Sustainable Salons increases automation to reduce the hassle and cost of recycling

Every year, more than one million kilograms of foil are sent to landfill by Australian salons and that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the industry’s waste problems. One of the challenges is that salons have traditionally lacked an easy way to recycle materials that fall outside the scope of their local waste management programs. 

Paul Frasca and Ewelina Soroko have made it their mission to solve this challenge and co-founded Sustainable Salons in 2015. 

“We had this idea of creating a business around something that was missing in today’s world and we decided to start with our purpose which was centred on people, planet, and profit,” said Frasca. “We cared about giving back to the community, we cared about recycling, and we cared about helping people drive their businesses. That’s really how Sustainable Salons came about.”

Today, the social enterprise has a network of collectors, recyclers, manufacturers, and distributors that help to divert up to 95% of waste materials from hair salons away from landfill. It is also Australia’s number one comprehensive recycling service for the hair, beauty, pet, and dermal clinic industries and has expanded into New Zealand. 

Salesforce helps Sustainable Salons maximise its impact by increasing productivity through automation and driving efficient growth. It also helps Sustainable Salons make recycling hassle-free.

Sustainable Salons works with more than 1,500 salons across Australia and New Zealand, helping them recycle up to 95% of their salon bin. The organisation’s operations are complex with many moving parts and, in the past, activities like member onboarding and managing collections involved a lot of manual work. For Sustainable Salons to keep growing and evolving, it needed to transform its operations

“Once you start scaling you can't afford to keep doing things manually, especially when everyone else is building their digital platforms and it's a race to see who gets there first," said Frasca. 

Sustainable Salons replaced its CRM software with Salesforce before embarking on a larger transformation with three specific goals: create transparency of data across teams; standardise workflow with clear and efficient processes; and free up employees to stay focused on the organisation's core mission. 

Sustainable Salons has partnered with strategy and technology consulting firm Arcturious on this transformation which has delivered benefits across the organisation.

One of the first priorities for Sustainable Salons was working with Arcturious to optimise its use of Sales Cloud and increase sales productivity.

Now when leads come in they are automatically routed to the right salesperson based on location and there are streamlined processes to drive lead management and conversion. 

Quoting and billing have also been automated through a solution comprising Salesforce CPQ and Billing, Salesforce Flow, integration with Xero via MuleSoft, and Asperato from the AppExchange.

The solution has reduced member onboarding time by up to 40 minutes per member while cutting order fulfillment time by as much as three days. 

“In the past, we onboarded an average of 20 members per month, whereas now we can manage double or even triple that amount with much less stress,” said Yana Liang, Interim COO at Sustainable Salons. 

Pricing updates have been automated too, eliminating 282 days of effort required to manage an update across the organisation’s membership base. 

It is also much easier for members to add new services to their subscriptions. These include Chemloop which allows for the recycling of chemicals like hydrogen peroxide.

Sustainable Salons continues to use Salesforce to create efficiencies across the organisation.

While many members have regularly scheduled pickups, Sustainable Salons also offers an on-demand service where members can book a collection online. The service is supported by an online community that was built on Experience Cloud and turned into an app using Mobile Publisher.

Sustainable Salons chose to use Experience Cloud and Mobile Publisher in part because it wanted the benefits of having all its data on one trusted platform. Sustainable Salons also wanted to avoid the cost and complexity of building something from scratch.

“With Salesforce, we can leverage and enhance existing technology rather than building our own which makes our lives a lot easier and allows us to focus on our mission - ‘Making Sustainability Reality’,” said Frasca.

Sustainable Salons partnership with Arcturious has helped it get the most out of Salesforce and working together, they were able to build and deploy the app in just six weeks.

Using the app, members can scan a QR code on the bins or bags to be collected and make a booking in minutes. They can find answers to frequently asked questions on Sustainable Salons’ Salesforce Knowledge base. They can also view their balance of rewards points which can be redeemed for items such as biodegradable gloves.

“What’s important about the app is that it allows members to self-service which means we can support a growing number of members without adding additional resources,” said Liang.

All collections, whether scheduled or on-demand, are managed through Field Service which allows Sustainable Salons to manage collections with half of the resources needed previously.

Field Service also helps drivers to plan and optimise their route and makes it easier for them to report back on any issues.

As soon as collections are dropped off at depots, the process of repurposing them begins. Salesforce supports this process in a number of ways. For instance, the depots have their own portal on Experience Cloud where they can share information with Sustainable Salons on the materials that have been received. This transparency is important as the more visibility Sustainable Salons has over its inventory, the more equipped it is to turn this inventory into something of value.

“What we are demonstrating is real closed-loop recycling where we can pick materials like branded shampoo bottles out of the mix and turn them into products like sunglasses within eight weeks,” said Frasca. “This opens up a lot of opportunities because while companies want to clean up their waste, they also want to start seeing value from it.”

Sustainable Salons increased its membership base by 50% in the last year and has been recognised for the impact its made with multiple industry awards. The social enterprise has turned to Marketing Cloud to accelerate its growth.

With the benefits of marketing automation, Sustainable Salons can connect with current and future members at speed and scale. For instance, operational emails and SMS messages like collection reminders can be triggered by sales and service activities.

There’s also an email sent via Marketing Cloud as part of the onboarding process which includes an interactive form to collect member details. The details captured flow straight through to Salesforce and are used to populate Sustainable Salons’ Salon Locator. The Salon Locator is the number one salon directory in ANZ with more than 1,000 eco-conscious consumers pressing the ‘Book Now’ button to visit a Sustainable Salon each month.

Automated campaigns and journeys and the use of dynamic content help Sustainable Salons drive efficient and personalised engagement with new prospects. One of these is a nurture journey that’s triggered as soon as a contact registers interest at an event.

The streamlining of internal processes and integration of marketing campaigns has increased marketing productivity by 20%. There has also been a 40% uplift in engagement as a result of connecting Marketing Cloud with Experience Cloud and further streamlining communications around competition campaigns. 

William Choi, Marketing Lead at Sustainable Salons, said the marketing team had also benefited from working on the same platform as the rest of the organisation and sharing a single view of members. 

“It’s a lot simpler to have everyone working from the same platform and with the increases in automation and efficiency, we can focus more on our strategy and growth. Most importantly, we can sign up new members and divert more waste away from landfill,” said Choi.