No-shows quietly cost a salon a full day of revenue a week. The chair sits empty during a slot that a real customer wanted, your stylist gets paid for waiting, and the person who didn't turn up rarely gets a follow-up. Four levers cut this down fast without scaring off good customers.
1. Send a real reminder, not just a confirmation
A booking confirmation on Monday and nothing else until Friday's appointment is a recipe for a forgotten slot. Enable both the 24-hour and the 2-hour reminder on GlamBook so the customer hears from you twice: once far enough out that they can move it, and once close enough that they actually leave the house. The 2-hour ping matters most; that's the window where the appointment either happens or doesn't.
2. Make rescheduling one tap
Half of no-shows are people who couldn't be bothered to call. If the reminder message has a direct link to reschedule ("something came up? move your appointment here"), those become reschedules instead of empty chairs. On GlamBook the reminder templates already include this link; check that it's turned on for every service category.
3. Introduce a deposit for high-cost services
Long or expensive services (colour, keratin, rebonding, wedding packages) benefit from a 20% deposit at booking. It sounds aggressive but customers who genuinely want the appointment aren't put off, and the ones who wouldn't have shown up self-filter out. Keep haircuts and blowouts deposit-free so casual bookings stay easy.
On GlamBook you can toggle deposits per service, not per salon, so this doesn't have to be all-or-nothing.
4. Follow up on the no-show the same day
A polite message that afternoon ("sorry we missed you today, want to rebook?") does two things. It recovers about a third of no-shows as rebookings, and it tells the customer you noticed. Silence teaches them that no-shows are consequence-free. GlamBook's client page shows attendance history at a glance; keep an eye on the clients who no-show twice, they need a different conversation.
The rule of thumb
A healthy salon runs at 5% or lower no-show rate. If yours is higher, the first place to look is whether your reminder cadence is actually being sent (check the message log under Settings → Notifications). Reminders that never left the server won't save any bookings.