For customers, using an appointment-driven service like a hair salon means waiting. While waiting is the expectation of customers, the nature of the waiting experience can make a major difference in what they think about your salon and even overshadow the services you offer.
The Waiting Experience You Want For Customers
Start your planning of waiting line management by considering how you would like to be treated when waiting. Look also at what competitors in your local market, both for ideas and for mistakes. If you have a location in a mall or shopping center, it can be easy for customers to shop or take care of errands elsewhere while they wait their turn. The downside of this for your business is that you can lose out on further engaging your customers during that time, whether by having them look at hair style options in magazines or brochures or consider the products you have for sale. Also, you run the risk of waiting for the customer if they have wandered too far when you are finally ready for them.
Having a comfortable and even entertaining waiting room does require investment and upkeep, but it can be a valuable tool to improve the customer waiting experience. Product displays, TV screens, magazines, and other items can improve this space, as can a water dispenser or other refreshment options. If you serve children at your salon, the needs of a waiting room take on a whole new character. Parents will be extremely appreciative if you take care to provide activities and entertainment to occupy their kids as they wait, and may not mind a longer than average wait as it will by more quickly for them.
In any case, it is important to have your staff set clear expectations for customers as to how long their wait will be and then deliver on those expectations. Customers hate not knowing how long they will have to wait and being told one wait time and then another. They may leave feeling your staff either don't know what they are doing or are deliberately misleading them. Either possibility is very dangerous to your salon's reputation.
Conclusion
The service you offer to customers includes every interaction, from the setting of the appointment to all of the time the customer spends at your salon, including the wait. Your plan for the waiting experience will influence your operations plan and financial assumptions and should not be neglected as part of your salon's business plan.