“How can we help local businesses become more profitable and efficient with easy-to-use digital solutions?” 

This was the question Aimy, an Amsterdam-based online booking platform for beauty salons and hairdressers, sought to answer. With a hand from Bird, they delivered in a huge way.

Aimy provides its customers with a suite of appointment management and communication tools. This includes a 24/7 online booking platform, an automated notification system to remind people about their appointments, and Google Ads integrations for savvy marketers. 

Hundreds of thousands of bookings are made through Aimy each month. The platform empowers salons to do what they do best while Aimy generates leads, minimizes no-shows, and automates messaging and workflows. 

According to co-founder Derk Jan Statema, Aimy’s mission for their customer experience (CX) is simple. “We help salons run more smoothly with easy-to-use digital tools,” he said. “Salon employees don’t want to be on the phone all the time. We want to help them focus on the customer.”

With Bird, Aimy now provides its customers with various communication options, like live chat and WhatsApp. Because of that, salons that use Aimy better tailor their client experiences (and free up hair stylists’ time) like never before, thanks to automated communications on all the right channels. 

The problem: Decentralized communication between salons and their clients

Before using Bird, Aimy’s customers relied solely on the appointment scheduling interaction and the final point of sale (POS) to be their primary CX touchpoints. As a result, the focus was only on a sole contact point, which led to messy appointment management, no-shows for bookings, and barriers to winning repeat business.

The lack of a unified booking and communication process negatively impacted the salons’ revenue and business growth potential. Prospects and regular customers had to call the salon directly or complete their booking through a generic online provider. The lack of personalization left a lot to be desired.

Statema acknowledges that businesses in this sector often find it “difficult to keep up with digital trends.” However, when Aimy’s customers began harnessing the power of automated, personalized interactions with their clientele, it opened up a world of possibilities.

The solution: Streamlined, multichannel communication with Bird

The WhatsApp integration Aimy achieved with Bird did more than increase convenience for salon owners and managers. Combined with chatbot implementations, it put them in a position to drastically improve their lead generation, in-channel bookings, and hair product upsells.

“At the onset of the pandemic, customers weren't able to visit the salons,” Statema added. “We started experimenting with Bird’s chatbot integration in WhatsApp to give salons the tools to communicate with their customers beyond simple appointment scheduling. We wanted to help our customers give their customers exceptional product advice, care tips, and so on.”

As a result, salons using Aimy built stronger relationships with their clients and saved time and money while keeping their operations running smoothly.

“Through Bird, we were able to get rid of all the distractions and points of friction throughout our customer experience,” Statema said. “That level of personalization means better retention for them and new pathways of growth for us. It’s a win-win for everyone involved.”

The details: Why Bird was a perfect fit for Aimy

When Aimy began considering providers for their messaging needs, they knew they wanted key features like:

• Multichannel communication options, especially WhatsApp

• Ease of management for a large number of client accounts

• A no-code implementation that addressed limited developer resources

After loving their Bird demo, it was clear that our offering stood out, especially on the customer support and team experience front. Statema described Bird’s supportive consultation during this stage as a “deal maker.”

But the benefits extended beyond a product-specific wishlist. Aimy was also impressed with Bird’s:

• Scalability and reliability to help their start-up flourish in the present and future

• Reputation in the EU as a well-known, respected solution provider

• Solution flexibility that provides a turnkey product to Aimy’s clients rather than simply being a message sender

“We wanted to make sure we chose a vendor that can scale since we're still growing fairly fast,” Statema said. “So we needed to make sure our partner wasn't a small player, but one of the bigger ones, enabling us to grow easily by adding different channels.”

Here’s how Aimy uses Bird to provide its customer with the best platform experience:

1. Appointment scheduling and confirmations 

At the core of Aimy’s offering is seamless appointment scheduling and management that adds value for its customers and end users. That translates to automating processes and conversations in WhatsApp and other messaging platforms to minimize lost revenue and deliver a top-tier CX.

Not only can customers book their appointments directly on the platform, but they also receive reminders and updates in one unified conversation. “We noticed that, by using WhatsApp over email for appointment reminders, the no-show rate at a salon is much lower,” Statema added. “Reminder emails are opened only 30% of the time, while WhatsApp messages have a 95% read rate.”

2. Digital appointment waitlists

When salon time slots are scarce at peak times, digital waitlists ensure potential bookers don’t waste their time and avoid disappointment. With their MessageBird integration, Aimy customers provide salon owners with an easy way to manage high demand.

“With Bird’s Flow Builder, it’s easy to give salon customers time slot options that work for them,” Statema said. “We noticed that once end users had a chat open with a salon, they started using it to make bookings, especially after implementing an appointment booking in an automatic reply.”

3. Cancellations and in-channel payment links for no-shows

With Bird, Aimy wants to help salon owners and managers recoup lost revenue from customers who cancel outside of the typical 24-hours-before window. An automated workflow helps salons maximize their available time slots without chasing bookers with phone calls.

“We will start using Bird’s WhatsApp solution for payment-related issues,” Statema said. “Now our customers are able to provide a high-touch mobile experience that does away with inconvenient barriers and additional red tape.”

4. Personalized messaging using Flow Builder

The customized CX inside the end user’s messaging platform of choice extends far beyond appointment bookings and reminders. Statema and the Aimy team wanted to help salons leverage channels like WhatsApp to guide and delight their customers through every step of their journey.

“With Flow Builder, we built a detailed, multi-step experience our users can pass on to their clientele,” he added. “You get that initial reminder, then another one hour before. Fifteen minutes before your appointment starts, you get a WhatsApp message with a button to open the digital lock for the front door.”

A welcome message also tells salon customers to grab a cup of coffee and relax—an employee will be with them shortly. “It's a really interesting use case where we say okay, that's where we see the power of messaging,” Statema said. “It really adds value for our customers.”

Moving forward with Bird 

Choosing Bird’s no-code solution lets Aimy provide a stellar solution for salons in the Netherlands and elsewhere in the EU today while also charting their course for future growth.

“For a fast-scaling company, Bird’s Flow Builder gives our developers more time back,” Statema admits. “Now our team has the tools and resources they need to focus on bigger product improvements down the road.”

After successfully integrating a multifaceted WhatsApp messaging solution into their services, Aimy’s aiming even higher by extending that functionality to other platforms.

“Right now, we're mainly focusing on WhatsApp, which is a huge success factor for us,” Statema explained. “But we can already foresee using Instagram DM or Facebook Messenger, which will allow us to manage many accounts within a simple dashboard.” 

All the reporting tools and the simple API documentation are key success vectors for the Aimy team. With Bird powering their personalized messaging offering, Statema and the rest of the Aimy team are excited about what the future holds for their organization.

About Aimy

Aimy is a digital assistent for hairdressers and beauty salons. Aimy is full suite SaaS solution that helps hairdressers and beaut ysalons save time and money in order to spend more time on their customers and their creativity, from agenda management, POS, payment solutions, and administration to 24/7 online booking support, and the latest communication tools to connect them with their customers. Aimy takes care of all the salon's distractions and helps them to focus on what is most important: their customers. 

Aimy was born in 2020 and is the fastest growing salon software company in the Netherlands and is currently quickly expanding to other countries including Belgium, France, and the UK.

About Bird

Bird’s mission is to create a world where communicating with a business is as easy as talking with a friend. We power conversations between businesses and their customers — across any channel, with the right context, on every corner of the planet. If you’ve ever ordered takeaway, returned a package, contacted customer service or requested a login code, it’s almost guaranteed that Bird’s technology has powered your interactions.

Our platform, applications and APIs help businesses streamline conversations through their customers’ preferred channels — like WhatsApp, Email, SMS, Voice, WeChat, Messenger and Instagram — and build powerful and engaging experiences. Bird's out-of-the-box functionality and omnichannel expertise tip the scales for knowledge workers, giving them the tools to build great marketing campaigns, customer service experiences and automated business processes.

Headquartered in Amsterdam, Bird processes over 5 trillion+ messages, calls, and emails for over 29k+ customers such as Google, Facebook and Uber. Founded in 2011, we have grown to a powerhouse team of 800+ employees representing more than 55 nationalities, and we’re proud to be a “Remote Friendly” company.