Why You Need a Reopening Waitlist for Your Salon or Spa ASAP

While you may still be temporarily closed and sheltering in place, you need to start thinking about how to make your salon or spa’s reopening a grand reopening. You want to make it a memorable (and revenue-boosting) event. Now’s the time to build excitement among your clients.

When you do get to reopen, you'll likely have to operate at a lower capacity than you had previously to observe social distancing recommendations. You’ll probably need to increase the time between appointments to give your team ample time to wash hands, sanitise, and disinfect any equipment or space before the next client arrives, too. With fewer slots open for clients, it’s important that you take full advantage of what you do have available and don’t miss an opportunity to get a client on the books. Enter, the waitlist.

Why your salon and spa needs to start a waitlist now

There are a lot of unknowns when it comes to reopening amid the coronavirus. Will there be pent up demand for your services (hair salons, we’re looking at you), or will your clients be anxious about venturing out of their homes (despite being due for a service and wanting to return)? It’s impossible to know if you don’t ask.

A waitlist can give you a sense of just how many clients are eager to return, when, and for which services. You can also get a sense of which staff members are in highest demand to start building your schedule. This is especially helpful as you may need to have your team work in shifts.

How to create a waitlist for your salon or spa’s reopening

There’s now a waitlist right within Booker software. Just enable it in your System Settings and select the services clients can request. Your online booking page will be instantly updated so clients can request a service they can't wait to have! When you're ready to reopen, you'll have a list of clients that you can schedule to make sure your reopening is a hit.

Learn everything about waitlists in Booker here.

If you're not on Booker, you can still create a waitlist with Google Forms. You can share a message at the top of the form letting your clients know you’re not certain when you’ll be reopening your spa or salon, but that you’re looking forward to seeing them again.

When you’re building out your waitlist form, you need to ask your clients for the following:

• First and last name
• Phone number
• Email address
• Preferred method of contact (call, email, or text)
• Preferred location (if you have more than one, have clients select from the Multiple Choice option in Google Forms)
• Services interested in (clients may be interested in more than one, so list your services menu with Checkboxes in Google Forms)
• Staff preference (list your team names with Checkboxes in case clients want to select more than one)
• Any additional information we should know (this should be a Paragraph in Google Forms)

Ensure that responses are required for critical answers (name, phone number, email, and preferred method of contact).

You can also have a final item on the form that lets clients know how they can support your salon or spa during the COVID-19 pandemic. It can be a yes or no answer and look something like this:

“You can support our local business now by purchasing products at our online store (link to your website). Any purchases help us take care of our employees and keep our salon running during a difficult time. Would you like to be contacted about purchasing products or booking services that we can recommend to you?”

How to promote your waitlist

Your waitlist isn’t any good if no one knows about it. Make sure you:

• Share a link to your salon or spa’s waitlist in an email with your entire subscriber list (if you want your biggest spenders to get early access, you can use Marketing Suite to easily segment and share the link with them first)
• Post about it across all your social media accounts
• Add it to your website (make it easy to find with a pop-up or banner on your homepage)

If you use Messenger^[ai], the AI receptionist, you can update your missed call text, voicemail, and web chat to include the link to your waitlist form. You can also add a new FAQ specifically for your waitlist form and include trigger words, so the bot knows how to respond to inquiries.

You don’t want your clients to miss out on this.

Your customers will be thrilled to get on your spa or salon’s waitlist. They’re likely anxious about getting any missed services rebooked as soon as possible. They’ll be thrilled to have an update from you (and here’s what else you need to tell your community now). This waitlist can give your salon or spa some peace of mind, too. You may not know exactly what your reopening will look like, but at least you’ll know who you can look forward to seeing when you do open your doors.