Your ideal week in the salon is one that is fully booked. When you have days where this is not the case, you want your days to be scheduled as convenient as possible. Empty spots in your calendar are an annoyance for you and your staff. But rest assured! You can reduce gaps in your calendar by following our tips.

Reminders, reminders, reminders

Ideally, you want your calendar to be filled with nice appointments without gaps. No-shows, cancellations and rescheduling can spoil the party. This can be reduced by reminding your customer by email of the planned booking. Be sure to set a reasonable time to send the reminder. Should the customer still cancel, then there will still be plenty of time to fill the spot.

Have you learned from experience that your customers do not check their email regularly? If so, you can also send an SMS reminder to your customer. This increases the chance that the reminder has come through.

Promoting unpopular times

Noticing spots in the calendar that often remain open because of unpopular times? Everyone has a moment in the day which is simply inconvenient. Once you start recognising this in your calendar, perhaps it’s a good idea to promote these unpopular times. Think for example of off-peak discounts or a specific promotion for that moment of the day. Or think in target groups, students have a more flexible schedule so you can target the unpopular hours. This is also something you can do with last minute openings. If your customer makes an appointment shortly in advance, you can charge a last minute discount.

Let the software do its magic

To avoid gaps in the calendar, the smart calendar of Salonized chooses favorable spots in your calendar surrounding your opening time, break and closing time. Your calendar shows appointments to the client that are close to other appointments. Would you like to enable consecutive appointments in your account? Then you can find a help article here explaining how to set it up.

Paying a deposit

No-shows might be the most annoying thing that form a gap in the calendar. Mainly because they are unexpected and it no longer gives you the chance to fill the spot. In conclusion, you are missing out on an opportunity. To reduce the number of no-shows you can have your customers make a down payment when they schedule an appointment online. This way you reduce the chance that the customer doesn’t show up, because he or she has already paid for part of the treatment. Could you use some nice tips on how to reduce no-shows in your salon? We have a nice blog about it. You can read the blog here!

Canceled/rescheduled bookings

When booking online, change your settings so that your customers can cancel or reschedule their appointments themselves. By activating this, you can also set how many hours in advance the customer can cancel/move the appointment. This way you don't have gaps in your calendar at the last moment and there is still time to fill the spot.

If a spot in the calendar became available due to a cancellation or rescheduling, it’s preferable to fill it up again. There are a couple of things you can do to fill up your calendar for the day. You can for instance make a call in the morning to clients who are available at short notice. Or when you have social media like Facebook or Instagram, you can post something on your Story with a last minute available spot. This method works great if you are active on social media! Often you’ll see the spot is filled moments later!

A gap isn’t always that bad

A gap in your calendar can work to your advantage every now and then. It gives you a moment, for example, to clean up, post a nice Story on your Instagram, call customers to remind them of their appointment, check the salon stock, and so on. That way, the hour flies by and you have spent it usefully.