There is a specific feeling: foils half in, colour on the gloves, the client telling you about her sister's wedding, and the phone on the desk starting to ring. You have about four rings to decide. Answer and the client in the chair waits with colour processing while you talk about someone else's appointment. Let it ring and the caller may be a new client who tries the salon down the road instead. Most stylists have made this decision a thousand times and never settled it. Here is a way to settle it.
The client in the chair comes first, always
Settle this first and the rest follows. The person who is paying you right now, whose colour is on a timer, is not to be put on hold for a phone call. If you have no one else to answer, the phone does not get answered mid-service, and you need another way to catch the call. Everything below is about that other way.
If you have a second person
A receptionist, an apprentice, a stylist between clients. The rule is that whoever is free picks up by the third ring, and the stylist in the middle of a colour is never the one. Write it down and put it on the wall if you have to. A shared understanding beats a shared glance across the salon while the phone rings.
Give the second person a short script for the things they cannot answer: I am not sure about that one, I will check with Renee and text you. Take the name and number, write it on the pad by the phone, and move on. Nobody needs to know the answer to everything; they need to know how to take a message.
If you are alone
A solo operator, or a two-person salon where both are mid-service, has three choices: voicemail, a diverted line, or an answering service that is a person.
Voicemail is the default and it is the worst of the three. People do not leave messages anymore. They hang up at the greeting and ring the next salon. If you must use it, make the greeting short and send them to your booking page: we are with clients; request a time at this link and we will text you back.
A diverted line is what Glow Line is. Your mobile diverts unanswered calls to a number where an assistant answers in an Australian voice, says it is the virtual assistant for the team, gives the caller your prices and hours from the list you saved, and takes a booking request or a message. When the call ends you get a text. You read it at the basin and confirm by text. The client in the chair never knew the phone rang.
A human answering service costs more and knows less about your menu, and you still get the message later. For some salons the voice on the other end being a person matters enough to pay for it.
What the caller actually wants
Most calls are one of five things: a price, a booking, a change to a booking, your hours, or a question about a product or a voucher. All five can be handled by someone who has your menu, your hours and a few notes in front of them, and none of them need the stylist's hands. The assistant on a diverted line has exactly that in front of it, and nothing else, which is why it works for these and says so when it is asked something outside them.
Setting expectations with the caller
Whatever answers, the caller should hear two things early: that they are not speaking with the stylist, and when they will hear back. Glow Line's opening line does the first in its first sentence. For the second, the assistant says the team will confirm by text, and you make that true by texting back within a couple of hours. A caller who has been told to expect a text waits for it. One who has heard nothing rings again or rings elsewhere.
The text back
Texting is better than ringing back for almost every salon call. It can be done between clients in thirty seconds, the client can answer when she is free, and both of you have the time in writing. Keep a few saved replies on your phone: a confirmation with day, time and service; a could not fit that time, how about this; a price reply with the menu line pasted in.
Your mobile stays yours
One quiet reason stylists answer mid-colour is that the business number is their mobile and the alternative is giving it out to nobody. With a divert, the mobile is still the number clients ring; it just hands off when you cannot pick up, and takes the call back when you dial the off code. Clients never learn a second number and you never read a business text at midnight if you do not want to.
Try it for a fortnight
Set the divert, leave the phone face down during colour, and read the texts at the basin. Count how many calls you would have missed and how many became bookings. Then decide. The decision most stylists come to is that the client in the chair was always the right one to look after, and that the phone was never really the problem; the lack of a way to catch it was.