A recent study by Square reveals beauty and personal care businesses, including barbershops, lose more than one day a week to admin.
Square, a technology company that makes commerce and financial services easy and accessible, released new research on 28 September 2023* revealing the biggest time and energy drains on Britain’s £36 billion** entrepreneurial beauty and personal care sector. Nearly half (43%)* of British barbers, spa and nail salons, personal trainers, tattoo parlours, and piercing studios are not using platforms or tools to automate bookings. Therefore, barbershops are potentially losing over a full day each week to admin tasks.
An always-on booking system works around-the-clock, even when businesses are closed. If beauty and personal care businesses rely only on manual pen and paper booking systems, they could miss out on revenue. Four in 10 (42%) Brits want to make an appointment after hours or at the weekend, Square data reveals***.
These findings come at a time where beauty and personal care businesses in the UK admit that filling down time between clients and appointments is the biggest challenge they have faced over the last year (39%)***. Optimising schedules via digital tools empower businesses to map out resources more efficiently to drive revenue.
“Manual booking systems are one of the biggest time drains for the UK’s beauty and personal care businesses,” says Samina Hussain-Letch, Head of Square UK. “Rescheduling appointments, taking bookings and sending booking reminders are demanding admin tasks for those without a booking tool.”
By automating bookings, British beauty and personal care businesses can gain a day’s time back each week, and say they would treat themselves to a better work-life balance, and also invest in their skills or business. By streamlining admin, they’d aim to finish work on time (48%), identify new services to offer (40%), look at training for their team (40%) and marketing for the business (34%)*.
Tap Into Tech to Unlock Efficiencies in the Future
While beauty and personal care businesses are turning to technology to transform their offerings and customer and staff experience, obstacles remain. The main barriers that stop some from implementing automated booking systems include traditional ways of working (42%), preference of working manually (35%) and worries about training staff and management on the new platform (27%)*.
Turning to new solutions can unlock efficiencies for staff, managers and clients now and in the future. Only 1 in 5 of beauty and personal care businesses are automating marketing campaigns (21%) or inventory management (19%)*. This is an opportunity for businesses to turn to tech to unlock efficiencies and set up a strong platform for growth.
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*Research commissioned by Square and carried out by Coleman Parkes in June 2023. Surveyed 400 UK beauty and personal care businesses.
**GlobalData reports that the UK’s health and beauty market size is £36 billion in 2021.
*** Research from Square – 2022 consumer survey, United Kingdom, commissioned by Square and carried out by Cint in September 2022. Survey of 1,000 consumers and 500 beauty and personal care businesses in the United Kingdom.