Quote:
Originally Posted by peach  Sunsally, you fail to mention all of the negatives of not taking appointments. ie customers piling into the store at 5 pm and standing around in your lobby for a hour waiting for beds, along with periods of time where no one is there, dissatisfied customers who pay for higher level packages but never get to use them. Treating everyone as though they are the same type of customer when they are not, etc.
If your equipment is homogenous (the same) then appointments don't matter, but who runs a salon like that anymore?
You can do both (appointments and walkins) and have the best of both worlds-appointments get priority over walkins, but if you are late, you forfeit your slot to a walkin, if there is one. The last priority in a functioning business with people in front of you is always the phone. We make something easy into something hard. |
People will always pile into the store at 5pm - it is a popular time to tan in many salons. Telling them they can get an appt at 2 instead doesn't help if they work.
It is a VERY hard balance to let people know "we take appointments", but then answer the phone only as a last priority.
Ditto to cancelling them out if they are late (what defines "late" - 1 minute? Two? What about the walk-in who comes in 5 minutes BEFORE the scheduled appointment? They wait while looking at an unused bed.....)
If customers are "piling up in the lobby for an hour", it is either:
1. Busy season - ALL beds are full - customers understand -- "it is busy season and you picked our busiest time of day"
2. Poor customer mgt by staff. If there are HIGHER level beds available - upgrade them. If there are LOWER level beds available - ask if they prefer to go there in order to get in and out faster.
Like other topics, you may be one of the handful of salons out there doing most things differently than what typically leads to the best success for every OTHER salon. But I still wouldn't recommend appointments as a rule of thumb.
Even though this thread - and my advice - is 2.5 years old - I stand by it.