Owning your data and having access to it are not the same thing. Your records can be “yours” on paper and locked inside a tool that will not give them back. What the law gives you, what a marketplace keeps, and the three questions to ask before you sign.
The day you change tools
One Monday morning, you decide to leave. The subscription has gone up, or the software gets on your nerves, or you have seen better. You look for the “export” button. It is buried in a submenu, and it produces a file with nothing but names and phone numbers, no history, no preferences, not the exact colour of the client who has been coming back for six years. Or it does not exist, and you have to write to support. Or it exists, but the marketplace keeps a copy and carries on sending reminders to your clients, on behalf of its other salons.
That morning, you realise that “your” records were only half yours. This guide is written so that morning never comes.
What is in a record, and why it is worth more than a name
A client record is not a line in a notebook. It is the date of the last visit and the one before, the service, how long it took, the colour formula, the contraindication she mentioned the first time, what she spends on average, the fact that she comes on Tuesday mornings and never on Saturdays, and the note you made about her wedding in June. It is also the trace of her agreement to receive an SMS, with its date.
All of it belongs to you in the sense that you gathered it, client by client, over years. But owning it is no use if you cannot take it with you.
What the law gives you, and what it does not settle
The European data protection regulation gives rights to the clients themselves: to know what you hold about them, to have it corrected, to have it deleted, to object to marketing messages. In return it requires you to have a reason for every piece of data, not to keep it forever, and to be able to prove consent whenever you send a message that is not the confirmation of an appointment.
What it does not settle is the relationship between you and your software. The law does not say the provider has to hand your records back in a readable format, nor that it cannot keep a copy for its own purposes if its terms allow it. That is the contract, and it is there to be read before you sign.
Consent, dated, at the source
Consent is a box ticked by the client, at a precise moment, for a precise use. If your tool does not keep the date and the place where she ticked it (while booking, at checkout, on a form), you cannot prove anything, and every follow-up becomes a risk. A good tool records the agreement at the source, with its date, and refuses to send a marketing message to anyone who has not said yes.
At ODS Salon, that is the rule from the Vitrine plan up: consent is taken at the moment of booking or payment, dated, and visible on the record. A client who has not consented receives the confirmation and the reminder for her own appointment, and nothing else.
What a marketplace keeps
On a booking marketplace, the client is not only yours. She has an account with the marketplace, with her history at your salon and at the others. The marketplace sends her its own messages, suggests its other salons when you are full, and knows her better than you do, since it sees her everywhere. The day you leave, your page disappears; the client stays registered with them.
That is not a flaw in the marketplace, it is its model: the company behind Blissa also runs rdv360.com, a marketplace that claims 8.1 million visitors and lists every salon next to its neighbours. ODS Salon has no marketplace. Your clients have no account anywhere with us: they book on your website, with their name and phone number, and their record lives in your dashboard, not in a database shared by every salon.
Three questions to ask before signing, us included
The first: can I export all my records, with history and notes, myself, without writing to anyone, in a file another tool can read? With us, yes: a button in your dashboard, at any time, in an open spreadsheet format.
The second: what do you keep after I leave? With us, nothing that could serve anyone else: the data is deleted when the account closes, and we have no marketplace and no other salon to show it to.
The third: what do you do with my data while I am with you? With us, it serves your salon, your follow-ups, your statistics. It is not sold, not shared, and not used to send your clients elsewhere. Ask everyone those three questions. The answer is worth more than a price list.