Is your Online Appointment Service stealing your clients?

Yes, I said STEALING YOUR CLIENTS!

Salon and Spa appointment booking is rapidly moving online for individual booth renters, single location and multi-location Salon and Spa businesses. Since my business is an Online Appointment Booking and Emarketing tool for Salons and Spas, I am all for this; but not all services are created equally and licensed professionals must BEWARE.

Online Services vary not only in features and functions, but also in Terms & Conditions of Use. Maybe you've heard of these "Terms"- it is the page on most websites that nobody reads and quickly clicks to "Accept". If you sign up for online services that will share ownership of your client list, you may be personally destroying your own business.
Online appointment booking services can be VERY valuable to build your business, but NOT when the online service you select will legally consider YOUR clients THEIR clients.

This dangerous new trend in "Terms of Service" that we are seeing in some our competitors is a new breed of online tools that is promising licensed professionals free search listings and new client promotions in addition to online appointment booking services.

VirtualSalons & VirtualSpas does NOT have a Salon/Spa Search available to consumers on purpose. If every time your clients go online to book an appointment they see all of your LOCAL competition's service menus and current promotions, there will be a percentage of your clients who will choose to schedule services with another Salon/Spa professional even though they originally logged on to schedule an appointment with you!

Every business wants and needs new clients, but you should not be gambling the loyalty of all of your existing clients in pursuit of new clients or online appointment booking tools.

If the online service you integrate into your business legally considers YOUR clients THEIR clients, MAKE NO MISTAKE, they will be marketing competing products and services to your clients and this will undermine your business success.

Bottom Line: No matter what cool features it looks like an online system has to help you find new clients, be sure you KNOW WHO OWNS THE CLIENT CONTACT INFORMATION and KNOW if your clients will have the potential to be contacted by your online service provider.