Touchless Services: Debating the Merits

By Sam MARGULIES, Fondateur, Président d’Atmosphere Spa Design - Spa be Beaute, France

Touchless Services have made a strong entry into spas! Is this really a good idea? How to succeed in this technological and philosophical shift, without losing your identity or your business?

Touchless care is the big current trend so as not to occupy staff for an hour. The question is not whether it is a good idea or not, but whether it is something that will allow you to make your business more profitable, offer new treatments or, on the contrary, will thist risk distorting the DNA of your spa?

Spa Therapists

The definition of a traditional spa is an active and permanent presence of a spa member for one hour with a client. During a touchless treatment, the treatment will not last an hour but rather half an hour with a person present to install the client and also at the end of the session, i.e. three minutes at the beginning and three minutes at the end.

For example: you have two spa practitioners: Anne and Dora, who each had two clients in cabins. They carry out these manual treatments with an average gross margin of 27%.

The manual and the touchless: Anne begins at 10 a.m. by putting a client in a touchless treatment. Then, she immediately enters the cabin with customer No. 1 for an hour. Dora starts her day at 10:30 a.m., we shift it by half an hour. She begins by letting out the first touchless customer that Anne had brought into the cabin. Then she immediately brings customer No. 2 into the touchless cabin. She goes to the cabin for a manual treatment with her client for 1 hour. Anne finished with her client and took client #2 out for hands-free treatment, and brought client #3 in. She continues by taking her second client for a traditional one-hour cabin treatment. Halfway through her service, Dora will have finished with her client in manual treatment and will be able to bring client No. 4 into touchless treatment. After half an hour from this time, Anne will have finished with her client in traditional care and will take client No. 4 out of the cabin hands-free.

If we compare:

– traditional treatment only: 2 hours, 4 clients. With a gross margin of 27%, – hands-free: 2h30, 8 customers, 4 traditional and 4 touchless.

You have therefore considerably increased the profitability of your staff efficiency by mixing touchless care and traditional care.

The Profitability

To simplify the calculations, let's assume that traditional care sells for one euro per minute and touchless care for 1.5 euros per minute. This is possible because customers understand that even if the duration is shorter, the price is higher because a technology has to be paid for. For traditional care, let's say you have 20 euros of staff. At one euro per minute, your income is 60 euros per hour and therefore a gross margin of 40 euros.

By mixing traditional and hands-free: you need two members of the team who will work staggered, it will cost you 40 euros per hour. Except that you will have traditional treatments for 60 euros and two touchless treatments for 45 euros, for a total of 150 euros and a gross income of 110 euros for the same hour! I would rather earn 110 euros than 40 in an hour! The difference could represent an additional turnover of more than ¤215,000 over one year!

Investment

By calculating the reimbursement margin only on the income generated by touchless treatments, here is the result: you need 2 hours 15 minutes of handsfree treatments, or 4.5 treatments per month to pay the monthly reimbursement. I don't sell equipment, I don't work for a skincare brand, that's not my job. My interest, as a consultant, is to show you how we can generate income with 4.5 treatments per month for an investment of 10,000 euros. Presented like that, it's not heavy except that you have to seek out customers and present them with something that will not distort the DNA, the identity of your spa.

Communication About Your Services

It is not because you will have additional equipment on your treatment card that you will automatically have clients. They must be highlighted and brought to life.

Internal communication: Absolutely all members of your team must be trained and able to answer all questions: basic principle of toucheless treatment, beneficial effects and handling of each piece of equipment. This means that each member of the team must be able to take a customer into the cabin, install them and launch the machine. Also train your team in promoting each treatment, so that everyone is able, in the cabin, in the store, or at reception, to talk about the treatment and its benefits.

Use all communication media, everywhere! All companies that sell equipment give you marketing materials: posters, flyers. Except that in 80% of cases, all this material is placed in the storeroom. You have to use all of this, put the posters in strategic places, or your manicure and pedicure area.

To take it a step further, you can make a video of a treatment with a voice explaining what it is and what it does. And you can broadcast your film in a loop on screens in different places in your spa.

External communication: Highlight your equipment for your existing customers but also for all your potential customers on your website, your social networks, and also send emails. It is imperative to promote your equipment to make it profitable.

Being present in the local media does not necessarily mean doing traditional advertising, it means getting people talking about you. How many articles have you had in the local press? Do you participate in local associations as your spa? It doesn't take a lot of time, it doesn't cost anything, but you have to be interpersonal and present where you work.

Integration into the Spa Care Program

It's good to have touchless treatments and sell them individually, but study your treatment menu to know how to offer your clients a ritual that will incorporate both manual and touchless treatments. This is very