Tattoo artists continue to grow their specializations, and create unprecedented tattoo works every year again where customer care wasn’t a priority in the past, it becomes more and more distinguishing.
With the rise of many new talented artists and studios, we see a shift toward group practices and private studios.
Making your studio the go-to place for tattoo clients becomes harder to achieve, with all the competition rising.
Founder at Tattoogenda
What tricks are the studios missing? Spoiler alert – it’s about customer service.
SourceForge recently sat down with Sandy Verfaille, founder of tattoo studio software Tattoogenda, a tattoo artist and tattoo studio owner. Tattoogenda has been designed out of the specific need of an up-and-running artist-owned studio.
In this Q&A, Sandy shares her insights on how to run a tattoo studio as smoothly as possible, with the help of her Tattoogenda Software.
Let’s kick this off with a classic question.
What is your experience in the tattoo industry
I’ve been a tattoo artist for 12 years. I started my own studio 12 years ago all by myself and gradually grew it into a studio with 12 tattoo working places, 1 piercer, 1 marketeer, and 2 receptionists. Since 2 years we also have 2 more locations in different parts of the country. Those are run by their local franchise manager.
Why grow your studio that big?
It allows each artist to specialize in their own unique style. Eg. if you work together with +- 3 artists, you have to share all the all-around requests over you 3. If you have 10 artists, then it becomes more clear which request is for who.
By booking the right job with the right artists, our artists grow faster than normal. When guest artists visit our shop, they always bring in new techniques and ideas. Our resident artists can learn from those, so it’s a continuous circle.
It also makes sure we have enough artists working all the time, so each person can take time off as they please. Some artists work all year long, others work in periods. Some work full-time and more, others tattoo 4 days a week. Every artist contributes to our system, that’s how we can afford to pay a full-time receptionist.
What exactly does the receptionist do?
Our Tattoogenda receptionist is actually a ‘matchmaker’. The receptionist talks to the customers, listens to their stories, and takes the time. People feel a warm welcome when they come to our studio. Then the receptionist starts asking more questions to make the story more complete and starts feeling how open the customer is to the artist’s input.
They explain to the customer why an open mind can lead to better results or eg. help them collect the right pictures as a source for the tattoo.
Depending on the genre the customer wants, how open-minded to the artist they are, and the budget they are willing to spend, our receptionist shows the customer 1 to 3 options to choose from.
How does it go from there?
When the customer makes a choice, our reception makes the booking into our tattoo studio software: they put all data into Tattoogenda. Our reception sees the agendas of all artists working here. Our customers can not make the booking themselves, we always need the human reception in between, because it’s only them who can give an estimation on price and time, fit, etc.
After the appointments are in the system, the customer receives an automated email.
Is that what you mean by automated notifications?
Correct. A lot of the communication with clients goes automatically, yet personalized, through Tattoogenda. If you have the right subscription to TG, you can ask the customer for a deposit in that first automated mail.
When your customers click on the ‘confirm’ button in their appointment list mail, they are taken to a payment page where they can make a digital payment to your account. The appointments in your calendar will be automatically marked as a deposit paid.
Do people always pay their deposits like that?
More than half of the customers pay their deposit immediately after receiving the mail. If they don’t, TG will send out a reminder email eg. 5 days later, so the customer gets a second chance, they probably just forgot.
You can also choose to have TG send out a second reminder.
How strict are you about this in your own studio?
With TG you can choose to have the system automatically cancel an appointment if the deposit still hasn’t been paid after the second reminder.
In my own studio, I don’t use this last option. If people don’t pay after that second reminder, they stay in the system. We counted that less than 10% of the no-deposit-payers become no-shows. So we decided to leave it like that.
How do you handle no-shows?
Those are really annoying. All our artists are self-employed people. If the client doesn’t show up, you lose income. So if that client paid a deposit, then they lose it.
If they cancel on us more than 48h before their appointment, we let them keep their deposit value, but we never pay it back.
If they cancel within less than 48h, they lose the deposit too.
Another good thing with TG is that you can see this history on the client.
Imagine a customer is booking with you (in your reception or via mail), you start to select his name from your client list.. you will immediately see if this person canceled or no-showed on you before.
With that information, you can decide to charge a higher deposit this time or even ask for upfront full payment.
So the deposit collecting system makes sure you don’t have many of those, right?
That, AND our automated appointment reminders.
24h before the appointment, TG sends out an SMS to the client, to friendly remind them of their appointment. This helps reduce no-shows significantly.
Also, we make sure the deposit rules are communicated in the first mail, that they lose it when they cancel less than 48h before their appointment.
So this SMS 24h before the appointment can’t be triggered to cancel.
How do your artists like your tattoo studio software?
They like it because they can be better organized. They can read their bookings anytime, from their TG app. They see what we book for them, maybe request more info or discuss details. Eg. Our guest artists are always fully booked before they arrive in our country, and since they can see their bookings in their app, their designs are well prepared by arrival. This gives everybody a stress-free journey.
Another detail our artists like is that TG helps them grow their socials.
In the appointment list mail to the customers, there is a mention of the social media of the artist they are booked with.
So those customers go check out and follow their IG.
A trip to our shop means an increase in social skills, who wouldn’t like that.
Does a guest artist need a TG account for every studio they go to?
Nope. An artist that works in other studios, and does not have his own studio never has to pay for TG. An artist gets invited by the studio that uses a TG-free/paid subscription.
That same artist can be invited by a second studio also, and so on. That artist can log in to his artist account, and easily switch between studios.
It’s tailored to traveling people.
If an artist wants to have his own tattoo studio software account, then of course they need to register for a (free or paid) TG subscription.
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