Cancellation & no-show statistics, options/methods to fill last minute openings?

[spikeit13]

Hello Salon Geek community...

A few questions and hoping to gain some insight on the statistics found online as well as understand how you solve the challenges around them. Wondering if you can provide data or validation on the following statistics:

- 10-15% monthly cancellation and no-show rate worldwide across the beauty industry
- 62% increase in now shows with COVID-19
- About 10 minutes administrative time last in trying to manage the cancellation and no-show
- 21% in lost revenues
- Existing methods or solutions only help to fill cancellations 10-15% of the time

And what methods do you use to solve this issue
-Paper and pen waitlists
- Automated waitlists
- Charge customers for no-shows and cancellations > how effective is this (i.e. do your cancellations or no-shows go to zero) > what do you do with the opening
- Do you care about alienating customers that no-show or cancel
- What do you do with vacancies that are hard to fill (i.e. typically the middle of the day when people are working or in school)? Discount
- Would you consider raising prices for more desirable times?
- Other?

Thanks,
Rob

 

[Piercednige]

We charge 100% of the bill for no shows and cancellations on the day. We use a booking system that holds customers details (customers put them in online via an automated text sent out once they have been booked in they have 24 hours to put in their card details to secure their slot). It has been really successful and all clients have been fine with it. The new clients who don't confirm with their card details don't get an appointments. Our no shows are zero.

Out waiting list is in the system and pings us if there availability. Quick phone call at they're booked in with no issue.

With the "hard to fill" appointment times they're the onky appointments we offer when it comes to booking people in. Once these are filled we then move onto the next difficult to fill slots etc.

We never discount, we compete in service, not on price.

We wouldn't raise prices for popular time, that comes across as greedy and wouldn't look good from a customer point of view.

 

[spikeit13]

We charge 100% of the bill for no shows and cancellations on the day. We use a booking system that holds customers details (customers put them in online via an automated text sent out once they have been booked in they have 24 hours to put in their card details to secure their slot). It has been really successful and all clients have been fine with it. The new clients who don't confirm with their card details don't get an appointments. Our no shows are zero.

Out waiting list is in the system and pings us if there availability. Quick phone call at they're booked in with no issue.

With the "hard to fill" appointment times they're the onky appointments we offer when it comes to booking people in. Once these are filled we then move onto the next difficult to fill slots etc.

We never discount, we compete in service, not on price.

We wouldn't raise prices for popular time, that comes across as greedy and wouldn't look good from a customer point of view.

Thanks for the information.. what do you do when you get a cancellation or no show with the free time slot now in the calendar? and is your phone calls using the waitlist 100% effective in filling in your vacancy (as a result of the cancellation at least)... thanks in advance...

 

[Piercednige]

We don't get no shows anymore since we have taken card details.

If we get a late cancellation we would send a quick text from the booking system to.the person next on the list and book them in. It onky takes a couple or minutes to do it. But once again we get very few last minute cancellations so it's not too much of an issue to do at the moment

 

[forever21]

The problem we have is we have a very diverse age group, we get young forgetting their appointment (even though we send out text reminders, etc.) and seniors feeling ill on the day, etc.

We ask for deposits from then on if they have canceled/moved a few appointments, say 2 appointments in the past 6-12 months either the same day or the day before. Our policy says we need 48 hours (2 working days) notice for moving or canceling an appointment.

But I love the idea of charging the full price (100% of the appointment) this does make it easier, also for new clients and if they have more we just charge for the extras. The only problem we have is we do not have an automated booking online system ours is computerised but they sent messages to us and we confirm then so no way to take their money I suppose we could manually do this.

I agree, always try not to discount but add value say treatments, 10-50% off a take-home product, free consultation, etc. A waiting list is a great idea but it needs to be simple to look at the check or be automated. We also try to clump bookings together so we don't get wasted time that can't be easily booked and stop you from booking larger money-making services.

 

[spikeit13]

So an automated intelligent waitlist system would be helpful?

So no-shows go away with appointment deposits
Cancellations get filled 100% of the time with waitlists
Waitlists today are filled by the front desk in order of the folks on the waitlist? The contact method is text - email - phone call?