Playbook, salon or spa
The questions nobody rings a salon to ask
A first colour appointment does not start with colour. It starts with a stylist looking at the hair and asking what has been on it, and a client who did not know that has planned the wrong amount of time. Around that sit a dozen smaller questions about washing, undressing and what to bring that people are too self conscious to ask out loud and will happily type.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for first visit questions holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- The consultation comes before the first colour rather than instead of it, and describing what happens in those minutes converts more first bookings than any price sentence on the site.
- Whether to arrive with clean hair has a real answer that differs by service, and clients guess it wrong in both directions, then spend the first ten minutes apologising for their hair.
- A first spa visit involves undressing to some degree and nobody will ring up to ask what stays on, so the chat box gets a question the phone never hears.
- The staff stopped noticing these details years ago, which is why the answers exist nowhere in writing: which floor, where a coat goes, whether a child can sit in the corner, whether the music can be turned down.
How it arrives
- should i wash my hair before my colour appointment
- what actually happens at a consultation
- what do i wear for a massage
- do i keep my underwear on for a body treatment
- how early should i turn up for a spa day
- can i bring my daughter to sit with me
What has to be indexed for this to work
| What the first consultation covers and how long it takes | That a stylist looks at the hair, asks what has been on it and agrees the service, how many minutes it adds, and whether it is charged. Clients avoid consultations because they expect a sales pitch, so describe the conversation instead. |
|---|---|
| Washed or unwashed, service by service | Whether to arrive with clean hair for a colour, a cut, a treatment or an occasion style. One line each. This is the single most searched thing about a salon appointment and it takes four sentences to answer. |
| What happens in a treatment room | What is removed, what stays on, how the towels work, whether there is a robe and a locker, and that a therapist steps out. Written plainly, because vagueness here reads as evasion and stops people booking. |
| Arriving: time, coats, children and phones | How early to come, where to leave things, whether children can come along, and the position on phones in a quiet area. Small enough to feel not worth writing, and collectively the reason somebody has not booked. |
The reply
For a first colour, come with your hair as it is rather than freshly washed on the day, since a little natural oil on the scalp is helpful [1]. The appointment starts with a consultation before anything is mixed: the stylist looks at your hair, asks what has been on it including any home colour, and agrees the service with you, which takes about the first ten minutes [2]. Allow a bit longer than the service time for that. If you have a patch test to do first, that has to happen before the day of the appointment.
It answers the small question first, because that is what was asked and it is what the person is embarrassed about. The consultation is then described as a conversation with a length, which is what turns it from an obstacle into a normal part of the appointment. The patch test is added at the end as a fact rather than a warning, since the reader now has a reason to care about it.
Where it stops
The trigger. The visitor mentions a condition, a medication, a pregnancy or anything about their skin or scalp while asking what to expect.
I can tell you how the appointment runs, but anything about your skin, your health or a medication needs a therapist rather than me. Leave me your name and an email with what you were thinking of booking and one of the team will call you.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never tell a client a patch test can be done on the day of a colour appointment, whatever else is being explained.
- Never say a treatment will feel relaxing, painless or comfortable, because that is a promise about their experience.
- Never state what a client should remove in a treatment room beyond what the salon has published.
- Never say children are welcome unless the salon has written that down, since the answer often differs by area of the building.
Questions
- These feel too trivial to publish. Are they?
- They are the questions that stop people booking, which is not trivial. Nobody rings a salon to ask whether to wash their hair, so the hesitation never reaches you as a question. It reaches you as a booking that did not happen, and gets blamed on price.
- Can it tell somebody how long their first appointment will be?
- It can quote the published length of the service and say the consultation adds to it. It cannot say how long that particular head of hair will take, since that is what the consultation is for, and a firm number given here becomes a complaint about running over.
- Where does this stop being a first visit question?
- The moment a health word appears. Pregnancy, medication, a skin condition or a recent procedure all leave this pair immediately and go to a therapist, even when they arrive inside a perfectly ordinary question about what to wear.
Keep reading
- Everything for a salon or spaPrices depend on hair length and condition, so a real quote needs a consultation. Patch tests and pregnancy questions need a person.
- Handling first visit questions in generalWhat to wear, where to park, how long it takes, whether they can bring somebody. Cheap to answer and disproportionately valuable.
- The morning that starts at six and has to finish by elevenA group takes the floor and the morning runs backwards from a ceremony time, so it is staffing and a trial before it is a booking.
- The stairs, the basin and the height of the couchStairs to a first floor, whether the basin can be used without lying back, and a quieter hour for a client who needs one.
- There is nothing to return, so what is the money positionA cut cannot be handed back. Where the money stands on an opened retail bottle, a part used course and a voucher bought by somebody else.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.