertain the features that you need and the ones that you don’t need. Ideally, you shouldn’t be paying for the features in the spa software that your business doesn’t need to use. In other words your business should have an affordable med spa solution.
- One shoe doesn’t fit all
Software developers are trained to read their potential customer’s mind. When the customer doesn’t bite into the bait of a free product, which often comes with associated costs, they are more than willing to market a product that has a fixed bunch of features under a single umbrella. This is the time when you remember the old adage, “One shoe doesn’t fit all”. As a business owner when you are hunting for the best med spa software, do bear in mind that best here means a product that augments the goals and plans of your business. Each and every business model is unique, thus the software solution should be tailored to meet the requirements. There is no need for you to fall into the trap and subscribing to a product that has a bunch of fixed features, especially when your business doesn’t require you to use those features.
- User experience
Before zeroing down on a spa software product, it is highly recommended to speak to the industry veterans and experts to understand the user friendliness of the spa software solution. The users of the system are both your clients and your staff. You must bear in mind that not everyone is very tech friendly and can understand how to use it. Thus, it is important to understand the user friendliness of the product. The last thing you want during transforming your business is to deal with a state of art product, which comes with a steep learning curve. It is a sure-shot way to ensure that your customers and staff both would want to bypass the system and as a result your business will be unable to derive the stated outcomes.
- Tech Support
Last but not the least, technology is known to have sudden glitches. At that instant, the software developer must be able to provide a robust support to get the system up and running at the earliest. Whether it is routine maintenance or further simplification of the software to enhance the usability of the spa software the service should be top class. As a buyer, it is important to look for customer reviews and signs, which indicate the contrary. Furthermore, the software support should also update the security codes and features to ensure no data compromise occurs.
Once the software passes the above criteria it can be considered for further evaluation to meet the business’s process and budget requirements. Some of the popular names of med spa software that are now well established products are Zenoti, MioSalon, Vagaro, Wellyx etc.