Tim Howard, Vish Chief Innovation Officer, recently sat down with Vish expert users, Elizabeth and Gianna from Annastasia Salon and Luscious & Co. to chat about all things system learning and hidden hacks in Vish. Watch the webinar to learn more about their Vish experience and top tips below!
Elizabeth M.E, stylist and trainer at Annastasia Salon in Portland, Oregon has been in the salon industry for eight years. On a day-to-day basis, she works with an assistant who helps her deliver amazing color results. She emphasizes that using Vish makes communicating with her associates simple – providing a smoother process behind the chair.
Gianna DeCaro has been in the salon industry for eight years, seven of which she’s been working at Luscious & Co. in Shelton, Connecticut. Gianna’s main focus is on color, cutting, bridal, and extensions. She notes that Vish is her ‘bread and butter’ for her usuals that come in for a touch-up every 3-4 weeks.
So, what does onboarding with Vish look like? When onboarding, your customer success representative will walk you through the basic functions such as weighing colors, reweighing the bowl, and saving client formulas. Once the learning curve is achieved, you’ll be able to access the full breadth of features. This is typically accomplished within the first couple of months.
→ Stay tuned for a new version of the Vish app coming out early next year!
Gianna recounts how using a new system has its challenges, “especially when 15 stylists are fighting over 3 scales,” she adds. Initially, forgetting to reweigh was the most common culprit in a slow adoption, but buy-in came soon after everyone realized how much easier proper implementation would make the day-to-day in the long run.
Gianna suggests taking an intentional 10 minutes at the beginning or end of your day to play around with the software. She found that exploring the app without the time constraints of the in-appointment urgency to get your color mixed and applied really helped.
Elizabeth found the system to be a bit of a hurdle, as previously much of her day she operated on muscle memory and her own color methods that had long been in place. After a couple of months, things clicked and she had a new routine for weighing, mixing, reweighing, and so on. Similar to Gianna’s suggestion, Elizabeth found that stylists who had those extra couple of minutes to spare to familiarize themselves with the color bar found it much easier to implement.
It was when their clients returned for the first time that the magic really happened.
The save formula feature allows you to express your creativity at the color bar, then save the exact formula you used under the client’s history for next time. It alleviates the tedious task of searching through the POS, a notebook or trying to recall a formula from memory. It’s all there in the Vish app.
But that exact formula wouldn’t be complete with the reweigh. Once you’ve mixed your color, it’s time to reweigh (whether there’s color left in the bowl or not). This refines the formula, ensuring not only the exact colors, toners, developers, etc. used are saved – but the exact amount needed to achieve the same desired outcome is calculated with zero waste for the next appointment.
Crafting the perfect color cocktail without the math has never been easier with the mix more and mix from history features.
Gianna loves that she can mix 25%, 50% more, or even just 20 grams more – all proportionate to the previous math. “It’s absolutely fantastic to not have to do the math,” she recounts. For Elizabeth, the mix more feature is a hit with her and her associates. When she’s getting low on color, she can request that they mix 50% more, easily accomplished all within a few quick taps in the app. “It streamlines the mixing process and saves everyone time,” says Elizabeth.
When it comes to mixing from history, Gianna uses it religiously. It’s the perfect feature for those clients who have been with her since she started. No arbitrary guessing on the amount of color used last time based on the amount of regrowth, all of those numbers are stored in the client’s profile.
For Elizabeth, this feature provides a seamless stream of communication between her and her associates when they work with her clients. They’re able to log into Vish and check past client history and formulas without having to reach out to Elizabeth, saving time and increasing efficiency on busy salon days.
Curious how the mix more feature works in real-time? Tim demonstrates in the Vish app just how easy it is to mix from history, calculating and mixing 50% more of the original formula selected.
Accidentally poured too much of one product? The auto-suggest feature tells you how much additional product of the other contents in the bowl is needed to rebalance it to the right consistency and proportion. No scooping out necessary.
Have a specific note or message you want to leave on the client’s profile? That’s all made easy with the help of the notes feature. Simply click the ‘+’ button next to the Bluetooth icon then type or dictate your note: “make sure to add 30 volumed instead of 40.” Once complete, the note will show who made it and when it was made. Add as many notes as often as you’d like!
The extra product charge can vary depending on the salon and its pricing structure. How does it work for Elizabeth’s salon? Once the service is complete, you can find any additional product charges added to the final ticket. She loves the silent communication between the receptionists and the Vish Front Desk, ensuring there are no surprises at checkout and giving her the freedom to mix what is needed. She recalls how the old paper system typically resulted in information getting missed yielding inaccurate charges.
The next time they came in she’d have to let them know that they were undercharged. With Vish, nothing gets missed, helping to build long-term relationships and allowing customers to budget.
For Gianna’s salon, they would always charge the client an extra bowl fee with each bowl consisting of 100g of mixed product. She loves that the extra product charge that’s been implemented since using Vish promotes a transparent business model and significantly reduces waste.
At Gianna’s salon, each stylist gets a monthly data report detailing their waster per service, and product used per service. “The average salon wastes 27% of the overall product – Vish can get salons down to 5%,” says Tim. An impressive yet entirely achievable feat.
Luscious and Co. have to track inventory from two floors, so the Vish inventory report alleviates the tedious and time-consuming task of going from the first floor to the second floor to count tabs and color boxes.
Leveraging the inventory report is a bit different for the team at Annastasia Salon, recounts Elizabeth. “It’s been great with the inventory shortages. If we know we’re low on color, you only use what you need so other stylists are able to add product needed that would’ve otherwise been wasted.”
The sales module feature found on the Vish Dashboard which was recently launched and allows you to look at the customer’s bill after the fact to see historically what your customers have been charged. Learn more about it here.
Elizabeth finds searching for an exact color to be very efficient. With so many color lines it saves time scrolling. She adds that the ratio feature has got to be her favorite, doing the math for her time after time.
The mix more feature is the winner for Gianna, saving time and the headache of mental math. She reiterates just how important she thinks spending time during non-busy hours to play around in the app and with the scale is – take the time to learn where everything is and find the most efficient way that Vish works for you.
Tim’s biggest tip is to never fake a reweigh, noting that it’s better not to reweigh than to fake a reweigh. He suggests utilizing the help button in the Vish Dashboard and working through the how-tos available to help with the learning curve. Ultimately, feeling comfortable and confident using the app is the best way to see sustainable success.
Check out the Help Center for a full breakdown of how to use all of Vish’s intelligent features.
Find key insights and takeaways with the timestamps below!
Want to catch all the latest content from Vish? Click here to register for upcoming webinars and events!
