What is Going Away in the Massage & Bodywork Industry Over the NEXT 5 - 10 years?
This is a question I get sometimes from clinic owners and as well as older therapists who are slowly leaving the industry but also some customers. What is going away in the industry over the next 5 to 10 years?
Desk Staff / Front Desk - as office automation technology continues you're going to see you significantly more use of technology when it comes to the staff that greet you and says goodbye to you and help you pay for your massage and bodywork sessions. One of the major sticking point in massage and bodywork industry has always been personalized customer service but the industry does not currently function on margins that allow for career staff people. Direct interface technology is allowing customers to work using a phone app or a kiosk when they enter which will serve all of the major functions that staff people presently do. To go along with this trend that you will find that many of the customer service issues or else will be eliminated as much of the complexities of computers are creating there also gain simplicity and less complexity as well which means if you were human errors and many fewer computer systems are necessary to do the same work.
Points Based Membership Programs - membership programs are very common way of gaining steady income for many massage-based businesses. These systems are often built on dollar amount equaling points or units of time as a matter of conversion in reality this over complicates many of the simple transactions. Many consumers would rather not have a membership points just a straight percentage off or bonus times or other benefits that are much easier transactions to complete and keep track of.
Accepting Checks and HSA (as holding cards) - paper checks are becoming increasingly obsolete Anacostia banks more money process than they are worth in many cases unless they are for specific types of transactions. Health Savings Account or HSA’s are becoming increasingly restrictive and as a result much more of a hassle because they act as debit cards instead of credit cards which makes them highly vulnerable to fraud and misuse. As a result of these realities mini massage and bodywork locations no matter if they are affiliated with insurance or not or longer take these forms of payment.
Points or Location based 1st or 3rd party gift cards or vouchers - gift cards are a wonderful way to generate revenue for a business but they can also hold many restrictions for customers who wish to use them and this is becoming an increasing problem. Many franchises will have nationwide access gift cards please allow you to give them to anyone to use in any location around the United States. However in order to incentivize massage and bodywork industry to do this as well they have also come out with location specific or points specific gift cards which means I don't have a significant amount of flexibility in other words there's no longer a balance but points this can cause many problems every time and time and cause a great deal of resentment towards a brand. For those reasons I think gift cards are going to disappear and have these current is yours or points involved because they are simply too restrictive and the general public is not OK with that any longer.
If you have any questions like always please go to my website https://www.tonyschwartzbodywork.com/ and contact me with any additional questions you might have.