To train a junior to take bookings, give them three things in writing (the menu with real durations, a five-item booking checklist and a short list of what they must never promise), then practise with role-played calls before they take real ones, stay within earshot for their first live calls, and check every booking they make for two weeks. Most booking mistakes by new staff are not about phone manner. They are a wrong duration, a missing mobile, or a time offered that was not really free, and all three are fixed by a checklist and a daily look at the diary.
What to give them on day one
The menu, with times. Not just names and prices, but the real length of each service as it runs in your salon, and which services need a particular stylist or room. A junior who books a balayage into a one-hour slot has not been careless. Nobody told them it takes three.
The booking checklist. Every booking, every time:
- Name, spelled back.
- Mobile, read back.
- Service, in the client's words and in the menu's.
- Day and time, with the stylist.
- Anything to note: first visit, voucher, patch test, photo coming.
The never list. Things a junior should never do on the phone, however friendly the caller: promise a price for something priced at consultation; book a correction or a big change without a consultation; give an opinion on a health question; offer a refund or a discount; or squeeze someone into a gap without checking with the stylist. Each of these gets the same answer: "I'll check with the team and text you today."
How the diary works here
Every salon's diary runs on unwritten rules, and the junior needs them written down: which stylists do colour, how much buffer time follows which services, when processing gaps can be used and when they cannot, and who to ask when unsure. Half an hour going through a real week of the diary, pointing at each booking and saying why it sits where it does, teaches more than any manual.
Show them what a double booking looks like and how one happens, so they recognise the danger when two calls come in at once.
Practise before the real thing
Role-play a set of calls across two or three days, getting harder as you go:
- A regular booking her usual cut.
- A new client wanting highlights, with no other detail.
- Someone moving an appointment.
- Someone cancelling inside your notice window.
- A caller asking the price of something priced at consultation.
- A caller who wants today when you are full.
- A caller asking whether a treatment is safe with a skin condition.
- A complaint.
Play the caller properly, including the vague and the rushed. Afterwards, look at what they wrote down together, line by line against the checklist.
Live calls, then daily checks
For the first few days, have the junior take real calls while a senior is in earshot. After each call, a quick word: one thing that went well and one thing to change. Then let them take calls alone, and check every booking they made at the end of each day for two weeks. Look for durations, missing details and anything on the never list.
Training you ask a junior to do is part of their job, so roster it and pay it like any other working time. If your junior is an apprentice, check the hair and beauty award with Fair Work for the rules on training and supervision.
If an answered line takes the calls nobody can reach, its call summaries are good role-play material: the questions callers really ask, in their own words. See call summaries.
A worked example
Tumbleweed Salon has three stylists and a first-year apprentice, Mia, who started taking calls in her second month. In her first two weeks on the phone, with no training beyond being told to write it in the book, she made 40 bookings. The owner checked them afterwards and found 7 errors: 4 wrong durations, 2 missing mobiles and 1 double booking. That is 7 errors in 40, a rate of 17.5%.
The four wrong durations each ran 30 to 45 minutes over and pushed into the next client. The double booking cost a regular's goodwill and a free treatment to make up for it. The two missing mobiles meant two clients who could not be reminded, and one of them did not turn up.
The owner then spent two hours on the checklist, the never list and a diary walk-through, and an hour over three days on role-play. In the next two weeks Mia made 50 bookings with 2 errors, both minor: a misspelt name and a note left off. The error rate fell to 4%. Three hours of the owner's time bought a junior who could be trusted with the phone on a Saturday.
Mistakes to avoid
- Training by osmosis. Overhearing others on the phone for a month teaches habits, including the bad ones.
- No list of what not to promise. Juniors want to help, and helping often means saying yes. Give them a safe phrase for the things only you decide.
- Checking only when something goes wrong. Daily checks in the first fortnight catch a pattern before a client does.
- Leaving out the why. A junior who knows why a colour needs a buffer can work out the next case alone.
- Different rules from different seniors. If two stylists tell the junior two ways to book a colour, write down one and make it the rule.
What to do this week
- Write the menu with real durations and which stylist does what.
- Print the five-item booking checklist and the never list, and put them by the phone.
- Schedule the diary walk-through and three short role-play sessions.
- Set a reminder to check the junior's bookings at the end of each day for two weeks.
- Read the glossary entry on a booking request and the guide on first-visit calls, so the junior's questions for new clients match yours.