Front desk in a busy salon: moving bookings without upsetting guests

Ask anyone who has worked reception in a busy salon what the job is, and „taking bookings” is not the first answer. Moving them is. A stylist is off sick, a colour runs long, a guest rings to come an hour later, a machine needs servicing. Every one of those is a booking that moves — and every move is a chance to send a guest a letter she did not need, or to fail to send one she did.

Most of what follows was asked for by a salon owner who runs a front desk herself. All of it works in Slotora in the browser now, and comes to the phone app with its next version.

1. Decide, every time, whether the guest is told

Not every move is news. Shifting a booking ten minutes so a colleague can finish, or moving it to another column because two stylists swapped, does not need a letter; moving a guest to Thursday does. So every cancel and every move made by the salon asks one question: notify the guest? A quiet fix stays quiet, and a real change still gets its letter.

2. Let guests ask, and you approve

Letting guests move their own bookings saves the desk a phone call — until three of them move into the slot you were holding for a long colour. Switch on approval and a guest who moves her own booking only asks; the desk approves or declines.

3. One visit is one card, one letter, one reminder

A cut, a colour and a blow-dry booked together are one visit to the guest. They should be one card in the diary, one confirmation and one reminder — not three letters in a row and three reminders the night before. And when she adds a treatment at the desk, it goes onto the visit she already has, without a fresh confirmation.

4. Let a booking be as long as it really is

Services have standard lengths; guests do not. A thick head of hair runs over, a regular is always quick. Stretch or shorten one booking without touching the service, and when you book outside the usual rules, type the time as a start and an end rather than fighting the menu.

5. Write the day down where the team can see it

„Delivery at ten.” „Anna leaves at three.” „Boiler engineer in the morning.” A note pinned to a day in the diary, visible to the whole team, saves the desk repeating the same sentence twelve times.

6. Know who moved what

When a guest arrives for an appointment that is no longer in the diary, the question is never „what happened?” — it is „who did it?”. A change log that lists who changed what — a colleague, the system or the guest — settles it in a minute. In Slotora the owner, the managers and the front desk see it; a team member does not.

And two that protect the guest