THE idea of going to a hair salon conjures images of sitting and flipping through stacks of magazines as you wait for the stylist to be done.

One hair salon in Singapore is changing that experience by going digital.

Mode Hair Gallery, which opened in December last year, decided to hand out Apple iPads to customers, replacing magazines.

Steven Chew, project director at Propagate Interactive Technologies, which was commissioned to build Mode's iPad and customer relationship management (CRM) system, told BizIT that the tablet devices are not merely digital e-readers to the business.

By tying the iPads into the salon's CRM system, this opens the gate to new uses for customer data.

First, new customers sign up and enter their preferences into the devices. Their data will eventually allow customers to be segmented for targeted marketing campaigns.

Returning customers will also have their preferences logged so that the salon's staff can be alerted.

For example, customers have left feedback detailing that they want the water used for their hairwashes to be warmer, which they were otherwise reluctant to express in person, said Mr Chew.

Additionally, customer feedback on their experience and attending staff will be crunched by an analytics system for use in benchmarking targets set by the management.

But it's not all work and no play for the iPad. Mode has a system of shooting customers' pictures after a haircut in its photo studio.

These photos are captured on a server and displayed on the iPads in the form of customised hairstyle galleries, allowing customers to take a walk through past hairstyles upon subsequent returns.

This catalogue of history is aimed at cultivating a long-term relationship between a stylist and a customer, said Mr Chew.

The hair salon has been aggressively employing digital marketing to add personal touches to its service. Customers' studio shots are e-mailed to them as souvenirs, for example.

"The system is able to help stylists track their clients' history visually, which is aimed at producing better results through improved communication," said Mr Chew.

This article was first published in The Business Times.