Run a walk-in salon shift

Give walk-ins a clear place in the day

A customer at the door wants to know how to join and what happens next. The person greeting them also needs to know which services can accept another walk-in. Start with those two questions. Claari's pilot connects a QR join page, a private customer ticket and a staff line. Your team still decides when a chair is ready and performs the service.

Before opening

Choose the chairs or periods you will use for walk-ins. Keep booked work in your existing appointment system and leave enough capacity for those commitments. Claari has no verified calendar connection that keeps another booking system synchronized. Do not assume adding a walk-in reserves a chair or changes an appointment.

Set up the location and the services customers can actually request. Give each service a recognizable name, then check which lines should be open. Invite the people who will run the desk and give them the location access they need. Choose one shift lead to answer questions about unresolved visits.

From Locations, get the customer join link and printable QR code. Before printing, confirm that the pilot URL is reachable on a customer's phone. Put the sign where people arrive, with a plain instruction: “Join the line here, or ask us for help.” Make one practice visit and follow its ticket through a staff call. If you use a lobby screen, check the ticket-number display before customers arrive.

Welcome and call each customer

Ask what service the customer needs. They can scan the QR code and join without downloading an app or creating an account. A staff member can also add a walk-in for someone who needs help or has no phone. Confirm the person has one active visit before trying again after an uncertain submission.

Explain that the ticket follows their place in the line; it is not a promised start time. Ask customers without email to keep their ticket page open. Email depends on the configured provider and its actual outcome, so keep a way to call customers in person.

When a professional is ready for the next walk-in, the authorized staff member uses Call next. Keep “called,” “serving” and “done” aligned with what actually happened. If someone does not respond, check with the team and use the available recovery controls according to your shop's agreed practice. Do not mark a haircut complete just to clear the board.

The stylist confirms the requested treatment and checks that they have the skills, time and clean workstation to begin. Record consultation or treatment details in your existing client record, away from the public ticket. At the end, the stylist tells reception what was delivered; reception confirms payment in the POS and offers rebooking in the appointment book. The stylist owns the workstation reset before taking another customer. These are team handoffs, not actions Claari performs automatically.

Hand over and close

At a staff change, review people still waiting, anyone already called and any visit needing attention. Name the person taking over each unresolved issue. The appointment book and checkout system keep their existing jobs; a queue ticket does not prove a sale or update either system.

If a ticket or board will not open, reception uses the agreed manual calling list. Check the original visit before adding someone again, and reconcile the list with people present when access returns. Do not expect automatic offline sync.

Before closing, tell remaining customers what the team can still serve and stop accepting new arrivals when appropriate. Reconcile the active line with the people actually present. Record useful observations about interruptions and abandoned waits separately if you want to assess the pilot. Those are measurements to collect, not savings Claari can promise. Choose a specific shift as the observation period; count “left” as a person who joined but departed before being served, rather than every finished ticket.

Next step: Try the free pilot on a defined walk-in period. Read the daily operations guide, or contact the team before combining it with a wider setup. The staff console currently remains in English.