We all have places we need to be, people we need to meet, and things that we want to do. As we accomplish these things, we want to make a positive impression and feel confident. It might sound cliché, but when we look good, we feel good. What this means can be different for different people. Some people love to wear a suit and tie as armor, while others are most comfortable in loose-fitting athleisure and open-toed shoes.
No matter what your personal style is, one thing we can typically all agree on is that hair is an important part of it. From braids to buzz cuts, hair acts as a form of essential self-expression that lets us communicate our aesthetic and our cultural beliefs. So it should be no surprise that even in the 21st century, barber shops continue to be places where communities gather, which means they're always busy.
This ongoing societal relevance stands as a testament to the skills of barbers and the way they care for people, listen to them, and help them present confidently as they navigate a complex world.
There's a lot that goes into managing a barber shop behind the scenes. Sometimes a barber shop is staffed by a single individual, but it can also be a team of passionate and committed professionals whose availability, shifts, and changes according to the needs of both the business and day-to-day life.
This is why it's essential that barber shops are equipped with a customizable calendar scheduling infrastructure that reflects their unique goals and needs. This might seem like it's something hard to achieve, you might be wondering exactly how it's going to happen.
I can think of three ways that a barbershop could go about achieving this goal.
Option one, your shop could hire someone to manage all of the booking and scheduling for your business.
Option two, your shop could have someone design and code custom software suited to your business needs, and then you could manage the day-to-day maintenance and addition of client appointments through that software.
Option three, you could just sign up for a Cal.com account and create different types of availability schedules and appointment types with a few simple mouse clicks.
Of all of these options, I think that option three is probably the easiest. This is because Cal.com is a scheduling infrastructure project that grows as you do. You can start out using the basic free plan and then upgrade to the team plan in order to access a whole host of benefits.
A simple scheduling solution for barbershops
Cal.com's team plan is ideal for any business that wants to supercharge their scheduling, invest in their brand, and save one of the most valuable commodities of all time. One of the nice things about the team plan is it lets you center your business's brand identity. What this means is that you can remove Cal.com's branding from your booking pages so that the entire appointment scheduling process feels more like an in-house product.
Custom event types
One of the benefits of using the team plan is it comes with three unique event types that are only available to pro users. These event types include managed events, round-robin events, and collective events. Each of these options works in slightly different ways to help increase the impact and efficiency of the way your team operates day to day.
Managed events allow the system administrator to use a no-code interface in order to set the parameters around specific event types. What this means is that you can assign this event to other members on the team and also state the details such as how long the event is, what it consists of, and what availability schedule it references. This is great if you're managing a large shop or multiple shops and you want to ensure consistency of service and practices throughout.
Round-Robin events are an essential part of every business's client satisfaction strategy. Round-Robin scheduling helps to ensure that appointments are assigned as soon as possible based on both the needs of the business and employee availability. This helps to increase efficiency and makes it easy to accommodate last-minute appointments. You can also set specific people as mandatory supervisors or hosts of round-robin events, which can be really useful when incorporating students, apprentices, and new hires within your business workflow.
The final event type, which is available to customers with team-level accounts and above, is called collective events. Collective events let you host in-person or online gatherings and specify all the people who are required to attend the event in order for it to happen. This is super useful for team meetings, training sessions, and charitable community outreach related events like on-location haircuts at seniors' homes.
Advanced routing forms
Cal.com account holders with team-level subscriptions have access to our advanced routing forms. Routing forms are a modular feature which means that they can be enabled on an as-needed basis. You don't have to add routing forms to every event or appointment type; you can just use them when it makes sense to.
Routing forms are simply a set of questions that clients are asked as part of the booking process to ensure they end up exactly where they need to. This makes it easy to ensure that each client ends up booking the appointment with the exactly the right person. This is an awesome time-saver if you have a team of two or more people each of whom has different areas of strength. A key example would be setting up a routing form for specialized appointment types.
For example, if you have one person who specializes in the creation and maintenance of restorative hairline work, you can set up a routing form to help people book appointments with that individual. On another hand, if you have a person whose skill set includes giving haircuts to children or adults with sensory issues, a routing form will help ensure that they are directed to the right party.
In the busy hive of a barbershop, where the buzz of clippers serves as a heartbeat and every strand of hair tells a story, efficiency is the backbone of a smooth operation. Just as a conductor directs an orchestra to ensure every instrument is in harmony, barbershop owners need the right tools to manage their team's schedules and the diverse needs of their clientele.
Cal.com's Team Plan offers just that - a symphony of features tailored to ensure that time-based communication is seamless. It's more than just scheduling; it's about embracing technology so that we can help ensure every individual feels valued and looks their best. In a world where time is precious and first impressions last, don't leave things to chance. Harness the power of efficient scheduling with Cal.com and let your business, and your clients, shine.
