Today we’re going to talk about the sneaky clients. I’ve seen this come up in our Facebook community for The Lashpreneur Society a couple of times where people are like,“Gosh, this client, she just keeps booking the WRONG appointment!”  or “She’s trying to book a cheaper appointment when she should be booking a full set!” or just all of these nuances that happen with online booking specifically. 

So what do you do as a business owner when you think that clients are trying to GET AWAY with cheaper services, or undercut the policies that  you have in place?

You Have More Power And Control Over The Situation Than You Might Think

So what usually ends up happening is an event happens – we will just use the example of a client booking a fill when it’s been six weeks since our last appointment, so it should definitely be a full set. The lash artist or the service provider sees that and they go:

“Oh that Becky, she keeps doing that!”

“She keeps trying to weasel her way in or get a fill when it really should be a full set.”

“I know I’ve talked to her about this before!”

We have all these assumptions about what the client’s intention was and we make it mean something that maybe it shouldn’t mean –  like she’s trying to do it intentionally, or she’s cheap. You probably have some version of an experience with a client booking for an incorrect service. So what do we do about that? Do we tear her apart? Do we shame her? Do we just suck it up and let her have that service and not address it because we’re afraid of confrontation?

No, I don’t think that’s the way to do it. I tend to CHOOSE to come from a place of thinking – I’m not on my client’s mind 24/7 and she may not even be aware of my policies. If I haven’t communicated them, she may not have known when to come in. She just knows, “it’s been a while since I’ve had my last appointment and my lashes are looking a little sparse. I should go book”.  

And yeah, she may be choosing the cheaper appointment because, why would anybody choose to pay more for what they don’t know they should be booking? So I’m going to err on the side of client confusion and a lack of client education FIRST. My default reaction is – she booked it by mistake, she must not have known that she actually should have booked a full set.

So with that in mind, it already changes my emotional state in looking at the result that I’m getting, which is a client booking an incorrect appointment. Instead of responding with “shame on you”, or sucking it up and just giving the appointment that she booked – I’m actually going to reach out to the client just say, “Hey, I noticed that you booked X appointment and it’s been six weeks since your last appointment so you’re actually due for a full set. I’m gonna go ahead and cancel your current appointment and reschedule it or rebook it for a full set. If you don’t have time that day, I’m gonna go ahead and cancel this appointment and I need you to go back in and book a full set.” 

The fear that tends to come up at this point is that she’s not going to book the full set because it’s more expensive than the fill that she booked – that is OKAY.  Chances are this client was not all that serious about continuing investing in this treatment otherwise she should have pre-booked.

There SHOULD Be Consequences For Undesired Behavior

There has to be a consequence for them to continue to do the desired behavior – which is them pre-booking their next appointments.  At least one appointment ahead, but obviously if we can get two or three – great – and if not, then we need to tell them by what date they need to book their fill appointment in order to still be considered a fill.  

When we set that expectation at the end of their previous appointment, then all we need to do as service providers and business owners is just keep them accountable and reiterate what we’ve already reiterated and enforce it, so it doesn’t become this moral “I don’t want to upset a client” thing. You are just operating in integrity and following through with what you have ALREADY established as the expectation.

So I’m gonna go back to the checkout process – of said client who ended up booking the wrong appointment – and I’m going to look back at if I communicated WHEN she needed to come back in in order to still be considered a fill. Now in my business, I did that at every single point. My goal was to get every single client to pre-book at least one appointment every time they checked out. If they couldn’t, because some people don’t know their schedule that far in advance, I would always try to advise them and educate them as a best practice – it’s better to have something on the schedule and change it than to have nothing and get to a point where they may need a full set instead of a fill because you’re getting booked up. 

So you always want to educate the client on what is the best practice and your recommendation because you are the expert of your business. It is in your best interest and in the client’s best interest to follow what you have to say and for you to communicate that. 

If you want to take it one step further,  you can follow up after maybe a week and say, “Hey, I noticed you haven’t booked your next appointment.  This is just a friendly reminder that you need to book your next fill by June 30. I’m running out of appointment slots. So I want to just give you a quick heads up to go ahead and book that now, here’s the link” – and if she chooses not to book out in advance, that’s NOT UP TO YOU to make up for. 

If she couldn’t get her ‘ish together to be able to book an appointment on your schedule in advance when you educated her properly on it – sorry, now it’s a full set. 

Your role is then to reiterate, “Unfortunately because you didn’t book in advance, you now don’t have enough extensions remaining to be considered a fill, and we’re going to need to do the full set.”  You may lose that client, and that’s okay, because that is the natural consequence of somebody not following your advice and your guidance as the expert business owner. 

Ideally, we want people in our business that can create stability for the business, meaning that they want to continue to come back for their recurring fill appointments, time and time and time again. So if we have people in our business that are not that type of client – and they self-weed themselves out – because they don’t follow policies, they don’t follow your advice, they’re not pre-booking out, and then it’s too late. 

Now all of a sudden they want you to accommodate their poor decision making. That’s not something that you have to or should accommodate.  Even if you made an exception for that one client, you have now made it clear that you will make up for whatever policy she violates. And it’s hard to have stability in your business, when you are actively self-sabotaging what you’re trying to create. 

So we can take the meaning of a client’s lack of booking or booking the wrong appointment and we can put ourselves back into an EMPOWERED state instead of a victim state and look at what actions we took along the way during their checkout or client education or aftercare to make sure that we’ve communicated what the expectation is. 

That they come in by XYZ date and we’re clear about what that exact date is. And then if you want to go a step further and remind them if you haven’t seen their appointment come through in a week and they have another week to go, to give them a heads up. That’s totally optional. 

So that’s my advice on how to handle a client booking an incorrect appointment. Even if they are trying to be cheap and get the cheaper appointment and not follow your directions, it is NOT in the best interest of the business to enable them. So I would go ahead and go under the assumption that they booked the incorrect appointment because they didn’t know what appointment to book. Cancel the appointment and rebook the correct appointment. 

Are you struggling with policies in your business? Maybe you don’t know which ones you should have or you’re not exactly sure how to word it so that it’s clear and enforceable? Well you’re in luck! I have my sample policies that worked extremely well in my business that eliminated 99.999% of client problems BEFORE they occurred.  

To check out what policies worked well in my business – download it for free here

Episode Highlights:

Simple mindset shift to help you keep your cool when a client books a wrong appointment.

Steps to take when an incorrect booking happens – and what to say to your client.

Do this IMMEDIATELY if you think your client is unhappy with her results.