ChanteQ: an innovative mobile app for enhancing hair salon appointment management

Traditionally, customers schedule hair salon appointments through phone calls, messaging apps, or walk-ins. However, this process is often tedious and inefficient, which causes various challenges, such as difficulty in finding common time slots, unclear information about available hairstylists and their expertise, limited information about services provided, uncertainty about pricing, lack of guidance for first-time customers, miscommunication due to different languages, and difficulty in finding hijab-friendly salons. These challenges illustrate the importance of a comprehensive and customer-friendly digital solution. This study has developed ChanteQ, an innovative mobile application, to offer a comprehensive platform for managing hair salon appointments. The primary objectives of the study are to simplify the booking process, enhance customers’ experience, and increase service transparency between hair salons and customers. ChanteQ is unique, as it combines multiple features in one app, such as real-time scheduling, hairstylist profiles, and service lists with price ranges. It also provides dual language support to make it more accessible for different customer groups. Moreover, it includes a search filter that helps customers find hijab-friendly salons that respect cultural and religious preferences. ChanteQ also adopts a customer-centred design approach to ensure usability and convenience for both first-timers and returning customers. Its technical features include a real-time appointment system that aligns with hairstylists’ availability, automated booking reminders, an interactive interface for customer feedback, and a personalised hairstylist selection function. Internal tests have shown that the prototype operates well, with the booking process and data synchronisation working correctly. Overall, ChanteQ offers a practical mobile solution that connects hair salons with their customers. By simplifying the booking process and offering transparent service details, it boosts operational efficiency for hair salons while increasing customer satisfaction. This innovation shows that digital technology can transform traditional services into more efficient, accessible, and customer-centred systems.