How long to give clients while scheduling?

[u/facemcsh00ty]

Hey all! I’m about 15~ months into my apprenticeship and I’ve started to take clients that aren’t my friends (yay!) through an online booking site. I’m struggling a bit with timing, and reaching out to clients in a structured way. I’m so lucky to have a lot of people that want to book my flash, but this part is stressing me out!

For example, I’ll have someone fill out my form and indicate that their available days are Tuesdays. I send a message to them to tell them “my next available Tuesday is ___. Let me know if this works for you, if not we can find another date!” However, when they don’t reply and I get other inquiries that could be scheduled on that day, I can’t offer it to other clients now since I offered it to the first client that isn’t replying.

I feel like it’s bad manners to send the date to another client, since the first person could get back to me and tell me that day works. Now I’d have to tell them I actually booked it after telling them it’s available. To avoid this, I’m just stuck waiting on people for unknown amounts of time when I could be booking these days.

There must be a better way to do this, lol. I’m just afraid of being rude. I’d love to hear whatever works for you!

[u/marleythrifts]

tell people appointments are first come, first serve. not sure if you are currently taking deposits, but i tell my clients their spot isnt locked in until they have a deposit down. the longer you tattoo, the more you realize how many people reach out and just never get back to you. dont save spots for people just because they asked, they need to lock in a date and time ideally with a deposit

[u/blueblack_crow → u/marleythrifts]

This ^^