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All About Hair...and So Much More.
Welcome to All About Hair with Danise...where beautiful hair is just the beginning.
I'm Danise, a hairstylist, educator, and salon owner with more than 30 years in the beauty industry. After owning four award-winning salons, I never imagined I'd build another one...until now.
Join me as I document the real journey of creating Panache & Company from the ground up. From finding the perfect location and designing the salon to hiring a team, mentoring stylists, serving clients, and navigating the unexpected, you'll hear the honest conversations that happen behind every milestone.
Whether you're a client looking for trusted hair advice, a stylist building your career, or a salon owner growing your business, you'll find practical education, inspiring stories, and real-life lessons from behind the chair and beyond.
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• Client transformations
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Remember...when you know better, you do better.
All About Hair...and So Much More.
223: Mastering Salon Growth Through Tech and Utilization Insights
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Are you the type of salon owner who dreads looking at their reports? You might have invested in a fantastic POS system to manage your appointments, but did you know it also comes with powerful reporting capabilities? In this episode, we sit down with Jules Reese, an Enterprise Customer Success Manager at Boulevard. Jules will break down the top five reports every salon owner needs to know about and show us how to use them for business growth.
Jules Reese brings a wealth of experience, having spent 10 years in the salon industry as a stylist and business administrator for multi-location salons and barbershops across Ohio, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York. At Boulevard, Jules helps clients maximize their technology investments, enhance client experiences, and unlock growth potential. Tune in to learn how you can harness the power of your POS system to take your salon to the next level.
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Salon Reports and Business Growth
Speaker 1In today's throwback edition of our podcast , we are going back to episode 140 , where I interviewed Jules Reese . He's a customer success manager at Boulevard . It was one of our most popular episodes . Jules breaks down the top five reports every salon owner needs to know about and shows us how to use them for our business growth . I think you're going to enjoy it .
Speaker 1Welcome to All About Hair , the go-to podcast for stylists , salon owners and anyone passionate about hairstyling . Whether you're a seasoned stylist refining your skills or a curious listener looking to enhance your hair knowledge , we've got you covered . I'm your host , denise Kylitz , a former stylist and salon owner with four award-winning salons under my belt , with over 30 years of experience , I've dedicated myself to helping stylists excel in foundational haircutting , color theory , client communication and more , enabling them to build six-figure careers they can be proud of . My mission is to uplift our industry by sharing valuable insights gathered along my journey . Get ready for enlightening discussions , captivating interviews and practical advice on marketing , sales and technical skills . This is the podcast all about hair . Today , we have a guest with us , jules Reese . He is from Boulevard and that's a program for your POS system for salons and med spas and basically any service industry that makes appointments . Am I right ?
Speaker 2Sure exactly . We like to pose ourselves as a beauty and wellness brand . Who happens to create technology to support those businesses ?
Speaker 1technology to support those businesses . Fabulous , yeah . And Jules supports the business owners by helping him or her read reports , use technology to their advantage , things like that . So before I slaughter it , I'm going to have Jules introduce himself and let us know a little bit more about him , how he got to this position and a little history from just being in the beauty industry .
Speaker 2Thank you so much , Denise .
Speaker 1Absolutely .
Speaker 2First , thank you so much for having me on your podcast .
Speaker 1I'm glad you're here .
Speaker 2I think I'm about 20 episodes deep and I've really enjoyed listening to the different topics that you speak about on here , Thank you .
Speaker 2So a little bit about me . So currently I am a customer success manager at Boulevard , the beauty and wellness brand that caters to these appointment-based businesses . By way of technology , we are a complete salon or business management software providing scheduling , point of sale reporting , inventory management , integrated marketing and a lot of other features too . A little bit of context about me and how I got to Boulevard . I started . If we want to go , I started . If we want to go far back . Growing up , I had a head full of curly hair , didn't know how to style it , Therefore , I hated it , and when I found out that you could style hair for a living , I knew that that's what I wanted to do , because I didn't want anyone to feel self-conscious or unsatisfied with the way that they looked and the way it affects their confidence et cetera .
Speaker 2So I started my beauty industry journey by starting as a receptionist at a salon in Dayton , Ohio . I transferred to one of their locations in Columbus , Ohio , and attended the Aveda Institute in Columbus . I went and became licensed , got a year of experience under my belt before leaving Ohio and from there on out I bopped around from New York , LA , San Francisco , back to LA , back to New York , and depending on where I was or what position I was hired for , I felt like I always had a hand being behind the chair and behind the scenes . So I was often managing and styling hair , and those businesses ranged from local mom and pop shops to multi-location corporate salons , franchised businesses between full-service hair , skin and nails salon to barber shops , to blow-dry salons , to luxury Wow Anyways . So basically , I wanted to kind of get a little bit of everything out of the industry , just because it's a fascinating industry .
Speaker 1It is .
Speaker 2Over time I became more interested in the administrative side . Reporting , which we'll talk about today , became a huge interest of mine . And besides , the salon operations , how do you take that information back behind the scenes and what do you do with that information to encourage better client behavior or encourage better staff behavior ? Or what do you do with this information to get your business to the next level ?
Speaker 1Right .
Speaker 2Yeah , so here at Boulevard , I've been here for about a year and a half now as a customer success manager . I manage a book of businesses . Some are facial studios , some are salons , some are nail studios , lash studios , et cetera . But I am a point of contact for them to consult with what , like , how do they do X , y and Z ? Or here's this platform that they're using , here's all the amazing tools , but , like , how do you apply it to your current business model ? Or do you want to change your business model , and how can the platform help you do that ? So , more so , I guess , software and business implementation , if you want to shortly ?
Speaker 1Okay , wow , well , the reason why we thank you for that . It seems like you have a lot of background . You could probably help a lot of owners do various things , probably even get behind the chair a little bit .
Speaker 2Yeah , I miss it . I have been .
Speaker 1Yeah , so curly hair . So you just went and and if people can't see , you go on our YouTube channel . Take a look , watch the whole video . So you just shaved it off .
Speaker 2You just like forget it well , you know what is um interesting . So it all fell out randomly when I was 22 years old . I'm 30 now , but I this is actually scalp micropigmentation .
Speaker 1Really Wow .
Speaker 2It is a hair tattoo , so maybe this will boost the views for the video if people want to see it .
Speaker 1Wow .
Speaker 2But it's like microblading , but instead of lines on your eyebrows it's just dots . You know , kind of mimicking that hair follicle .
Speaker 1That's amazing . I've seen a lot of things and it's amazing what our industry is is going towards right so it's really innovative , exactly so you would never know that by looking at you it just kind of looks like a yeah it looks like you're yeah , yeah , so , yeah , okay , what's that ?
Speaker 2um well , I was gonna say uh , when it came to curly hair . When I was , I believe , in seventh grade , an older brother of mine had a girlfriend who was in cosmetology school and that's kind of where I started connecting all the dots . She flat ironed my hair one time and I was so thrilled . That's when I was like I have to tell everybody about this flat iron which , looking back , sounds so silly . No , it's not .
Speaker 1I remember my first encounter with a flat iron . I grew up in Kansas and I have very curly hair myself , but I'm a lot older than you and so we did hot rollers , and so I blow dry my hair and then I put it in hot rollers , and so I knew I had curly , fuzzy hair , but I didn't know what else to do with it until I went over to my friend's house and I thought she had straight hair . I always did . I always thought she had straight hair and she had a flat iron .
Speaker 2Now , this is in the 80s .
Speaker 1OK , so she was probably frying her hair , but I always thought she had straight hair . I was just so amazed that anything like that was even possible .
Speaker 2Right , I feel like that's funny that you remember your experience , your first experience with one Cause I feel like a lot of us probably can especially for a hairstylist or past hairstylist and like having that light bulb moment the first time you ever use one .
Speaker 1Oh , I still get those . But I'm so glad that curly hair is making a comeback , you know everybody's embracing their texture and I love that and it's opening up a whole new avenue for
Leveraging Salon Reports for Growth
Speaker 1businesses . So , okay , we invited Jules on the podcast today because we wanted to talk about numbers and reports . And I know a lot of salon owners that I speak with . You know they . They became hairstylists first and then somebody said , hey , you make a great salon owner , you're being successful , and so they become a salon owner , but they don't really know how to read all the reports . They get the software in , it's a POS system , it runs and they have all these hidden reports in the background and they've either one never , don't even know what they are , never open them because they don't know what they are and then how to utilize them to grow their salons .
Speaker 1You know I'm a numbers geek . We were discussing that before . I love every single report and I've used a lot of different systems and I love using those reports to grow my team . You know and what , and so maybe that's even something you know we'd look at reports . What do you even look at ? What are the numbers you need to know ? So I'm going to leave that in your court because you know we'd look at reports . What do you even look at ? What are the numbers you need to know ? So I'm going to leave that in your court because you know your system . I've never actually used Boulevard myself , but I researched a lot online , looked at the website and you know , things like that .
Speaker 1I like what I see . It's very current , the images , the texting , the marketing reports . So of course we'll put that link in our show notes , so in case anybody else wants to go there as well . But I will leave it in your court . So we're going to just talk about what's important to know and what salon owners need to know .
Speaker 2Sure thing . So I'm going to be talking about some metrics and some formats when it comes to reporting , to demonstrate how understanding the data in your reporting is the best way to actually leverage it and take actionable steps to grow your business .
Speaker 1Okay .
Speaker 2And I'll preface this by letting our listeners know this is not intended to be a complete Boulevard plug . We're not telling you to go , run and sign up for the software . You can if you like . However , we're just speaking from experience , and Boulevard is the tool that I use to help my customers .
Speaker 1So most of these systems have reports on them . So if they are using a system they like , this can still help them , right .
Speaker 2Exactly yes , yeah , this should be pretty universal . I would say Okay . So the first one that I'd like to discuss is utilization percentage . So , first of all , what is it so ? Utilization percentage on most platforms is going to indicate how busy or how full a service provider's schedule is . In Boulevard , the actual calculation or logic behind the metric is hours booked divided by hours scheduled . So in most cases , the busier you are , the more revenue you're generating , and high level stats will show the location utilization , so you understand what location is the busiest . Or , even higher level , you can see how utilized your business is overall , whether that's staff or resource utilization .
Speaker 1Oh , you can break it all the way down to each individual , like if you have somebody that needs to grow , you can actually see how busy they are compared to the whole salon .
Speaker 2Right , exactly , yes , and with the segmenting that Boulevard has in reporting , we can get this high level on a business level , location level , staff role level , if you want to see a particular level of stylist , or if you want to see which department is being the most utilized , whether that's color cut versus style . And , yeah , you can drill down into each staff member and even get really granular as to the day of the week or the time of day . Day of week and time of day will be a format that we talk about here in a few minutes , but I'll first kind of lay out , I guess , the basics of utilization percentage .
Utilization Percentage and Marketing Strategies
Speaker 2So , besides how that's measured hours booked divided by hours scheduled there is also , like time blocks to be taken into consideration . So , depending on your platform , all of your time blocks might count towards your utilization , or they might count against the utilization , or perhaps they don't have any effect . So ask whether that's your customer success manager or the support team , the platform's support articles , et cetera , understand how that metric is being calculated .
Speaker 2But in Boulevard we have the option to block out schedules as either personal or business .
Speaker 2Some examples of personal blocks might be if the staff member is requesting to come in late or leave early , whereas an example of a business block might be for continued education , if you're blocking them off for a class or for one-on-ones , catch-up time , for late clients , et cetera . An exception to a business block being completely business centric might be , excuse me , scheduled lunches , where I'm not trying to make this all about talking about lunches , but I only bring that up because that seems to be a topic I speak with my customers . A lot is how do I mark out lunches Like that's not doing anything for the business ? But if you count their lunchbox as personal , then they're never going to hit 100% utilization percentage , which can be discouraging to the staff member if their schedule on paper says that it's not being fully utilized . And in states like California who might have state mandated lunch breaks , it's not the staff's fault that they have to take a break , so I wouldn't want to count that time against them .
Speaker 1Yeah , that makes sense . That makes sense . So if you're blocking off a personal one hour lunch break , then they're only and they're completely full the rest of the time . That goes against them and so they're only 90 , I don't know I'm getting 90% utilized because they're out of there saying that they're taking a break .
Speaker 2Exactly right . So that can be discouraging , especially if your KPIs for a staff promotion , if they are centered around , if utilization percentage is one of those metrics you consider that's not going to be a pleasant conversation with your staff . Yeah .
Speaker 1Yeah , and it should be one of those benchmarks . Yeah , wow , okay , that's good to know . See , right there , you just taught me something .
Speaker 2Oh , thank you .
Speaker 2Well , yeah . So some tips , like if your utilization percentage is low , quick fixes are , of course , like bundling services , offering product discounts , like offering some type of incentive to get clients in the door during those times of low utilization . Of course , quick fixes are not always sustainable , so instead , maybe consider using a marketing tool to boost your brand visibility and encourage clients to come in more frequently to boost that utilization percentage . In Boulevard we have an integrated marketing suite and two of the campaigns are based solely on utilization percentage . It's the metric that you can heighten or lower the threshold that you can choose to determine when emails are going to be sent to your clientele . If you want to say , I only want these emails to go out if they have 50% or more availability , then set that . If you want to send more emails , then you can lower that threshold . Or if you want to send less emails , then you can heighten that threshold .
Speaker 1And so these emails . I'm assuming there's some backend stuff you have to do to set it up , some backend stuff you have to do to set it up , but they just automatically go out . If they see a stylist is 50% or whatever you set it at , they just automatically go out , Exactly .
Speaker 2And actually there's hardly any downtime for a setup because our engineers have built in logic into these campaigns so they're not going to send to clients who already have an upcoming appointment , not send to any clients who have been in within the last 30 days and no clients who haven't visited within the last year .
Speaker 1And that's automatic , so you don't have to set those levers up yourself .
Speaker 2Nope , you set when you want that threshold what you want the threshold to be set it , forget it , and then every day , like it forget it , and then every day , like clockwork , it'll send out , based on the criteria .
Speaker 1Wow , that's . That's pretty cool , that's awesome .
Speaker 2What are some of the examples perhaps you've seen in your businesses in the past ? Has utilization percentage always been like a hot topic as far as like KPIs are concerned , or is that something that you've paid particular attention to ?
Speaker 1Oh , absolutely did . Yeah , it was part of our benchmark for promotions , things like that . My salon we didn't actually have a problem with utilization because we were so busy Congrats . So busy , you know , but we worked hard at getting busy . You know , we did all the marketing , things like that . We were in a great location and we'd been there for a long time , so people knew about us . So utilization , actually , you nobody worried about even our newest stylists . They just didn't worry . In fact , most people came there to build their clientele and then they took off . But that's a whole other story . It's okay .
Speaker 2Another episode topic .
Speaker 1I'm not bitter , no .
Speaker 2One thing I will say , though . About that I there's a saying that I love it goes . The only thing worse than training your staff and having them leave is not training them and having them stay .
Speaker 1I've heard that too , and that's how you get over that .
Speaker 2Yes , exactly .
Speaker 1I tell my , my um salon owners who reach out to me too with that kind of you know , cause it aches it . It hurts when somebody leaves your salon . As a salon owner , you put everything into them , you feel like you do um , you know , and you build their career and their you know , and it really hurts when you feel like you don't have what they need anymore , you know , for whatever reason . And so I've had salon owners reach out to me a lot about that , like what do I do , you know ? And I was like you let it go and you congratulate them and you and , and if they leave on good terms , guess what ? You leave that door open .
Speaker 1Cause that happened too . People would go go away thinking the grass is greener and then they ended up coming back because it wasn't . You know , they didn't know what they had , because we were the first place that they worked and they had nothing to compare it to . And then they would come back and oh , I love that , you know , as long as they're leaving on good terms , you know , you know .
Speaker 2Agreed . And for the listeners , Denise's episodes on firing stuff Great listens I was . I was clutching my pearls because there were some very relatable points .
Speaker 1Yeah , I've been there . Oh my gosh , after 11 , 12 , I mean , I've owned four salons , but this , my last one , my last two were my most successful . Of course , you keep learning and I had it for almost 12 years and , um , oh my goodness , um , you know , know , last time I did my report for my payroll when I was shutting it down , and it shows you how many people have filtered through your system . Oh my gosh , it's like , oh , that's terrible , but that's what it takes . You find your people and they find you .
Speaker 2They don't want to stick around . Yeah , yeah , yeah you find your people and they find you . Everyone's like around . Yeah , yeah , yeah . So oh , by the way , I'm I just wanted to note I tried sharing my screen , although it says host disabled participant screen sharing , so we'll just adjust that for quick hold on a
Customized Reports and Utilization Metrics
Speaker 2sec .
Speaker 1Let me see who can share . You can share , uh . Who can start sharing when someone else is sharing ? Okay , there we go amazing .
Speaker 2Thank you , janice there we go .
Speaker 1Oh awesome , look at this . Are you able to see my screen ? I am okay , wonderful .
Speaker 2so , um , just to kind of give you some context of like where we are , like in Boulevard's platform , we are in reports and we have two sections which personally I love . The first section , which we're not going to stick in , I'll still just touch on it , though . This is what we call our classic reports . It's a little bit more visually appealing , we have a little bit more graphics here , but this is a collection of reports made by our team for appointment-based businesses and , for instance , we'll just say , like month to date for this date range . So this is a staff performance report . We're about to dive into the other version of this , but , um , this is , uh , an example of one of our classic reports . I like this section because it's pre-made , it's pretty and I kind of call these the type b reports the artists who may have become business owners who , like they don't want to worry about putting together a huge report . They don't know what metrics to pull in . Like this is done for you , yeah .
Speaker 2So , it's easy to pop in and see the information you need and in some reports , such as this one for staff performance , you know we're looking at that utilization percentage . We can see service revenue . We can scroll over and see additional metrics . We can scroll over and see additional metrics , but if we select the staff member's name , we can see a detailed line item view of all of the transactions , whether they're products , services , et cetera , that make up the numbers we're seeing .
Speaker 1Gotcha . That looks good . That's easy to read too .
Speaker 2Yeah , and you can actually even email it straight to the staff member from the dashboard . It'll populate their email address from their staff profile . So you just click the email button and it sends it off to them .
Speaker 1That's nice .
Speaker 2Yeah , good for a goal setting , one-on-ones et cetera , but in the beta report section .
Speaker 2So this is more customizable . That's the benefit of using this version , because we can see . You know , our date range is just this last week . I don't want to pull too much data in here , but by default this report is going to be by a staff role into the staff . But if we want to see a higher level view , we can customize it . We customize what our reporting data is , how the rows are , group our columns , what their group by we want to do , week over week , a month over month , and then we have all of the columns that we're measuring down here , and if we select into this , there's an additional of metrics that we can add . So chances are , if you want to measure it , we can .
Speaker 1Wow , I could totally geek out on this , oh yeah . I love that kind of stuff .
Speaker 2But here we can do . If we want to sort this by location , then we'll get a wide view of all of our stats at the top , Then it'll break it out per location and then the staff members underneath .
Speaker 1That's nice .
Speaker 2We could do month over month or quarter over quarter , et cetera , but this gives you that that high level view of um the busyness of your business in each level of granularity .
Speaker 1Right , okay , that's great , that's nice .
Speaker 2And , um , we'll come back to , uh , some more reports here in just a moment . Um , I'm or actually , one more piece of granularity I suppose I can show is we can group , we can have our reporting data be a staff name rows grouped by client name , and then that'll give us each staff member , along with each client that they service . That makes up those numbers .
Speaker 1Oh , wow , okay , yeah , that , wow , okay yeah , that's nice .
Speaker 2So we'll come back to screen sharing in a minute . Yeah , any other questions or comments about utilization ?
Speaker 1before diving into the next no , that kind of leads us to the next , because the next thing that I have on my list is tags , and that was what those things you were showing us right , those blue tags- so for the tags , well , so in Boulevard you can create a tag and you can apply it to appointments , clients or orders , aka tickets , oh , okay , and you can create these tags to mean anything , give them any meaning .
Speaker 2Choose an emoji to associate it with if you like . You don't have to , but the benefit of using one of the emojis which I feel so silly talking about emojis when discussing business and reporting but the benefit of assigning it , is that you can quickly glance at an appointment and glance at a client profile , et cetera , and see that emoji , like see that tag , and instantly know a bit of information about that person .
Speaker 1Oh , like a VIP , maybe you have a heart emoji and so there's going to be a heart next to any VIP client , whatever the VIP means .
Speaker 2Okay , and you can pull these tags into reporting . So if you want to measure a particular group of people , whether that's , like you know , your DIPs or your influencers , or if you your your late clients , your chronically late clients , or if you want to , you know , pull in membership reporting so you use a membership tag . You can really get insights to how much revenue they're generating for your business . So I'll kind of go through each type of tag and give you a couple of examples of each . Okay , when it comes to appointment , tags like those are going to be temporary , attached to a single appointment . It's not going to display on future bookings and it won't show up in the client profile .
Speaker 1It's intended for that appointment specifically like maybe they have to bring their kid to the appointment , or exactly or maybe they're bringing a pet and you need to know that , like in case anyone's allergic , etc .
Speaker 2Um , but like a couple examples would be like the client or the staff member running late . If you tag that appointment , then anyone couple examples would be like the client or the staff member running late . If you tag that appointment , then anyone else who might be like you know the break room computer you know waiting for their client , can see . Oh , this client called and said they were going to be late .
Speaker 2Great , ah , yes , okay um , one that I wish I would have used when I was using boulevard as a customer , because I was managing a salon um on the customer customer side , using Boulevard for two years before joining the Boulevard team
Efficient Appointment and Client Tagging
Speaker 2. But an appointment tag I wish I would have used would have been like requested an earlier time or an earlier date , or perhaps requested a later time or a later date . And that's only because when scheduling , whether it's over the phone or in the notes section of online bookings , clients oftentimes are asking for earlier or later appointments than what they actually booked for . So if you have a cancellation , you can easily glance at your books , see if there was someone else that day that wanted to move up to an earlier time or on a future date , wanting to get in on a sooner date . So you can quickly look at your schedule , see who those candidates are and start contacting them to get that spot filled .
Speaker 1I love that . Yeah , that wow .
Speaker 2Yeah , and even if they don't take the appointment , like clients are usually so appreciative and over the moon that you would think , or that you would quote unquote remembered that they did want to come in earlier and you know , try to accommodate them that way .
Speaker 1Right , Magic .
Speaker 2And another appointment tag that I wish I would have used would be like an example , like appointment sentiment . So this could be positive , neutral or poor , and while tagging each appointment a sentiment , it could seem excessive , depending on what your client volume is . However , the benefit of this is it can be an indicator of either a staff member who may need to polish up their customer service skills or their technical skills , based on like what that service is . But if something's also tagged as neutral or poor , it also allows you to have that visibility and then reach out to the client and say like hey , thank you for coming in , how was your appointment with us ? And it opens up that conversation to get feedback from the client . Maybe they weren't planning on coming back , or maybe they were planning on leaving a poor review because maybe they thought the customer service was subpar , or maybe they didn't like the way their hair turned out .
Speaker 1And you can usually tell that when they're checking out just that vibe , that energy that you know Exactly .
Speaker 2So it could be the staff member or your receptionist that tags the appointment and that's just a little flag for you to like . Check in and dig a little deeper and make sure that it's the type of experience you want a client to be having .
Speaker 1Yeah , even if it was the salon owner who went through that , even weekly , and saw the neutral or the negative ones and they reached out . Could you imagine if the salon owner actually reached out to these guests and said hey , I mean , nobody does that I used to do it . Yeah , every once in a blue moon I would do it , but I mean it's a lot , but it's so important to your business if you want to keep your guests right , exactly Because we're in the business of making people feel good , whether it's about the way they look , or important Right , yeah , yeah .
Speaker 2So I love that . And then last example of an appointment tag . I don't have as many examples for the clients in order , so this tax section I'm not going to make , but for called and left message , um , uh , or , excuse me , an example name of a tag to be called enough message , texted enough message or confirmed appointment move . And the use case I'm attaching that to is like we've all been there . A staff member calls out , they have a book full of appointments and you are then playing phone tag with all of their clients all day long because you can't get them on the phone . Maybe your platform has two-way texting , maybe it doesn't . I hope it does because that makes it so much easier . But also , considering how many people you're working with at the desk or how many people your receptions are working with at the desk , you can be like tag teaming and working your way down the client list to try to move appointments . But if you have a tag that you can quickly just call it a left message , text it a left message .
Speaker 2Oh yeah , better just to keep your own organization in line , but that way you're not like double calling clients , right ? That's , that's happened to me in the moment .
Speaker 1Oh yeah , it happens to everybody , right ? You've got yeah two or three people at the desk and they don't know what's going on . Right , you've got yeah two or three people at the desk and they don't know what's going on . Oh no , that's , that's lovely . I could see where that would come in handy big time then . That way you're not writing all your notes down on a pad of paper and trying to keep up with that or typing an individual note for every single , which you don't have time right , you don't have time and not everybody sees that because they don't click on it I .
Speaker 1I don't know how UBARD works , but you know you usually have to click on it to see the note .
Speaker 2Exactly , or at least hover over it .
Speaker 1Yeah , something which , if you're using an , iPad hovering doesn't really exist on iPads . Right , true , and a lot of people are .
Speaker 2Um , for client tags , uh . So those are going to be permanent tags , um , until you remove them , of course , but those will be attached to the client profile and those will appear anywhere the client does in the in the platform . So , whether it's on your front desk page for check-ins , whether you're on your calendar tab doing the entire schedule , um , you'll be able to see with just a glance , like , who that client is , or , uh , or what group that they might be a part of .
Speaker 1Okay .
Speaker 2So um example , tags could be like consistently tardy or spicy , or no phone calls , or maybe this is a no charge client ? Um , perhaps like create an allergies tag If , if you need , if you should be noting a client's allergies , if you're , you know you're doing skin services , or there was a regular client in my past who was allergic to lilies . So when we so when she came in , we had to make sure we didn't have lilies in the salon . If someone lets you know that they have an allergy , you know it doesn't hurt just to pin that tag on them . Oh , yeah , but then also a popular one during COVID reopening was creating a client tag for proof of vaccination or prefers masks for their services .
Speaker 2So they have a lot of flexibility . You can get creative with these . You can use them for whatever you like , really . But then , yeah , I'd say , when it comes to actually reporting on these tags , the most popular one that we see is for businesses with memberships marking a membership tag on a client . You could have a generalized membership tag or , if you want , to create a tag for each type of membership . That way you can get even more granular with what each membership is bringing in and then , along with reporting , you can use these tags to create audiences in the marketing suite .
Speaker 1Oh , yes , and just email to those people .
Speaker 2Exactly so , depending on like for that membership tag . Example , if you want to send a generalized campaign to all your members , great , but if you want to send a campaign to a particular membership audience , you can do that . If you're trying to promote one membership and you want to send to the clients who may have a membership but not that one , you can do that .
Speaker 1Right , oh , I get that . Yeah , that's cool . And now now , if you create a , an emoji for all of these different things , doesn't that kind of get like crazy ? I mean , are you talking like emojis Like when you're texting ? You know smiley faces . Are you talking like emojis like when you're texting ? You know smiley faces , arrows , you know that , all those kind of emojis . So OK , you just don't want to go overboard , I would . I would assume .
Speaker 2Sure , and that's why I kind of like the flexibility of like you don't have to choose an emoji if you don't want to , if you want something to live in the client profile for you to report on , but you don't want it to clutter up your view per se , then you can do that . This is an example . Like if we hover over this , my cursor is kind of large , but I like it . We have like loyal client or member Okay , so those are examples of client tags . Okay .
Speaker 2So , those will always live with the client , whereas here we can add an appointment tag . Perhaps this client shouldn't always be a no charge , so we don't need this on their client profile , but perhaps for this particular appointment it should be no charged so then we can assign that and we can see easily by looking at the books that this would be yeah , so that's an example .
Speaker 2Okay , yeah we've also got our front desk screen , which um is um the same information as the calendar , but in a little bit more legible form , because , depending on how many staff members a client or , excuse me , a business has , it can start getting a little squished , the columns . So this is a much easier way to read it and you still have access to information .
Speaker 1OK , I see , that's nice .
Speaker 2Yeah , and then in reporting this would be an example . I didn't test this first . I'm not sure if this is going to bring clients in this set of data , but we would be able to filter down to what we want if we only want to see stats for our members .
Speaker 1Oh , okay , yeah .
Speaker 2So a little example of the filtering you can do .
Speaker 1Yeah , that's nice .
Speaker 2So , as far as the importance of tags , I mean chances are , like as most duty businesses do , you have unique needs and not every report is not every uh report is going to give you all the metrics that you want , um based on like your interests . So that's where tags come in . And uh , and , like I said , you can even create audiences .
Speaker 1So they've got some versatility to what you can yeah , um , and I'm sure that when you go into um , your businesses that are assigned to you , or even probably setting up new ones , you can go over this kind of thing with them , cause that , you know , that's a lot to remember , you know , but it could be really powerful if you use it Right . I could , I could tell so I mean even on yours .
Speaker 1Your example that you showed on screen it said tourist . Your example that you showed on screen it said tourist . You know that means you know don't send them like a repeat , like hey , you know , it's time for another haircut if they don't even live in the area .
Speaker 2Right , or you can choose to exclude those tags If you don't , if you don't want that lack of retention to affect their overall retention , because your staff can't help if that tourist or not , and they shouldn't be penalized if they can't bring that tourist back into chair right , right , yeah , yeah , and you don't want to keep bothering them if they live across the country .
Speaker 1Um , we're in a touristy town , we my old salon was too , so , so okay .
Speaker 2Yeah , so I like that . I like tags Same same tag user . So the next point that I wanted to touch on , which we touched on with the first topic , but the format of being able to measure something by the day of week or the hour and or the hour of day , so this format can really be used . Used whether you're trying to determine , like , when your highest or lowest service sales are , when your highest or lowest retail sales are , or , in our use case , that we're going to be talking about is utilization percentage , and you might want to find out what your high and low volume times are .
Speaker 2Maybe because you're trying to reconfigure your store's open hours , maybe you're trying to slim down , or maybe you're trying to gauge if you should expand your hours , like see what that demand is , yeah , or perhaps you are finding yourself almost too busy . You are finding yourself almost too busy If every staff is at 100% utilization . Maybe there's literally not enough room in your space for all these clients . Or maybe you're running out of shampoo bowls . Maybe you're running out of room on the coat rack , or maybe you're having someone process in an awkward chair over in the corner because you don't have anywhere else to put them Like I think we've all
Staff Utilization and Scheduling Considerations
Speaker 2seen it .
Speaker 1Yes , yes , I've been to all those shows right .
Speaker 2So , um , yeah , I'm going to uh share my screen again and we're going to uh just take a look at , um , a detailed line item report . That's going to give us that granularity with seeing something by day or by hour . Okay , so , our report data we're just going to look at staff names . We're not going to group the we'll group the rows by hour of day and we'll group our columns by date of the week , and I'm going to slim down some of the metrics that we're measuring , just so that it's easier to see the like each column side by side . Okay , so we're going to be measuring , let's say , utilization , net service sales , net retail product sales and perhaps net gift card sales . So we'll just use these for them . But what it's going to show us is oh , okay , so this imaginary environment that we're in , they're closed Sunday and Monday , which ?
Speaker 1is you ?
Speaker 2know typical salon hours . Yes , as we move into Wednesday we can see . Actually let's arrange this by hour of day , then staff meeting Gotcha .
Speaker 2So now we're looking at the hours of the day on the left-hand side , broken out into staff name , to see which staff was busy during that hour and then our columns , as we see we'll see each day of the week so we can see what their utilization percentage is for Wednesday or what their net service sales would be .
Speaker 2We can expand our date range to do last month , so maybe we have a little bit more data to play with here . But this is going to be good for if you want to like extend your store hours or maybe redistribute of , like the high utilization you're seeing with staff and redistribute it over to junior staff . I'm going to stop sharing my screen here for a second , but some examples of reasons why you might want to identify low appointment volume . Identifying slow times is going to help you determine , like , your hours of operation . But also if you have hourly staff and you're and you have a lot on staff that you're paying for , you know , servicing no clients , like you know , this can help reduce your labor costs , so you can consider reducing your hours . Alternatively , if , instead of reducing , you'd rather combat slow times , then instead of fawning , you can consider , like offering a promo code for discounted services or products .
Speaker 2Right Bundle something or and make those codes only applicable to particular days of the week or times of day you know , between these and these hours , to help promote business during that time .
Speaker 1Yeah , we used to do that . You know , like Tuesdays was a weird day , you know just slow . We were open seven days a week . Um , tuesdays was really weird , and so we would . We would have surprise things , not all the time , because we didn't want people to wait till we did that we would have surprise , but , um , we didn't . Uh , I don't remember doing it like this , we just did it on social media .
Speaker 2But yeah , well , and some examples of like high appointment volume considerations would be if you have too much utilization happening at one time and it's too busy , then perhaps you can rearrange your staff schedules with their consideration , of course but if you have all senior staff on a particular day and then all junior staff on a particular day , chances are your senior staff is going to have higher utilization and that can lead to congested spaces .
Speaker 1Yeah , no , you're right . But it could also tell you too if you need to hire somebody new , right ? So if maybe you're not at capacity , but yet you don't really know when you're supposed to hire your next person , this report would probably tell you that .
Speaker 2Exactly yes . So , like considering resource utilization , you can see if all of your chairs are actually always busy or if you're not utilizing all of your chairs .
Speaker 1I like that .
Speaker 2Okay , our next topic I wanted to address was , like time and attendance tracking yeah , and with um a lot of people .
Speaker 1Well , in california you have to clock in and out oh , yeah , yeah um , some states don't have to do that you . They do commission , but I think that's changing .
Speaker 2I think it is too Um I I'd say that the culture definitely used to be we don't schedule lunch breaks . You eat when you have a gap in your schedule or in between clients .
Speaker 1Yeah , that's how we used to operate , yeah , same .
Speaker 2Um yeah , like those in California with those uh stricter employee laws . You know , clock out by your fifth hour if you're working more than six hours in a day . I think they're allotted like two , 10 or 15 minute breaks for every four hours .
Speaker 1There's a lot of layers and complexity to that there is , and it's kind of ridiculous . I mean I'm sorry , but because we don't operate like that , you're not . Oh , I got to go clock out and I got bleached on somebody's head . You can't do that . You know Exactly , yeah .
Time Tracking and Automated Marketing
Speaker 2It is a unique industry for many reasons , but that's definitely one of them .
Speaker 1Yeah .
Speaker 2But when it comes to time and attendance tracking , a lot of I see a lot of customers a boulevard who integrate with external platforms and they don't have all the data that they need or that they want to have access to directly from the platform .
Speaker 2So a creative way of how I've seen my customers use our time clock feature is , yes , like clock in and out , but then you can also log a reason for that clock in or clock out and that reason . A basic list would be like on time , late , excused late , unexcused vacation , sick or sick , paid or sick , unpaid , et cetera . Especially if you're offering benefits to your staff and you allot them a particular amount of paid time off or a certain amount of sick days until they have to start requiring doctor's notes , et cetera . But also having data on their attendance and punctuality , it can also help you confidently promote them or give bonuses . Bonuses or if they come to you saying , hey , I want a raise or hey , like I want more xyz , you have the data that you can refer back to and have that play into your decision right , yeah , and if they're always late , you know if you're making everyone clock in and they're always late , yeah exactly that's a coaching moment .
Speaker 2Exactly A coaching moment here , sharing my screen . Now . This is our time clock summary report and right now we just have this segmented by location name and then the date . Alternatively , we could list our reporting data as staff name rows grouped by date . We'll keep that . But then we're going to add reason into one of the metrics that we measure . So when we run this we'll see each staff member , all of their time punches , how many hours they clocked and what that reason would be . So we can see how much vacation was used , how many times they were late or perhaps how many times they were on time , etc . But we can change our report data to reason and then staff name . So if we want to say like okay for our vacation hours , like how many employees and who used vacation during this time period , how many were sick , et cetera .
Speaker 1I have a question . So say you have somebody who's taking vacation and it's on their calendar and on their books , and you've marked them off for vacation , does it automatically come to this report or do you have to clock in and out ?
Speaker 2That is an enhancement that I would love to see in our software , For now , that is something that if someone is blocked out for excuse me , for vacation , you would also make a separate time card for them with the reason vacation and log how many hours their shift would have been . I see okay but still a great way to compile all of this data and absolutely absolutely keep track of what's being used . What's not being used . Yes , keep track of what's being used . What's not being used ?
Speaker 1Yes , or how many times someone was late .
Speaker 2Yes , absolutely , yeah , yeah . And then let's see , I'm looking back at my notes . The last thing that I wanted to cover is um marketing yes , fun and do we , and do we have time to still cover marketing ?
Speaker 1absolutely yeah okay , as long as you have time , yes , I did so .
Speaker 2Um , when it comes to marketing , I feel like that's such a hot topic for everyone these days .
Speaker 2I remember 10 years ago from now , or , yeah , 10 years ago from today , I feel like a lot of businesses were relying on , say , like , a Facebook page to reach their audience , and then after that , then Instagram , then the algorithms started changing so that I feel like it kind of took that power away from the business again , from being able to connect with that audience .
Speaker 2So a lot of business owners these days are turning to actual marketing platforms to get the job done . Yeah , so , when it comes to Boulevard's marketing suite , we have five campaigns that are automated , and then the ability to send one-time blasts that are automated , and then the ability to send one-time blasts , and for one-time blasts , you can filter and segment your audiences based on whether that's a certain provider that they've seen or a particular service they've received . You can segment based on tags , like we mentioned earlier , so you can get really granular with the audience that you want to send to . But we can kind of go into some like brief examples of each campaign , just , I guess , to get some thoughts going on , perhaps something that someone who's listening might want to have in their marketing suite or their marketing platform , whatever they choose to go with .
Speaker 2Yeah their marketing suite or their marketing platform , whatever they choose to go with . Yeah , so one of our campaigns is going to be Phil Slow Days , another being last minute opening . Those are the two that I mentioned at the beginning of this call that are based off of utilization percentage .
Speaker 1Now are those emails going out , or how does that work ? Is it a social media post ? Because you know , you see , on social media I see a lot of stylists post like in their stories hey , last minute appointment . Does it do that ? Or is it an email ?
Speaker 2This will be an email and , and hopefully later on this year , a text as well . Oh , great . But it won't be linked directly to social media .
Speaker 1Okay , okay .
Speaker 2But this will go out automatically , so that you don't have to . Yeah , that's great , you don't even have to think about it .
Speaker 1So and like you said before , it goes out and it finds the people who haven't been here for 30 days doesn't have an appointment for two weeks , or whatever you've said , I can't remember exactly , but so it doesn't . It doesn't make redundant emails , like nobody's going to get an email that says wait a minute , I got an appointment in three days . Why am I getting this email ?
Speaker 2Exactly .
Speaker 1OK .
Speaker 2And if a client happens to fall within the criteria of two campaigns or more within seven days , they're not going , they're only going to get one campaign every seven days , which is one of the criteria .
Speaker 1First , so we're not spamming . Yeah , that's great , Because then they mark everything junk .
Speaker 2Exactly , I mean , if they're getting too much yeah . Yeah , so with Phil's Flow Days , that's looking seven days in advance and sending out based on the threshold that you put how much availability you want a staff member to have before emails are sent out . But an example is for if you're trying to fill your slow day , you know seven days in advance , like no matter what , get all of those appointments filled . Set a low threshold so that no matter what availability you have , emails are being blasted to get those books filled .
Speaker 2Alternatively , if you'd rather have a less aggressive approach , set that threshold higher so that less emails are being sent that availability for those who call in , or for those who are on the wait list , or for , uh , for staff members who have uh , you know , one-on-one conversations on Instagram , you know , with their clients . Maybe you don't want to fill those books too quickly because your staff members are already working with clients who are trying to get .
Speaker 1Yeah , that's true .
Speaker 2Um , and then last minute opening , that's looking to two days in advance . The same logic .
Speaker 1Okay .
Speaker 2The two other campaigns that we have are going to be a reminder to book and rescue lost clients . Reminder to book is going to be 30 or more days since someone's last appointment that you want them to receive another email . But I don't even really like considering it reminder to book . I'd like to think of it as a retention builder , because with any marketing , what we're trying to do is encourage better client behavior , absolutely .
Speaker 1Yes , we used to do these like if we hadn't seen somebody in , like I don't even remember , but two months maybe that we would send out something and it would automatically do it , and you'd be surprised how many people go . Oh yeah , I totally meant to do that .
Speaker 2Exactly .
Speaker 1I mean we're all human , I do it too .
Speaker 2Yeah , do it too . So yeah , or even like , if someone should be coming in like every eight weeks maybe you don't set the criteria to be sent eight weeks out , maybe send it six or seven weeks out , so that you are planting that seed for them to then call and actually get in a , get a time that they want , um , in the amount of time that you recommend for them .
Speaker 1So these emails . Do they have like links on there for like online booking ? Yes , can you set it up like that ? So there is online booking , okay .
Speaker 2Yes , so our marketing suite comes complete with merge tags , so it'll auto-populate the client's name , the location address , the location number , their book , now information to link to online booking . But we've got a pretty comprehensive marketing suite . As far as customization goes , no matter what you want to link to or inserting pictures or columns or rows , like you can really , uh , start from scratch or use one of our pre-built templates , but you can have basically as much customization as you want to the design that's nice yeah and then um .
Speaker 2the last campaign that we have um is birthday message , which is self-explanatory oh , it'll go out for your birthday , but whether you want to send that , like on the day of week prior , month prior , et cetera , I always recommend sending that out sooner than later . That way they can come in and get services before their trip or before their party , before whatever it is that they have planned .
Speaker 1Yeah , it's amazing to me how many people don't take advantage of something like that because they don't have an intake form that asks for their birthday . Have you ran into that ? It surprises me that how many salons , at least in the area I'm in now , they don't have a hey , you know nothing . Not a paper , not an iPad , no intake , they just have name number , cell phone number . Yeah , that is crazy to me .
Speaker 2I agree , and I think that in the defense of those businesses , I bet that it's because they don't want to come off as intrusive to their clientele , so I'm sure that's the intention behind it . You know what's the regime look like at home .
Speaker 1What do they need help with All these things ? It actually made us look like we were more serious about doing hair . You know that there is a purpose for their visit . We're not going to waste their time . You know that there is a purpose for their visit . We're not going to waste their time and we actually have solutions for them , which lead into retail , which is a whole other whole other conversation . But it's all about the whole experience of an intake form . But how can you do that if , if you're looking at your client list later on and all you have is a name and a phone number that doesn't tell you anything about them ? You know it's sad , actually it's . It is sad .
Speaker 2Now that you write that down .
Speaker 1We need a , we need a coaching , a coaching podcast , just on intake forms .
Speaker 2Yeah well , it's kind of a consultation just on intake forms . Yeah Well , it's . It's kind of a consultation , but instead of for a service like it's their consultation for the experience they're going to have at your business .
Speaker 1Yeah , you wouldn't go to your doctor and not fill out some kind of history , right ?
Speaker 2Exactly .
Speaker 1You would think how are they going to take care of me ? I would think the same . I think the same as hair . You know myself . I mean for that experience it just makes it a lot more personable . So I know I'm getting off the subject of that . Does Boulevard have an intake form like a digital intake form , or is it or yeah ?
Speaker 2Yes , yes , that's one of the add-ons that you can add to your Boulevard subscription . So we actually just revamped our forms . So our forms up until about I think it was just a couple of weeks ago we had a great format that would send out whether it was for every appointment or only for new clients , whether it was for clients or whether it was for internal purposes , such as like recording your own notes for a visit .
Speaker 1Yeah , yeah .
Speaker 2But we just revamped our form so they're way easier to design and build .
Speaker 1Oh , so you can design your own .
Speaker 2Exactly .
Speaker 1Yes .
Speaker 2Multiple choice or a long answer . You can add a spot for clients to digitally sign their signature , and so it's comprehensive , it lives in the client profile and , yeah , I'd say that's going to be like your best bet as far as like collecting data on the questions you have .
Salon Consultation Forms and Client Privacy
Speaker 1I know this wasn't in our notes , but I'm just curious myself Do those go out like with the um confirmation emails ? Um , so they would click on a button and fill out their form if it wasn't already filled out .
Speaker 2Exactly , um . Yeah , they'll receive a confirmation email and it'll also be available for them to um to fill out in the reminder email a couple of days before they're up . For them to fill out in the reminder email a couple of days before their appointment and then also either at self-check-in on the iPad , if a business chooses to use self-check-in , or it'll also be sent one more time on the day of their appointment if they haven't filled it out from their confirmation or their reminder email .
Speaker 1So how do the stylists see it Like if they're talking ? I know I'm going rogue here . Sorry , jules , but how do the stylists look at the consultation form and go through a consult ? How do they do that ? Do they have it on an iPad ? Is it printed out like with a ? Or it be printed out like with a ticket ?
Speaker 2or yes , so it can be viewed like either on a computer , on an iPad or or , as you said , printed out . We are going to be revamping our Boulevard professional app and we are going to incorporate form viewing actually on a mobile device . That way , staff members can't I feel like we're using our phones so often , especially like stylists , with like , pulling up pictures from Instagram or what have you so we want to try to create as seamless of a mobile experience as possible . That way , no matter what the business setup is , whether they rely heavily on computers , ipads or mobile devices that client information is easily accessible , however you need it so , um , now you're going to have salon owners going .
Speaker 1Wait a minute , I don't want my stylist to have all my my um information on my client base . I mean , you know what I mean . Like what if that stylist is leaving ? They have all the information that . How do you lock that down ?
Speaker 2or do you ? Um ? Well , our forms are encrypted , are encrypted um to be HIP compliant , but we also have a lot of privilege settings on the back end . You can create as many privilege groups as you want , with as many different variations to privileges as you want . It's fully customizable as is the ability to view forms as well as modify them .
Speaker 1So you could set it on the backend as the owner of your business who can see what , and maybe turn it off if they , if they leave real fast or Exactly , exactly .
Speaker 2Super easy to do . But also , yeah , if you would rather have the privilege only for your users that are assigned into computers and perhaps a communal iPad , If you want those to have access to the forums and not give staff access to pull it up on the mobile app , then you would have that granularity to do so , oh , okay , well , and you know , if somebody leaves your salon , the clients are going to find them .
Speaker 1Hello , it's social media . You know , in this day and age . I remember a long time ago we'd lock that down tight right and oh yeah , um , and this day and age , now it doesn't I feel like there's no winning .
Speaker 2I feel like , no matter how hard you try , it's no , and it's yeah , it's okay .
Speaker 1Um , yeah , you just kill . Kill them with kindness . You make the experience so wonderful at your salon that they'll want to come back to your salon , doesn't matter who's servicing them . That's the win . That's what you want .
Speaker 2Hey .
Speaker 1I love this . I mean , I could talk reports all day long . I am a numbers nerd . I loved it when you shared your screen and we got to see all those numbers . I could look at that all day long . I felt like I was . I felt like you were just talking to me and I was just like , okay , let's do this . So I loved it . So , hopefully , to our listeners on our podcast , hopefully they get a chance to go to our YouTube channel and actually see the screenshots that you've shared , because I think that's important , you know , and if they like what they see , maybe they can reach out to you or you can . Which leads me to how do people find you ? If they wanted to talk to you a little bit more about this or maybe about reports , how do they find you ?
Speaker 2Sure , I'm on LinkedIn Jules Reese , J U L E S R E E S E . Feel free to reach out with me there .
Speaker 1But they can . I am going to put a link and , because I was sharing with Jules , I just read an article he just wrote for salon today , Um , and I'm going to put that link in our show notes too . It's very . It's about the recession .
Speaker 1Um right , um , and I really liked some of the information that you had in there . So if , um , they can find you there too , and I'm sure that that has links on connecting them to Boulevard and well , I loved , I love this conversation . I loved everything about it . I think it's super , super important that salon owners know their numbers , know where the reports are , know how to gain access and why it's so important . You know that's what we're here for , right , exactly . Help other salon owners out , so I appreciate it , thank you .
Speaker 2Yeah , thank you so much for having me on today , absolutely . I love talking , so I loved it . I loved it as well , yeah .
Speaker 1Yeah , you'll have to come back too , and I'm sure we could talk about other subjects as well .
Speaker 2So yeah , sure , we'd love to .
Speaker 1Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of all about hair . Here's what I'd love for you to do next Take a screenshot of this episode and share it on your Instagram stories . Be sure to tag me at Denise Kylitz so I can see that you're listening . Sharing on your stories helps more people discover this podcast , allowing them to learn how to build their salon business more easily and faster . If you're really enjoying the show , please head over to Apple Podcasts and leave All About Hair a review . Your support helps boost the podcast and it makes it easier for others to find . All right , let's wrap this up . I'm Denise Kylitz , and until next week , remember , when you know better , you do better .
