Dealing with Chronic Reschedulers, Cancellers, and Latecomers in Your Salon

Hey, friend. Welcome back to The Modern Hairstylist podcast. Today, we're gonna be attacking a little bit more of a complicated issue and circumstance. We're gonna go beyond the basics of reducing last minute cancellations and no-shows, and maybe people showing up late to appointments.

And we're gonna be talking about the chronic last minute cancelers and the people who chronically show up to appointments late every single freaking time. I believe that these circumstances can be a little bit more complicated to approach, especially if these people are following the rules, right? Maybe you have somebody who cancels on you and reschedules on you all the time outside of your cancellation policy window and you just are really unsure how to approach the situation, but they're becoming unreliable. It's getting a little bit frustrating.

You're seeing this pattern on a consistent basis. You don't wanna offend the person who's showing up late. Maybe they've b- been showing up late for a long time and you've always accommodated them and it's every single freaking time, and you're just not sure how to have the conversation without it being awkward or eliciting a negative response. So, I'm gonna be sharing with you my most balanced and most likely to be successful solution today.

What brings this topic to the table today is, number one, I hear about it happening more and more often recently. And then, also, y'all know I'm up in these free Facebook groups where there's, like, 100,000 hairstylists from all over the world who are giving each other advice. And I just see such terrible advice when it comes to how to deal with these things, in my opinion. And so, I wanna get the message out there so that way y'all are getting the best advice possible from an expert, from somebody who has coached people through figuring this out and then actually reducing these things from happening without creating a negative circumstance, right?

You guys know that that is always my approach, is to be as balanced as possible, creating a professional, excellent client experience, making the client feel taken care of and happy, even when you're implementing a boundary. But then also making it so your boundaries are clear and you're creating more positive outcomes for yourself and your business. So, if you want a balanced, most successful solution to handling these complicated situations, then let's get into it. Let's go .

Okay, so, of course, you should have a basic cancellation policy and a basic late policy in place. I have a ton of other episodes that dive deep into your basic policies. Recently, I have a five ways to reduce your last minute cancellations and no-shows episode. You can go ahead and listen to that, and then way towards the beginning of when I created the podcast, I created a general salon policies episode, so go check those out if you need the basics.

Now, you should have a cancellation policy and a late policy in place. The cancellation policy should have a window in which if they cancel or reschedule within that timeframe, then they are subject to be charged X, right, or something like that. You get to decide what the nuances of that look like. And then you should have a late policy in which if somebody shows up within X amount of time after their originally booked time for the appointment, then you cannot guarantee that every service that they are booked for will be carried out.

However, they will be charged the same amount or they will be charged an extra fee or whatever it may be. You get to decide what that looks like, what is fair for you, but also what is fair to the client as well too. Now, when it comes to these more complicated circumstances, what I really love to suggest that you do is have other clauses that are a little bit more extensive in advance beyond just your basic cancellation policy. So, let's start off with the cancellation.

So, again, let's say that you have somebody who just rebooks their appointment all the freaking time. They cancel last minute all the time, but it's ou- outside of your cancellation window, so they're technically following the rules, right? What you can do is is you can have an advanced cancellation policy in place that says something like this. If you cancel within seven days of your originally booked appointment three or more times within a year, then X happens.

You have to put down a nonrefundable deposit. You will only be able to book an appointments within seven days of the appointment time that you're trying to achieve, and you cannot book any earlier than that, right? You get to decide how you approach that as well too and what your decisions are around that. Now, you could do this with your late policy too.

You could have another clause in which if somebody shows up 15 minutes late to their appointment or more three times or more wi- within a calendar year, then they will be subject to a X fee that they j- have to pay if they show up X minutes after their appointment time that was booked. So, when you have these policies in place, you cover your ass in having a standard procedure that you follow every time something like this happens. It's easy to communicate because your clients should be reading, signing, and agreeing to these policies, so you can share with them that they have seen this policy before. And then you're fair across the board.

There's no guessing about what you should do or how you should approach this. It's just a set policy that you hold every one of your clients to that same standard. Now, you guys know that although I believe having policies in place is so freaking important, what I'd rather you do is is use them to mitigate the circumstances versus have to then enact upon them and then put into place the consequences of them, right? So, it's so much better to just get somebody to not do this bad behavior versus have to then punish them for when they do it, right?

So, that's why communicating these things ahead of time is so important, and like I said, we do that by getting your policies signed and agreed to. But what we should also be doing is, let's say your- your extensive cancellation policy is if you cancel within seven days of your appointment three or more times in a calendar year, then X. When they've done it the second time, before it gets to the third time, that's when you warn them. So, you reach out to them and you say, "Hey, Karen.

I noticed that this is the second time that you canceled within seven days of your appointment, which is totally fine. I absolutely understand things come up, and I really appreciate you can- can- canceling or rescheduling outside of my 48-hour cancellation window. Just so you're aware, I do have an extensive cancellation policy to make sure that I can plan ahead and keep spots open for people who need them in which if you do X, then X. So, if this does..."

happen again, then we may have to deal with that. But for now, I just wanted to make sure that you are aware. So, that way, you are communicating that to them, there's no consequence that is taking place, and then that person is aware for the future and they're gonna be very unlikely to actually cancel on you again within that amount of time. Now, the same concept applies to your people who are chronically late to their appointments, right?

And you don't necessarily have to bring up your extensive late policy with most of these people yet. I actually recommend that you don't, and you just try to talk about it and open it up as a non-judgmental conversation, and just keep it really chill. That's before you have to bring up your policy. If that doesn't work, then we bring up the, the more extensive policy and maybe give them a warning.

But what you can simply do is, is just reach out to them and be like, "Hey, Karen, I've noticed over the past couple of appointments that you've shown up a little bit late to the appointments, and that's totally okay. I absolutely understand what it's like to be busy and for time to slip away, or for things to be hard for you to show up for. And I know that traffic around here is bad," or whatever you wanna say. "But I do wanna make sure that I have enough time to be able to take good care of you when you're with me and I'm gonna need the full amount of service time to be able to take care of you.

So, I'd really appreciate if you could try your best to show up at the time that we booked originally for our future appointments. If there's anything that we need to do as far as scheduling goes to make it so this is easier for you or more likely for you to be able to show up on time, then I'm absolutely open to talking about that and working with you to make that happen. Otherwise, I really appreciate your understanding and want you to know that this is not coming from a place of judgment or upset, it's just coming from a place of love and wanting to take good care of you." And then, if you call somebody out on that type of behavior, it's gonna be very unlikely that they actually show up late to an appointment ever again.

You'll probably see this person start to show up early. But if this person continuously is chronically late to those appointments, that's when you can bring up the policy. That's when you bring out the big guns and you can enforce this policy, not just with the communication, but also with actual ground rules and consequences. Now, I've heard really bad advice that I was talking about at the intro of this episode before, which is like, "Oh, I just schedule them in 15 minutes earlier than the appointment time that I tell them," or, "I just add 15 minutes to this person's appointment because I know that they're always late and I need extra time."

It's like, number one, if you do the whole I tell them a different time than I booked them, then you're gonna really miss out on having text reminders and email reminders sent for confirmation for their appointment, which you should absolutely have. It's 2020 freaking 5 and people prefer that shit, okay? Your clients want it, and it will absolutely help you in reducing your last minute cancellations and no-shows. It's just a standard nowadays.

So, you should have reminders going out that will remind somebody of their appointment and get confirmation as well. And if you book somebody for a different time than they thought, then they're gonna get these confirmations and be like, "What the fuck is this," right? So, that doesn't work. Now, with adding 15 minutes to somebody's time block because you know that they show up late all the time, you're literally just wasting your own time and you're saying no to more money in which you could be adding somebody else into your book with that 15 minutes of time, but that's blocking you from being able to do so.

So, you're literally saying no to more money and you're just wasting more of your time if you do that. So, long story short, it really just comes down to having more extensive policies that cover your ass in these more extraneous circumstances, so adding another clause to your cancellation policy and your late policy. The basics that I teach is you should have your clients signing your policies and reading and agreeing to them on a consistent basis, not just once a year ago. And you should also be communicating to these people your policies when they are on the brink of them possibly having to face the consequences of them Now, I know that these difficult conversations can be pretty hard sometimes, so I hope that the verbiage that I gave you in this episode was helpful.

As long as you approach every single difficult conversation that you have with a client with professionalism and with their benefit in mind in the way that you frame the communication, and you don't come at it from a more accusatory or self-explanatory standpoint, then you will normally elicit a positive response and avoid a bad review online. So, I hope that this was helpful for you, my friend. I hope that this helps you stop these people who are chronically late to their appointments and maybe chronically rescheduling and canceling their appointments. And so much love to you.

I hope that you have a blessed rest of your day. Talk to you soon. Peace out, girl scout.

End of transcript. © 2024 Hunter Donia LLC.