What To Do When a Client No Shows
SUMMARY:
The first place to start in preventing clients from no showing is to understand what causes them to no show in the first place. Once you understand the mindset of a chronic no-shower, you can craft a plan to prevent them from happening.
In most cases, clients that no show do so because they don’t see the value in the services you offer and your business.
When you create a system that lets people know there will be repercussions for their negative behavior, you’ll have a better chance of repelling people that are more likely to no show.
Listen to the audio to get the full training
I recommend Acuity Scheduling for online booking which helps you to repel flaky people. Here’s my affiliate link to sign up.
If you enjoyed this episode and would like to learn more business tips like this, consider joining my monthly program, The Lash Masters Monthly where I teach lash artists tips and tricks to master their lash application and build a profitable lash business.
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Have you ever had a client ghost you and not show up for their appointment? And when you reached out to them, you got no response. Well stay tuned because I’m gonna share what you can do to stop no showers from flaking on you again.
No showing is something that’s all too common in the beauty industry. There are many people out there that don’t consider beauty appointments important nor do they realize how not showing up to an appointment they scheduled can hurt your lash business.
When a client doesn’t show up for an appointment and gives you zero communication, it may make you wonder how to handle it and prompt you to think about what you can do differently in the future to prevent it from happening again. Because let’s face it, as solo lash artists, every appointment we schedule is important because it determines how much we can make. If our business is filled with ghosters and flakes, it can cause us to close the doors to our business.
So what you can you do to prevent no shows?
The first place to start is by understanding what causes people to no show in the first place. Most no show-ers have a million excuses as to why they didn’t show up to their appointment. From being stuck at work, completely forgetting they have an appointment and some people will go as far as saying they got horribly sick or had an accident in the family to gain your sympathy. And while these things can happen, they’re quite rare events.
To get into the mind of a person that no shows, it’s important that we take a deeper look at the thought process of a person who would be so inconsiderate of your business, your time and your feelings. For most of the world, we interact mostly with large corporations. It’s become a normal practice to make an appointment with a larger business and not show up. There are no real repercussions for not showing up as these larger businesses have a lot of regular clients. A larger company doesn’t feel the sting of one person not showing up because they have so many clients.
Unfortunately, because people have interacted so much with larger businesses in this way, in their mind it’s completely acceptable to flake out on a business. And despite how amazing you are as a person, when people schedule appointments, in their mind theyre scheduling with a business, not you. They don’t stop to think about you being a small business who may be relying on their appointment just to keep your doors open.
So that’s one reason. But I believe it goes even deeper than this. When people blatantly don’t show up for their appointments, the real reason they do so is because they don’t value your business. They don’t see the real value in what it is that you do or the services you offer. I would go as far to say, they don’t see your business as any different than the lash bar a mile away from you. And because of that, they don’t take the time to think about how their behavior impacts your business nor do they care.
If you’re hearing this for the first time, this may sound harsh. It may even hurt a little. And to be clear, it’s virtually impossible to prevent no shows. They will happen and it’s just a part of life and business that you’ll have to learn to accept. But now that you have a different perspective on why people no show, it can help guide you on how to protect your business in the future.
The first place to start is to get people to respect your business and value what it is that you do. There are several ways you can do this. From my observations, many of the artists that have repeated no shows don’t charge much for their services. Some artists feel that because they’re just starting out, they can’t charge full price. Others simply don’t understand business and how to price their services. And then there’s that group that watches what everyone else is doing around them and they base their prices on what others are doing. Whatever the reason, they don’t charge enough for clients to see the real value in what it is they offer.
I don’t know how familiar you are with my backstory but in the early days of my career, I had issues with pricing my services. My first class told me to charge $300 immediately after class just because I trained with them but I grew up poor so my mindset was stuck in that place and I didn’t think I deserved to make that much money. And because I grew up poor, I assumed everyone thought the same way I did which I’ve learned over time, not everyone grew up in the same circumstances and not everyone thought the same way I did. In the early days, I had flakes too but when I got tired of the flakes and I got tired of not knowing whether I was gonna be able to pay rent or not, that helped me to shift my mindset and restructure my business in a way that commanded respect.
So the first way to prevent no shows is to raise your prices. When you’re charging premium prices, it weeds out a lot of flakes. When your prices reflect the kind of service clients will get… which lets be clear, lash extensions are a luxury service, that raises your business from ground zero to penthouse status. And when you’re at penthouse status, there’s a different level of respect you get. Flaky people will see your price and say, oh they cost too much, I can go get them done cheaper at so and so. And that’s fine. They can go no show on someone else and waste their time. Just not yours.
Now I know when I say raise your price, a lot of you are gonna do what I did when it came time to raise my prices and that is to resist because you’re afraid that if you raise your prices, you’ll lose your entire business. But let’s not jump from 0 to 100 here. There is a chance you’ll lose clients. And that’s ok. It’s part of doing business. The people you lose will more than likely be the clients you don’t want in your business in the long term. Remember, you’re running a business. It’s not personal.
But here’s another way to look at it. If you do lose a few clients, the clients that you keep will be paying you more and that should help to offset the cost of the clients you lose. Not only that, now that you’ve offloaded the less ideal clients, now you have the free time to focus on getting more clients in the door. And the new clients you attract they won’t know any different than the higher prices. So getting more people in the door that are willing to pay you more usually equals higher quality clients. And high quality clients don’t no show.
Now you may have this thought in the back of your mind like, “I’m not good enough to charge more.” And if you think that, let me ask you this question. What do you need to do to improve your skill or become a better lash artist? Whether it’s invest in more training, spend more time practicing, what can you do to improve your skill? And once you know what that is, do it. It’s really that easy.
Don’t forget, people don’t just pay for quality. They also pay for experience and how it makes them feel. If you create an amazing experience where your clients feel super comfortable, safe, they can relax and when they wake up their lashes look amazing… believe me, people will be more than happy to pay for that. So if you need ideas on how to spruce up your place and provide a better experience for your clients, there’s plenty of places where you can learn to do that. Pinterest is a great place for inspiration.
The next thing you’ll want to do to help prevent no shows is put a no show policy in place. And when you do this, make sure everyone knows what it is. You can put it on your website, tell them over the phone when they book… Just make sure it’s clearly communicated to everyone. That way, nobody can say they didn’t know and it’s a heck of a lot easier to enforce if it happens because everyone knows in advance.
My no show policy is that if a person doesn’t show up, they still have to pay full price for the time they booked. So if they booked a full set and didn’t show up, they pay for that full set. In the earlier part of my career when a put a cancellation/no show policy in place, I didn’t really have a way to enforce it. So what I did was, when I booked an appointment over the phone, I would take a credit card number. The funny part is back then, I didn’t have a way to verify the card number they were giving me wasn’t a fake and if they no showed, I didn’t have a way to charge them. But they didn’t know that. All they knew was that I was taking their card number down and telling them my cancellation policy so in their mind, they knew they better keep the appointment, cancel or reschedule in time or else their card will be charged for a service they didn’t get. When you have a way to hold people accountable and when people know there will be repercussions for not showing up, they tend to get really good about keeping their appointments. When I started taking credit cards, I went from no shows on a weekly basis to zero no shows. Funny how that works huh?
These days, I use an online booking service called Acuity and with their service, I created a consent form that spells out my cancellation policy and before clients can book with me, they have to agree to my terms. So that way, no one can say they didn’t know. It’s all there and they have to agree to it otherwise, they can’t book an appointment with me. And now I DO have a way to enforce my cancellation policy because with Acuity I selected the option to require a credit card in order to book an appointment. So win, win. I don’t use this option but you can also collect a deposit in order to book an appointment through Acuity if you want to have a little assurance on the front end.
I seriously love Acuity and I’ve used their service for several years and to be honest, they just keep getting better and better. And I love that they really listen to their customers and keep improving their service by adding features based on our feedback so it’s the only booking service that I’ve recommended for years. If you want to check them out, I’ll leave my affillate link for you below so you can check them out.
So to recap, the key to preventing no shows starts by understanding how no showers think and then structure your business in a way that repels flakes from the start. And that starts by upping your price. And to up your price, you may need to spruce up the place or get some more training to improve your skill. Do whatever you need to do so you can charge more and repel flaky people.
Next, put a no show policy in place and make sure everyone knows about it. Because when you do, no one can say they didn’t know and you’ll have ground to stand on if someone no shows.
And once you have a no show policy in place, make sure you have a way to enforce it. Whether you have clients pay a deposit up front or like me, you require a credit card in order to book an appointment with you so you can charge them, make sure you have a way to enforce it.
When clients know they can’t just no show without it actually impacting them, they will treat your business with respect.
Now if you like what you’ve learned here and want to go deeper, I actually teach lash artists the skills they need to master their lash application and I also teach how to build a lash business that is profitable, that’s filled with clients you love working with and one that you enjoy in my monthly program, the Lash Masters Monthly. I’ll leave a link to join in the show notes if you want to join and I hope to see you there.
I want to thank you so much for listening and hey, if you have a topic you’d like to see covered in one of these episodes, send me an email. Just hit the contact button on the site and send me a message. You never know, I may just cover that topic in a future episode. Thanks again and let’s make this a great week!