LINE OA for shops: thousands of friends, used as nothing more than an inbox

Three o'clock on a Tuesday afternoon, the quietest hour of the week at the salon. The owner sits down between clients and opens the LINE OA app on her phone. Her friend count is in the thousands, more than she remembered.

She scrolls through the chats. Most are the same messages. "How much is colouring?" "Anything free on Thursday?" "Where exactly are you?" The shop replied, the customer came, the hair got done. The last message in the chat is from the customer, "love it, thank you", followed by a sticker. Then silence. Some chats have been quiet for three months, some for nearly a year.

The people who had their hair coloured three months ago probably have roots showing by now. Nobody from the salon has messaged them. Meanwhile, the owner is wondering whether to try paying for ads this month to find new customers.

We see this all the time with shops on LINE Official Account. Plenty of customers add the shop as a friend, and the shop uses the account as nothing more than an inbox.

People who add your shop on LINE have already raised their hand

To add a shop on LINE, someone has to care enough to tap "add friend". Most have asked about prices, booked, or already been in. Compared with someone who scrolls past an ad in their feed, these people know you, trust you to some degree, and open LINE every day.

The trouble is that most shops always wait for the customer to message first. LINE OA ends up working like the shop phone: if it rings, you answer, if not, nothing happens. Yet it can reach people who'd be glad to come back, if you send the right thing to the right people at the right time.

Before thinking about finding new customers, look at the list you already have. The bigger picture of getting customers as a local business is in finding customers online as a local business.

Greeting messages and rich menus can answer the first question for you

People who've just added a shop usually ask three things: how much, when are you free, and where are you. If every one of those waits for a stylist with colour on her gloves, some customers won't wait.

The greeting message is what LINE OA sends automatically when someone adds you. Use it to say what you do, roughly what things cost and how to book. That beats a plain "thanks for adding us".

The rich menu is the row of big buttons at the bottom of the chat. Put the buttons customers actually need there: prices, book, map, see our work. People can find the answer themselves right away, instead of typing a question and waiting.

Auto-replies can respond when a customer types certain words, so typing "price" sends back your price list. Use them for simple questions that always get the same answer. For anything where you need to see someone's hair first, a person should reply.

Tag customers in chat and you'll know who should get what

A friend list in the thousands only becomes useful once you know who's who. In the LINE OA chat screen you can tag each customer and add notes, for example "colour", "straightening" or "regular", plus a short note on what they had done, when, and which shade.

Do it each time a customer leaves. It takes under a minute, but three months later you can see straight away who had colour when, and who's due a message about their roots. A customer who gets "Hi Mint, you had the golden brown done at the start of July, your roots are probably starting to show. We have a slot this Saturday" feels remembered, not like she's been sent the same promo as everyone else.