Setting Up Your CRM

A CRM starts paying off not when you connect it, but when it has history in it. This guide is about filling the base without a dull evening of spreadsheets, what exactly to record on a client card, and which numbers to look at once a week.

The core idea is simple: almost everything you need is recorded by the system itself — provided every visit goes through it. The work that remains is small, and it is the part that turns a list of names into something worth opening.

What the client base is in Bookly

It is not a separate module you maintain, it is a by-product of your daily work. Every booking creates or updates a person’s card, and every visit adds a line to their history.

What the base consists of:

• The client card — name, contacts, your notes;
• Visit history — what was booked, when, for how much, cancellations included;
• Requests — people who wrote or filled in a form but have not booked yet;
• Behaviour — who has not been in for a while, who comes regularly, who only ever takes one service.

The value is not in the number of records but in the fact that they are connected: contact, money and history sit in one place instead of three.

Step 1. Where the base comes from

The most common beginner mistake is sitting down to migrate old records by hand. It is slow, dull and almost always abandoned halfway. There are cheaper routes.

Online bookings fill the base by themselves

Everyone who books through your page immediately gets a card with their name and contact. After a month of ordinary work you have a list of everyone who came, without typing a single line.

Add the people who phone straight away

When you put a phone booking into the calendar, the card is created by the same action. It is the same work you already do — the result just stops living in a notebook and becomes something you can find six months later.

What to do with an old list

Migrate the active part, not all of it: the people who came in the last six months. The rest are mostly dead contacts that inflate the base and distort your numbers. If the old list is large, take it in stages — regulars first, everyone else later.

A base is valuable for being current, not for being big. Three hundred live contacts are worth more than three thousand where half have changed their number.

Step 2. The client card

The card is everything you know about a person in one place. Part of it the system fills in, part of it you do — and the second part is what separates a regular from a stranger.

What appears on its own

Name, contact, when they were added, every visit with its service and amount, plus cancellations and reschedules. That alone is enough to answer “when was I last here?” before the client finishes asking.

What is worth adding by hand

Record what you would otherwise have to remember:

• allergies, contraindications, sensitivities;
• the shade, formula, size or brand you used;
• what exactly was done last time and how it ended;
• practical details: comes with a child, prefers mornings, is reliably fifteen minutes late.

Notes like these cost ten seconds after a visit and save a minute and a half at the start of the next one — and the client experiences it as attention, not as a system.

What not to write

Judgements, diagnoses, and anything you would not be comfortable showing the client. People have the right to ask what you store about them, and the answer should be an easy one. Write facts, not characterisations.

Step 3. Keeping the base clean

A base decays quietly. Numbers change, people move away, and the same person books twice under two spellings of their name — and none of it announces itself. Ten minutes a month is enough to keep it honest.

Duplicates are the most common problem, and they come from the same person booking as “Kate” and later as “Katherine” with a different number. Merge them as soon as you spot one: early it costs nothing, a year later you are reconstructing which visits belonged to which card.

The second thing worth doing is marking the contacts that no longer work. A phone number that bounced is not neutral — it makes every count you look at slightly wrong, and it wastes the time of whoever tries to call it next.

Do not delete an old client because they have not been in for a year. Mark the contact, keep the history: the history is what makes a return visit easy when it finally happens.

Step 4. Putting history to work

History is not an archive. It exists for two specific actions: preparing for a visit, and bringing back someone who disappeared.

Open the card before the visit, not during it. Ten seconds of reading turns “what did we do last time?” into “the same shade as in March?” — and that is the difference a client actually notices.

Cancellations are useful too: if someone has cancelled an hour before the visit twice in a row, that is not a reason to take offence, it is a reason to ask them for a deposit.

Step 5. Confirmations and reminders

Two automatic messages close most no-show problems. The confirmation goes out right after booking and answers “when, where and how much”. The reminder the day before gives people time to move the visit instead of missing it.

Do not add a third and fourth message just in case. Three emails about one haircut read as spam, and spam gets muted — together with the reminder that actually mattered.

Step 6. Requests and people who have not booked yet

Not everyone is ready to pick a time straight away. Some ask the price, some fill in a form, some ask to be called back. These are clients too — they just need an answer first, and this is where most is lost.

The simple discipline that recovers that money:

• reply within an hour, while the person is still choosing;
• keep requests in stages: new, in progress, booked, closed;
• put the agreed time in the calendar while the conversation is still going;
• never end with “write to me whenever suits you” — that is a dead end.

What to look at weekly

Five minutes a week gives you more than a big report once a quarter.

Four numbers are enough:

• how many bookings came online versus by phone;
• how many visits were cancelled, and how close to the start;
• which services are booked most often;
• who has not been in for more than two or three months.

The first tells you whether the page works. The second tells you whether you need deposits. The third tells you which slots to open first. The fourth is a ready-made list for winning people back.

Common mistakes

Keeping some bookings outside the system — then the history is incomplete and the numbers lie. Migrating an entire old list — then half the contacts are dead. Writing judgements instead of facts — then the card is awkward to show. And the most common one: filling the base and never looking at it.

A CRM does not work on its own. It only puts what you need within reach — the benefit appears when you actually look.