Clients come in late, they come in early, and most often they come for their facial treatments right on time. Their timing depends on many factors on any given day. Traffic, kids, an office meeting that ran late, there are a variety of reasons a client might not be on time for her treatment as well as entering your office on the early side. Taking the early/late client arrival in stride is something to strive for vs. showing signs of irritation or disapproval. See my personal story below to find out why.
As I mention in Client Preparation: Part I, I tend to be early for appointments I have with other businesses and people. I try not to enter a business too early because I know how it feels when one of my clients comes in 30 minutes before their scheduled appointment. That is too early!
Several years ago I arrived at a chiropractic appointment with a new doctor. Because I wasn’t sure exactly where his office was, I left my home with plenty of time to arrive early or at least on time. The office turned out to be closer than I had expected, and I arrived 15 minutes before my appointment time. I walked into his office, which was a large room without any partitions. In other words, there was no reception area with his personal office in a private area. This doctor happened to be eating his lunch. As I walked in, he said in a rather nasty tone, “You’re early!” I was so taken aback by his tone; I said I could leave and come back, but he told me to take a seat and he’d be with me shortly. To say I felt uncomfortable (and wanted to bolt out the door) is putting it mildly.
I have never forgotten how bad this person made me feel about being a few minutes early to an appointment. OK, fifteen minutes early, but still there was no reason to treat me like I had just dropped a gallon of paint on his office carpet. I told myself then and there to never make one of my clients feel bad about being super early to an appointment. Perhaps in the past I had given a little attitude, but going forward I would be gracious and understanding. Needless to say, I never went back to this doctor, by the way.
You have a choice. You can be irritated about a client coming in super early or late and come across irritated with her or you can be calm and friendly. If she’s really early and you really can’t take her at that time, you can get her a glass of water or tea and ask her to sit in the lobby. Tell her you have a few things to do before you take her, then go into your office and do what you need to do. If she’s late, try not to make her feel like you’re rushing around, hurrying to get her in your chair. You can still get her out in a timely manner but never make her feel like you were upset or annoyed that she was late. You cannot undo that exchange, and even though your client was late, she might not come back if you treat her negatively—even once.
Usually a client will call or text to let me know she’s running behind. It is therefore essential to always have your business phone near you when waiting for a client. Nowadays my business phone is my cell phone number. In the past, however, I always had a landline business phone, where my cell phone was my personal number. With the landline, I was always in my office near the phone, so if a client called to be late I was there to receive the call. (This was also before texting was so commonplace.) With my iPhone, I take it with me into the lobby area of my office suite while I await my client’s arrival. Then if she calls or texts me with an “I’m running 5 minutes late” message, I won’t have to wonder where she is if she is late.
One client I had was always 20 minutes later for her 5pm appointment. It was so chronic that I suggested she make a 5:30pm (with me) and perhaps she’d be a bit early from now on. My only hope was that she then wouldn’t show up at 5:50! Moving her appointment to a later time actually fixed her chronic lateness. It worked for me because at that time I was taking as late as a 6pm facial. Obviously if your last appointment is a 5pm and you can’t take the client later, you’ll have to have a conversation with her to see what you two can work out.
As you may have read in Client Information Charts—Part I (see link below), I mark most things down on my client charts. Chronic lateness is one such item. Even if a client is late once, I will have marked it on her chart so that if it happens again, I’ll know this could be a growing trend. Same with an early bird. If a client continues to be 15 minutes early—always—for her treatments, I will come in 15 minutes before I normally would or make sure I"m ready 15 minutes early for he in case she, once again, arrives early. As long as this isn’t an inconvenience for me, I am happy to accommodate her without saying a thing.
Trimming your treatment. If a client is really late and I don’t have enough time to do the entire (time-wise) treatment, I will simply trim all the steps to the facial, hopefully in a way that is not noticeable to the client. Usually when people come in late, that completely understand if I have to cut their facial. Cut meaning trim it down to fit into the time frame I have for her now that she’s late. If you are careful, you truly can do the entire facial, albeit cutting things here and there and taking less time with each step, and your client won’t feel or see the difference.
It’s simple to do without removing any critical step from your facial. I don’t linger with any particular step. In other words, I click along from one step to another (not rushing, though). If this late client needs a lot of extractions, that step will have to but trimmed down and if she is really late, it may have to be cut altogether. In this case, say with a 30 minutes late client, I will give her choices in terms of what I cut. If she really came in for extractions, I will cut something before that in order to give myself time to not only extract her, but also put a clay mask on her face afterwards. I just couldn’t extract and have her leave my office without the clay being on her face for at least 5 minutes. Clay calms and soothes and is essential after extractions.
For more information, see:
“Happy Birthday” discounts 
TOWELS. You will need towels,
lots and lots of towels. I don’t think you can have too many towels. I prefer to have two towels resting on my lap.
One fully spread out and the second folded in half the long way. The
second, top towel is “hand towel” size and is what I wipe my hands on. The larger one is a “bath towel” and stays underneath the hand towel to protect my clothes. I don’t wipe anything on this larger, underneath protective towel. Otherwise my clothes could get product on them. When I worked at a fancy spa in Dallas, I
wore very dressy clothing. My friends were always surprised I didn’t
ruin them giving facials. Other than being careful and relatively neat,
without the lap towels, it would be a disaster.
Several years ago I arrived at a chiropractic appointment with a new doctor. Because I wasn’t sure exactly where his office was, I left my home with plenty of time to arrive early or at least on time. The office turned out to be closer than I had expected, and I arrived 15 minutes before my appointment time. I walked into his office, which was a large room without any partitions. In other words, there was no reception area with his personal office in a private area. This doctor happened to be eating his lunch. As I walked in, he said in a rather nasty tone, “You’re early!” I was so taken aback by his tone; I said I could leave and come back, but he told me to take a seat and he’d be with me shortly. To say I felt uncomfortable (and wanted to bolt out the door) is putting it mildly.
You have a choice. You can be irritated about a client coming in super early or late and come across irritated with her or you can be calm and friendly. If she’s really early and you really can’t take her at that time, you can get her a glass of water or tea and ask her to sit in the lobby. Tell her you have a few things to do before you take her, then go into your office and do what you need to do. If she’s late, try not to make her feel like you’re rushing around, hurrying to get her in your chair. You can still get her out in a timely manner but never make her feel like you were upset or annoyed that she was late. You cannot undo that exchange, and even though your client was late, she might not come back if you treat her negatively—even once.
As I’ve mentioned in previous articles, writing down the details is an important process in chart writing. Thinking you will remember may work for you, but it never really has for me. If I don’t write while the client is masking, I will miss certain things that may be important. Once the client has left the building any number of things can happen to distract you from writing on her chart. The phone could ring, a text might come in, your next client might be really early. My point is: write things down when they are fresh in your mind. Otherwise you might forget to remember.
