Mike’s Hair Studio Booking Changes
Mike’s Hair Studio is no longer using Square Appointments. The app remains accessible but all requests will be responded via email with an instruction to book via my website. The calendar at Square is not synchronized with the current platform so it will appear that I am available all day every day. I no longer receive Square notifications. It is hoped that everyone reads the email sent in response to booking requests.
I was continually surprised to learn how many clients didn’t even know I had a website. I built Square Appointments into my website and I assumed all bookings originated here. I had forgotten about the Google Business booking button. Facebook kept their booking button hidden from me (a client had to show me how their view of my page differed from my own). Online booking is now available only via my website.
Automatic Account Creation with Universal Sign In
The new booking platform allows you to stay on my website. A client profile is created for you upon submission of your first booking request and you are automatically signed in to allow you to proceed to My Bookings to complete your profile, if you like. Sign in at every visit so you can view and manage your past and future appointments. The top menu item, Sign In will take you to My Bookings ( / Booking / Appointment Request / My Bookings). Read on to find out about the booking features available to you.
You can submit booking requests without signing in.
Very much like my previous booking platform clients can submit booking requests without signing in or even being aware that they can sign in to modify their personal details and communications preferences.
Clients with Future Appointments Migrated
Many clients were migrated to the new platform (all those with membershps and/or future appointments at the time of transition). If you do not receive an email requesting to set a password for your account after submitting a booking request for the first time then your profile was likely migrated manually and you will need to click Lost Your Password at My Bookings to set a password (you can Sign in with Google without setting a password). Be sure to update my contact to allow my messsages to bypass your junk filter if they do not arrive to your inbox.
Sign In is Easy and Saves Time
Users with Google profiles are able to Sign in with Google with just a single tap. I could have kept the booking platform separate from the website but chose to integrate accounts since so many clients use Gmail addresses and would likely appreciate signing in with just a tap.
You don’t need to sign in to submit booking requests but it saves you time by completing your personal details for you when submitting booking requests, and allows you to cancel or reschedule future appointments as well as repeat a previous or future booking via My Bookings. When you use the Book Again or Reschedule features all you need to do is select a date and time. Using Book Again the service is automatically selected and your contact details are automatically completed at the final step. Using Reschedule simply asks for a new date and time.
Notifications
If you don’t want to receive SMS notifications you can remove your mobile number at My Bookings. If you don’t want to self-serve and sign in to your profile then you can ask me to remove your mobile for you. You can always add your mobile number back or update a new mobile number to your profile (or ask me to). Either change will not affect any currently scheduled appointments.
If you don’t want to receive email notifications you will need to ask me to replace your email address with a :blackhole: address. You can still sign in with the email address or username associated with your profile but you will not be able to reset your password without assistance.
Don’t Let Me End Up in Your Junk Folder
There is a good chance that booking, shopping and correspondence email originating from my domain might end up in your junk folder if you do not import my contact to your address book (or update my contact manually). Your contacts are allowed to bypass your junk filter on mobile devices. If you have a desktop you can whitelist the mikeshairstudio.ca domain in your email application settings.
Small business like mine tend to rent space on shared servers. This is problematic for my email reputation score. I don’t have the capital to throw at premium solutions so I ask you to support my small business by doing what you must to allow my email to reach you. Tap once to download my contact, then tap again to import using your contacts app. It’s not a big ask.
Gmail, Yahoo and iCloud users don’t seem to have a problem while Exchange, Hotmail and Outlook tend to junk mail even from major vendors. I have done everything I can to ensure delivery, such as using SMTP versus the website’s internal mailer, and setting strict mail delivery rules within DNS via arguments including DKIM, SPF and DMARC. I note that Square Appointments did not even bother to use these standard frameworks but spending thousands per month on an exclusive mail server evidently has its benefits.
Origination
Email notifications will always originate at booking@mikeshairstudio.ca.
SMS notifications will always originate at +1 289 402 8719.
I can only send automated SMS notifications to Canadian mobile subscribers. US and other international subscribers will need to ensure they have imported my contact or whitelisted the mikeshairstudio.ca domain to receive email notifications if they are not naturally delivered to their inbox.
Note: Your calls and SMS messages to Mike’s Hair Studio should be directed to the business number only at +1 289 438 2276. The SMS notifications sender is outbound-only.
Notification Frequency
Notifications are sent via email and SMS at 3 days, 1 day, and 4 hours prior to your appointment. The one day notification is sent 26 hours prior to your appointment to provide two hours to allow you to cancel your appointment before risking invocation of the cancellation policy. You can cancel an appointment up to 30 minutes in advance via My Bookings but the cancel fee is charged at under 24 hours in advance and the full service fee is charged at under 4 hours (fees are waived if slot gets filled).
Known Issues
There is a known bug in the platform that I hope will be resolved in a near future release. All “missed” notifications will be sent at once upon approval of a booking request. For example, if you book two hours in advance you will receive all three reminder notifications at once. I very much look forward to this being resolved.
If you have any problems with the booking platform please reach out to let me know. If the website fails to load correctly, refresh the page in your browser. Incorrect rendering can occur after a major core update if your cached page contains code that has been updated on the server. Booking and shopping links are not cached by the server (you are always sent the current version of a page) but your browser may cache the pages on your device nonetheless (your browser may ignore the cache header and cache a page anyway for performance).