Appointments take an hour to see through from start to finish (50 minutes of you are lucky). Even when things went great, I would most often get done with one appointment just as the other was rolling in.Let's break down what makes up an appointment
-Greeting/Asking Questions about session (5 min)
-Photography (15 min)
-Editing (10 min)
-Sales (25 min)
-Ringing out (5 min)
With an hour appointment, you have no time for delays. And yet:
-Parents will take 10 minutes to change a kid into their outfit
-Babies will be upset and need time to calm down
-The phone will ring
-Someone will come to pick up their photos on a non pick up day
-The server will crash
-The phone will ring again
-The mom will take forever to choose her photos
-Babies will be unfed
-Parents will have no control over their children
If one appointment runs late? Well there's no time between appointments and you're all alone, so your next appointment is going to go back late. And that will make the next appointment even later. And then in a space where you had a moment of downtime to catch up, the appointment scheduler will add another appointment.
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During Christmas one year, the corporate office was calling around seeing if studios would turn them away or not (posing as customers). They had your schedule in front of them, knowing your Sears store closes at 9 p.m, yet they would still call at 7:30 p.m. and say they wanted to come in at 8 p.m. when there WASN'T an 8 p.m. appointment available (and meanwhile, you're almost an hour behind schedule anyway because you only have 1 camera room and the appointments have been booked 15 minutes apart--and by the way you've been there since 9 a.m. and were supposed to leave at 6 p.m. but couldn't because of the appointment schedule.) So what are you supposed to do? Book them an 8:15 appointment which isn't even possible because you're behind and also know they will take longer than 45 minutes anyway? When corporate called posing as a customer in this situation, we explained that we were very backed up and also that the evening was already booked and that the store closed at 9 p.m.--could we get her in the following day? The caller said she would call back, but never did--she called our District Manager and told her that we turned down an appointment. We had no other choice! Doesn't it seem worse to have someone come in for a time that doesn't even exist and then potentially not even be able to get to them. Come on!
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