How to explain changes and cancellations at your shop

Almost every cancellation policy you read in a barbershop window is written for the customer who is not going to turn up. That is why it reads as a warning: "if you do not give 24 hours notice the service will be charged." The problem is that the people who actually read it are mostly the customers who do turn up, and the tone tells them something you did not mean to say.

A useful policy does three things. It tells the customer what to do if their plans change, it tells them how late they can do it without consequences, and it tells them what happens if they do not. In that order. The consequence is the last line, not the first.

Four decisions to make before you write anything

1. The notice period. How many hours in advance you want to know. The question that answers it is not "what feels fair" but "how much notice do I need to fill that gap?" If you sell almost every afternoon slot on the day, six hours may be plenty. If your calendar fills a week ahead, twenty-four hours is not enough.
2. The channel. Where you want to be told. Pick one, and make it the easiest for the customer rather than the most convenient for you. A policy that demands a phone call during business hours, at a shop that does not answer the phone mid-haircut, is asking not to be told.
3. The consequence. What happens if they tell you late or not at all. It can be nothing, it can be losing priority for peak-time bookings, or it can be an amount. Not every shop needs the third.
4. The exception. What you do about the genuinely unforeseeable. Deciding it in advance saves you improvising in front of a customer, and saves you applying different standards depending on the kind of day you are having.

Editable template

Change what is in brackets. It is written to be read aloud in ten seconds.

Changes and cancellations

If you cannot make it, let us know at least [24] hours ahead via [channel]. That way we can offer your slot to someone else and find you another day without any trouble.

If you tell us less than [24] hours ahead, we will still try to move you, but the slot may already be gone.

If you do not come and do not tell us, [consequence: for example, we will ask you to confirm the day before on your next booking].

If something urgent comes up, write to us and we will sort it out.

Where it has to be to be any use

A condition the customer discovers after the fact is not a condition, it is a surprise. It has to be visible before they book and in the same place where they book:

• On the page or profile where appointments are requested, at the confirmation step.
• In the booking confirmation message, summarised in one line.
• In the bio of the social profile, if that is where people write to you.
• In the shop itself, if most of your bookings happen in person.

Keeping it only in an Instagram story that expires in twenty-four hours is the same as not having one.

The consolidated text is on the BOE, in Spanish.

How to apply it without it becoming a fight

A policy is applied by a person, not by a sign. Three internal agreements that help:

• Whoever is at the counter does not negotiate the exception there. If an exception is going to be made, the same person always makes it, so it does not depend on who happens to be standing there.
• It is said beforehand, not afterwards. If a customer rings to move an appointment four hours ahead, the line is "we will move it this time, just so you know we ask for 24 hours notice", not a telling-off.
• It is written down. A customer who misses once is a customer. One who misses four times is a pattern, and you will not remember it unless you record it.

Check whether it works

• ✓How many notices arrived within the period and how many outside it
• ✓How many slots given up in time were actually filled
• ✓Whether the notices arrive by the channel you asked for or by another one
• ✓Whether anyone has stopped booking since you put it up
• ✓A date to look at this again

The second point is the one that sets the notice period. If slots given up with 24 hours notice always get filled and the ones given up with 12 do too, your real notice period is 12, and you can relax it. That is a cheap way to be better liked.

Where it gets published and where it gets recorded

You publish the policy yourself, on your own channels, with whatever tool you have. The notices and the exceptions get recorded wherever you keep appointments, and that is where a trail matters: a cancelled appointment is marked cancelled, not deleted.

If you are comparing tools with this in mind, three specific questions. Whether you can show your terms at the moment the customer books, and not only afterwards. Whether the system stores who cancelled, when and why. And whether it lets you tell a cancellation given in time apart from a no-show, because if it lumps them together you will not be able to measure any of the above.

What no tool solves is the legal part. A product that offers to charge automatically for a cancellation has not checked your local rules for you. That check is still yours.

Carry on with how to measure the gaps before you change the policy, who on the team can move an appointment, what to write in the confirmation message, and how to choose and roll out a booking calendar.