Digital Transformation of 'Best Friends Pet-Grooming Salon'

Best Friends Grooming Salon, located in the heart of Bellevue, WA has been in the pet grooming business for the last 30 years. The salon has a reputation for prompt and quality service and has acquired a strong customer base through the years of its existence, and experienced a continuous flow of customers.

However, since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the business has faced a drastic decline and potential challenges to sustainable growth. The business owners, Priyanka and Garvit were finding it difficult to navigate through the financial and operational challenges. Looking for innovative ways to improve and scale the business, they became aware of KarmaHelp and its services. They were delighted to learn that KarmaHelp’s mission was to help small businesses through Digital Transformation, free of cost, and decided to approach us for help.

After our initial meeting with the business owners, it became apparent that the business was not sufficiently equipped to adjust to the current Pandemic. Due to a lack of a strong online presence, they were unable to reach out to a wider market of clients. The initial principles that we identified to assist Best Friends were:

• Devise new ideas to serve clients in the pandemic, and going forward;

• Define clear brand guidelines;

• Redesign and revamp the existing website, and create social pages to create social awareness about their brand; and

• Prepare a social media marketing plan.

In furtherance of the principles, it was important to design and create new channels for customer acquisition. With our guidance, Best Friends revamped its way of serving customers to ensure the utmost safety for its employees and customers, as well as for their pets. In accordance with local regulatory guidelines, enhanced pick up and drop services were offered, with an option to reschedule/cancel appointments online, and incentives to new customers were offered.

We then prepared a brand guideline to define the way of communicating with former, current, and prospective clients within the target market, ensuring the business core value of providing excellent customer service is reflected.

The existing website lacked aesthetic and user-friendly capability. Instead, we designed a website that was not only aesthetically pleasing but also one where the customer could navigate easily and book appointments online. Brand new social media pages for the business and we created marketing strategies to promote the business. The brand new website can be found here:

(www.bestfriendsbellevue.com)

The business owners have initially had reservations about what the transformation would look like. After implementing the changes and creating an effective online presence, the owners have seen a drastic improvement in their business. They’ve already been able to acquire new clients through the website and social media, making the owners extremely satisfied with the help that KarmaHelp had to offer

From the owner, Garvit: "KarmaHelp has done a fabulous job in enabling technology and providing automation by updating our social media, updating our website, and basic integration across our scheduling and invoicing. This has helped us tremendously! Our sales have picked back up. We are actually getting a lot of grooming appointments through our website and through our social media posts that have been initiated and managed by KarmaHelp."

The future of small business lies within digital transformation. By acknowledging and embracing key digital trends, small businesses can reap the same rewards as a large enterprise. At KarmaHelp, our mission is to work closely with small businesses to understand several key trends, develop a roadmap to achieve higher revenue, increase customer base, optimize operations, and create value throughout the organization.