How Automation Saves 7 Hours a Week

Note: the example below is hypothetical, not real client numbers. It's built around a typical one-person service business so you can see concretely where the hours come from when four repeating tasks get automated.

Picture a hair salon owner. About 7 hours a week go into four repeating tasks: appointment reminder calls and texts, manually entering bookings into a calendar, sending invoices and following up on them, and answering the same questions, prices, hours, cancellation policy, on the phone and on social media. None of these is huge on its own, but together they eat a full working day.

Where do those 7 hours actually go?

Broken down, the week looks like this: about 2 hours go to appointment reminders sent by hand, texted or called one by one. About 1.5 hours go to moving bookings from one system to another, say from a social channel into a calendar. Invoicing and following up on it takes about 2 hours. The remaining 1.5 hours go to answering the same basic questions across different channels.

What does automation take care of on its own?

The appointment reminder goes out automatically by text or email a set time before the booking, without anyone having to remember to send it. A new booking moves straight into the calendar no matter which channel it came from. The invoice goes out automatically once a service is marked done, and a payment reminder fires on its own if it's overdue. Frequently asked questions get answered automatically the moment they arrive, and only the unusual ones reach the owner at all.

How much time is left over?

Once those four tasks are automated, the manual work that remains is a fraction of what it was, mostly exceptions, like a customer who needs to move an appointment at the last minute. Total time saved in this example is around 7 hours a week, close to a full working day freed up for something other than repetitive upkeep.

• appointment reminders: roughly 2 hours/week saved
• moving bookings between systems: roughly 1.5 hours/week saved
• invoicing and payment reminders: roughly 2 hours/week saved
• repeat customer questions: roughly 1.5 hours/week saved

Seven hours a week doesn't sound like much on a single day, but over a year it's more than thirty working days handed back to the owner.

What would you do with that freed-up time?

Some owners put the freed-up time into finding new customers, some into improving what they offer, and some simply into having more breathing room in the week. Neither reason is wrong, the point is that the hours go where you choose, not where they're forced.

Summary: work out your own repeating hours

This example is from one industry, but the method works for any business: list the tasks that repeat every week, estimate how long each one takes, and see which ones could be handed to automation. Often more of them qualify than you'd expect.