An after-hours call is any call that comes in while the business is closed: before opening, after the last client has gone, on a closed day or over a public holiday. For salons, studios and clinics these calls are rarely urgent. Most come from people who finally have a free minute, at night or on a Sunday, and want to book, move an appointment, cancel tomorrow's slot or check what time you open. They do not expect the owner to answer. They expect a way to leave the request and a reply early on the next working day.
In practice
Count them before deciding what to do. A two-chair nail salon that reads its phone log for a month might find 22 calls outside hours: 13 wanting a booking, 5 cancelling or moving, 4 asking the hours. If the 13 booking calls became 9 appointments at an average of $65, that is $585 of work that arrived while the lights were off. The cancellations matter too. A cancellation left at 8 pm for a 10 am slot is your earliest chance to offer that chair to someone on your waitlist.
Decide what counts as notice. If your policy asks for 24 hours, write down whether a message left at 9 pm on Monday counts as notice for 9 am on Wednesday. It should, and saying so keeps the rule fair to both sides.
Then answer every after-hours message in a fixed window the next day, such as before the first client. A caller who has heard nothing by lunchtime usually rings somewhere else.
In Glow Line
On the Line and Salon plans the assistant answers at any hour. It tells a caller your hours for each day, takes a booking request for a time you are open, or takes a message, and the text reaches you straight away to read when you choose. Your saved hours decide when you are closed; see the answered line.