20 massage therapist and saloons appointment related problems

How cool are you in handling appointments?

20 massage therapist and saloons appointment related problems : Appointment related problems sound really frustrating. It does not matter how skillfully you handle and manage appointments. Though there is a staff to assist in fixing appointments, manual appointment handling terribly fails in one way or the other.  Error free and tension free scheduling never happens with manual scheduling.

Being a massage therapist and stylist, you must feel stressed whenever the appointment goes wrong. Here mentioned 20 appointment related problems that you have face in daily life. You can relate yourself with all these problems mentioned below.

 

No show up rate

Not all appointments turned up to take services on the day of appointment. You can never match number of bookings and services taken. Manually it is difficult to handle booked appointments and people visited for appointments.

No show up rate can be calculated when you do schedules on own. You can neither see how far your saloon or massage center has a reach among customers. You don’t even know how many people like to know about services and styling therapies. Manual scheduling has its worst set back and lacks marketing strategy.

Forgetting

Forgetting is the key problem faced by massage and styling therapist. Customers find it really hard to remember appointments. They book for appointments but never remind of it on the day of appointments. They either visit the day before or after the day of appointment. This again completely confusing the schedules of the therapist and stylist. You sit waiting for clients all the day but none turned up. Other day, many have turned up for getting massage and styling. You feel hectic and stressful all the day.

Uneven workflow

When you fail scheduling appointments, there is a complete mess. Working hours will not be same all the days. It must be tiring for one day and free for the other. It happens when you don’t allot working hours and maintaining proper schedules.

Customers booking for appointments visit you on their convenience. Customers turn to get relaxing therapeutic sessions. There is no particular time allotment given except the date of appointment. As therapeutic sessions are quite long and time consuming, you get exhausted which you can’t help.

Zero communication

Bridging communication with your customers never goes right always. You barely have the contact number of the customer. Contact number is not a reliable source to communicate. People change their mobiles and numbers so often. They can’t tell everyone that they have changed their number.

In general, you try to contact customer only by their number. Thus many numbers of appointments get cancelled and missed. Communication gap is what you can never fill in manual scheduling.

Missing appointments

Customers lack reliability on your saloon and massage center when you miss any of their appointment. It is not a case with customers not turning up for booked appointments. Stylist or therapist may fail to include any of the booked appointments while scheduling. He/she is not blamed for this on any ground. After all, forgetfulness is a common disease nowadays. Still, customers find it problematic. To an extent, you may lack all your customers when you let it continue.

Cancellation of appointments

You fed up with last minute cancellation of appointments. Many customers never inform their inability to visit for their appointments. This happens very common and often with manual appointments. You can’t fix other appointments as you find it at the last moment. You must be left in abandon situation. You cannot rely on those customers again. Still, there is no other go.  It is a big headache when they ask for rescheduling.  Yes, it is highly frustrating.

No payments

Not all, surely few troublesome customers don’t pay. While making appointments, customers are not asking for complete charges details of the services. Customers simply book for appointments and confirm it.  When they show up for styling and massage, they make a big issue on the charges made. Finally, blame on your services lamely to defend them. It is better if they know the charges and paying it prior through online.

Not claiming discounts

When you give any offer or discount, it never reaches customers. You can’t believe advertisements alone. You can’t have contact details of all your customers also. If you have, then it is not sure that all can get to know about it. It is so common to conduct grooming session, special massage therapies on occasions. It is a kind of promotion that you are doing to increase your customers. What is the use of offers, discounts and free session when customers are not able to know about it even?

Tracking appointments

Once the appointment is fixed, there is no communication with the customers. Then how come you remind about appointments. When you are given all key details and social media ids, you can literally follow them everywhere. Unfortunately, manual scheduling doesn’t have any chance of getting all these customer details. Keep tracking the appointments prevent lots of unwanted cancellation.

Manual errors

Manual schedules don’t have any automation. It is a double task to fix appointments and scheduling it. There is no confirmation messages sent to customers. Even you recruit a staff to assist in appointments; she/he can’t handle all appointments single handedly. However you put effort to make error free appointments, it never goes well. There is a chance of clash of appointments. When you have a visitor other than your day schedule, it let you in a helpless situation.

Off days

Stylists and therapists also have their own commitments. Off days of saloon and massage center is differing from usual holidays and weekend. It highly depends on the work schedule of the stylist and therapist. There might be unplanned off days. They may have any personal commitments to do. At such occasions, they can’t make calls to every individual customer to inform it. There must be customers returning home on seeing closed doors of your saloon and massage center. This creates disappointment and lack of reliability to the customers.

Handling appointments

In saloon and massage center, you may have staff to assist you. You can never ask a stylist or massage therapist to handle appointments. You need to recruit a staff only for making appointments. It is pricy to pay additional staff. Though having a staff, you can’t assure error free schedules and appointments. Handling appointments is also not an easy task for the staff. You can never rely on the staff completely. Again you should overlook schedules prepared. It is a headache to handle appointments manually.

Re-scheduling

To please customers, you should always do reschedules. Customers missing appointments asks for appointments on their convenience. As styling and massaging are relaxing therapeutic sessions, customers prefer their free time to take services. You can’t say no for rescheduling because every customer’s satisfaction matters. To earn long term customers, you often go for rescheduling. This might collapse your other schedules and plans.

Clash of appointments

This happens mostly in manual scheduling. No one likes to wait unnecessarily when they tuned up for services. If there is a clash and two customers have come at a time, the situation becomes unmanageable. Of course, you should prefer giving services to long term customer. You might have been in such embarrassing situation before. It is like making choices. There is no doubt; the customers also have many choices to prefer than you. There lies a great threat of losing customers.

Blocking appointments

On any festive seasons and occasions, people think of grooming and relaxing. Overcrowded appointments are there. People may directly visit you at saloon or massage center. Often they never ask for appointments too. You can’t make customers waiting for so long to take turns. You need to tell customers that there are enough bookings. But it is impossible in manual scheduling.

Though you advertise for early bookings, it is always unavoidable. You may also feel tired on handling too many customers. No availability is shown. You can also never find a chance to block appointments.

Time-consuming

Scheduling is a long process. You have to fix appointments on calls. All you have is a rough written script of booked schedules. You should fill the free schedule to avoid clash of appointments. You should do scheduling, fixing appointments, confirming, sending reminders, rescheduling, and cancelling at single handed. It takes hours and hours to schedule.

You can never finalize the schedule as it may get chanced any time on customer convenience and comfort. Even you have scheduling staff, it is unmanageable. It is highly time consuming and tiresome.

Showing availability

Stylist and massage therapist cannot show his/her availability to the clients. In manual scheduling it is one common problem faced by many. He/she may find the day completely hectic or completely lazy on the basis of appointments. It is mainly because of his/her inability to show working hours and availability to all clients.

There must be a schedule in your working space for your view. At times, customers visiting saloon or massage center, may check for availability. Otherwise, there is little chance of letting the customers to know available dates and hours for services.

Fixing schedules

Customers always make calls and book for appointments. The staff may note it down. They can have all the bookings at hand. Still, there arises a problem when it comes to scheduling. They should match the availability of the stylist and therapist with booked appointments. Otherwise, staff should reschedule it by convincing the customers.

To make error free schedules, staff should check the schedule for multiple times. It is really hard to manage and fixing schedules and appointments.

Expenses

You cannot be sure that you always expect many customers to visit saloon and massage center. Only regular customers come for taking massages and do beauty routines on a regular basis. Most of the times, you may be sitting idly waiting for the customers. You already have expert staff to assist you in massages and styling treatments.

With that, the staff cannot handle appointments in addition. She/he may not attend the appointment calls all the times. There is no assured profit on having saloons and massage parlors. You cannot afford to pay for staff to do schedules alone. Your profit may never meet with the needs.

Preferences

In manual scheduling, unknowingly you may give preferences to regular customers. This is not fair for other visiting customers. Business is all about earning customer’s credibility. Schedules should be made only on the basis of early approach. Some customers urge the staff to give quick appointments. This again needs changes in the already fixed appointments. This kind of unfair treatment spoils fame and name of the saloon and massage center.

To avoid all these appointment related problems, switch to scheduling apps. Get error free and stress free schedules for your saloon and massage center!

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