Oma Hair Salon offers a safer customer experience by reducing crowds and lines with Qmatic

The salon has been operating inside the shopping center for over five years and during that period it has expanded its operations with the opening of a second salon. The salon provides high-quality and professional hairdressing services and products and employs over 30 people. The salon is part of S-group, a customer-owned Finnish network of companies in the retail and service sectors, with more than 1,800 outlets in Finland. 

Creating a safe environment for customers and staff

Amid the covid-19 pandemic, the shopping center Prisma and its stores implemented a range of measures to promote a safe environment for customers and staff. Some of them included mandatory face masks for employees, strict hygiene protocols, floor stickers to allow more efficient management of queue lines and social distancing of customers, and protective plexiglasses at its checkouts. Although measures have been introduced, the hair salon still faced challenges due to its high foot traffic.

Managing walk-in customers

As the largest salon in the area with more than 20 chairs available for customers, the salon mainly handles walk-ins (85% of all customers), which caused a lot of foot traffic during peak hours. This made it difficult for the salon to manage all walk-in customers without a proper queue management solution. 

Busy reception area

The reception area inside the hair salon became quickly busy during peak hours as only a few customers were permitted to wait inside the premises to adhere to social distancing guidelines. As a result, the salon was losing many customers.

Lack of statistics 

Another issue was that the salon wasn't able to collect any data and insights into their operations, making it difficult for the salon to accurately staff the workday, which resulted in long wait times and queues and decreased customer satisfaction.

One platform, unlimited possibilities 

To reduce wait time in the salon and create a safer environment for customers and their teams, Oma Hair Salon reached out to Loomis Suomi Oy, Qmatic’s partner in Finland that introduced Qmatic Orchestra, a customer journey management platform that makes it possible for users to manage every step of the customer journey, from pre-arrival to post-service.

With the new platform, the salon was now able to combine Qmatic’s virtual queuing solutions, self-service kiosks, and digital signage to offer customers different ways to get in line depending on their needs:

• Website: On the salon’s website, customers can choose to get in line before arrival and obtain a Qmatic Mobile Ticket on their smartphone 
• Self-service kiosk: customers enter the salon reception and issue a ticket and receive live queuing information from the digital signage.
• Smartphone: Customer scans a QR code upon arrival and joins a virtual queue using Qmatic Mobile Ticket and seamlessly follows their place in line on their smartphone.
  

Wait anywhere, at your convenience 

The different options enable customers to queue anywhere at their convenience and in real-time follow their place in line on their smartphone or through the shopping center’s media displays. And since the customers are no longer bound to wait at a particular location, they can roam freely around the shopping center while waiting for their turn.

“We are developing our service in many ways and this is one key part. Walk-in customers are an important part of our business alongside pre-booking. Feel free to visit us and try our new service,” said Miia Partala, Sales Manager at Oma Hair Salon.

How to get in line using Mobile Ticket?

1. Scan the QR code outside the premises or visit the website
2. Wait at a safe distance wherever you want
3. Follow the progress in real-time on your smartphone
4. Get notified when it's your turn to be served

Enhanced staff allocation, increased sales, and positive customer feedback

With the implementation of Qmatic Orchestra, the salon now has the means to offer customers and staff a safer environment by enabling different options to get service, while making it easier for people to keep their distance from others to avoid crowding.

Today, the salon generates reports using the data collected from Qmatic Orchestra. This provides management with an enhanced overview of its operations, enabling better allocation of its resources from both customer management and work management perspectives. The implementation has also resulted in increased sales during peak hours, decreased wait times, and positive feedback from customers about the queueing process where they point out the ease, speed, live queuing information, and the ability to wait anywhere as key factors.