Free up front desk time so spa staff can focus on what matters

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Free up front desk time

A guest should feel like the most important person in the world. Here’s how to free up front desk time to make that happen.

In a luxury spa and luxury hotel spa, Forbes Five-Star standards are always top of mind, and the way in which a guest is welcomed is a big part of those standards. From the moment a guest arrives at the spa, they should feel like the most important person in the world for whom the spa team has all the time in the world.

This means feeling taken care of. It means a warm greeting in a calm, tranquil environment from a front desk team member who knows their name and why they’ve come, creating an emotional connection from the outset. It means getting a tour of the spa and being escorted to the locker room, and being offered a beverage and a robe and slippers in their proper size. It means that the guest is engaged in conversation by a greeter who is relaxed, professional, and not rushed, harried, or distracted.

But this isn’t always easy to achieve, is it?

In order to create that tranquil environment with that relaxed and totally undistracted front desk team, a lot has to happen behind the scenes. This is where your software system comes in to free up time for your staff to focus as much as possible on the guest experience while the guests are in the spa. With cloud software, you can dramatically reduce the time your front desk staff spends taking and confirming phone appointments, filling out gift cards, recording guest information, tracking inventory, and more. Here’s how.

1. Save hours of phone time with online and mobile booking

There is a growing cohort of people who don’t want to book appointments over the phone and who expect to be able to book online or by mobile. These booking options are must-haves today, and an added benefit, beyond meeting growing demand, is that they mean less time on the phone for your team. When a guest arrives at the spa, they expect someone to pay attention to them, and they don’t want to stand around and wait while someone talks on the phone.

Krista Foulis, Book4Time’s Customer Success Director, was once the Spa Director at the Park Hyatt Toronto. Recalling the days before Book4Time and online booking, she says, “I had two or three people answering phones all day and it was non-stop. That’s hundreds of calls.”

And a call can take up to 20 minutes to complete. It usually takes closer to ten, however. So, if you have one team member taking calls in a busy spa, and just 15 of those calls per day move to an online booking system, that’s 2.5 hours of time saved – per day!

2. Reduce wait times with virtual intake forms

Sending virtual intake forms allows guests to fill out personal information on their own time, which reduces wait times when the guest arrives at the spa and allows your team to check this information beforehand or during downtime (or even from home, with a cloud-based system), saving further time when the guest is waiting.

If it takes five minutes for the guest to fill out the intake form and five minutes for the team member to enter the information into the system, and you can get 20 people per week to fill out the virtual form, that’s more than three hours in time saved per week.

3. Cut tedious tasks with online gift certificates

Gift certificates are an excellent way to attract new customers and, at certain times of year, selling them can take a lot of time. This time is measurably reduced with online gift certificate sales, as online certificates don’t need to be handwritten, boxed, bagged, or wrapped with a pretty bow.

Krista Foulis says that, before Book4Time and online gift certificates at Park Hyatt, “During the holidays we set up a whole desk and I would have to hire several extra staff members just to sell the certificates. Once we started doing it online that number was cut in half.”

4. Create an instant emotional connection with a note taking function

As we know, guests these days expect a personalized experience and will be impressed if they receive one and very unimpressed if they don’t. And it takes time to gather the information required to make this happen. Book4Time allows your staff to capture all pertinent information in one central system, including purchase history, robe size, preferences (like favourite music or a preferred beverage), and even past conversation topics. 

All of this is accessible at the click of a button and viewable from anywhere. So, staff can be prepared with that glass of champagne and small gift of a new product from a favorite company, and remember to ask about how the guest has settled into their new home, for example. All in the time it takes to log into the system and read the report without having to ask any questions or fumble through manually written notes.

When used optimally, software frees up hours of front-desk staff time per week, making it a breeze to be prepared and present, and create that emotional connection the guest is looking for.

Do you wish your team had more time? Learn more from Book4Time or book a demo now.

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