A bespoke barber in central London approached us with a particularly fun project idea. They wanted to take their clients experience to the next level, to create something more personal and something that would truly stand out.
Her idea was simple. She wanted to give clients a more personal experience within their business. To do this, she wanted to create client profiles that would store information such as the client’s name, contact number and email. But she wanted to go further, holding pictures of the clients last cut, so that a barber may replicate this on their next appointment.
At Bevl, we always love a new challenge; we wanted to create an experience that would capture the information required, while also engaging the user during the satisfaction of these requirements.
During the first consultation, it was clear there was a main priority here. Customer experience. This was at the core of their business, and they wanted to take it to a more personal level, offering photos of the client’s last hair cut. So, we started by thinking about the client’s experience and how they would get the most out of the FileMaker system.
• Capture necessary client information while undergoing the appointment.
• Take pictures of the client at the end of the booking, so that the photos can be used at a later date to replicate the cut.
• The system needed to be accessible via iPads. iPads would be used during the client’s appointment to gather the information.
• The system also needed to be accessible via Desktop, to manage the administration side of things.
The key to their project was engaging clients and getting them to fill out their information. Their idea was that if they create a genuinely personal experience for their customers, then they have a better chance of securing more regular and repeating business.
So, we took the personal experience to be the heart of the system, focussing of the customers, and how they would be engaged with this iPad application.
Before we got into the crooks of developing our client a FileMaker system, we took a step back, and took some time to evaluate other applications, and how those apps engage with their customers. It became clear; visual engagement was the answer. If you have visually engaging content on screen, it is a lot easier to gain the user’s interest.
So we started our relationship with the client by producing some product mock-ups in the Sketch platform, and we created some custom graphics for the company, engaging the user through this sign up process.
Once our client was happy with the look and feel of the application, we took to the FileMaker development itself, sending progress updates of the system while we went.
After six weeks, our client had a truly unique system, tailored to their business, that would help them create a more personal experience for their customers; a system complete with their own graphics and images.
