Beauty salon clients write when it suits them, not when the salon is open. We mapped 72,084 client messages from 50 salons in August 2026 by hour. 27% arrived before 9:00 or after 19:00, and 43% once weekends are included. Over the month, 442 conversations started outside working hours got no reply at all, and where only staff can reply, an evening message waits until morning.
In brief
- Clients send 27% of messages before 9:00 or after 19:00. Add Saturday and Sunday daytime, and 43% arrive outside weekday working hours.
- Of 6,182 conversations started outside working hours, 442 (7%) went unanswered: neither staff nor AI replied. In another 1,900, only the AI replied.
- Half of staff first replies arrive within 7 minutes, but one in ten comes more than 17 hours later: without AI, an evening message waits until morning. An auto-reply with an online booking link solves part of the problem for free; an AI receptionist replies and books at any hour.
In this article
- Where the data comes from
- When do clients message a beauty salon?
- How many messages arrive at weekends?
- How many salon clients go unanswered?
- How fast do salon staff reply to clients?
- What do unanswered messages cost?
- Which messengers do salon clients use?
- How to reply to beauty salon clients after hours
- What this looks like in an eight-salon chain
- Frequently asked questions
Where the data comes from
This is not a survey or a market estimate. We took 50 beauty salons that work on the Solwees platform and all their client conversations for August 2026: nails, hair, cosmetology, laser hair removal and barbershops. Some of these salons use an AI receptionist; in the rest, staff reply themselves from a shared inbox.
Every message is assigned to an hour in the salon’s local time. Ukraine, Spain, Uzbekistan, Hungary, the UAE, Germany, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, the Netherlands and Slovakia each count in their own time zone, not in UTC.
Window: 1–31 August 2026. 50 salons, 14,662 conversations, 72,084 client messages, 30,769 AI replies, 56,614 staff messages. A conversation is one client’s thread in one channel. Working hours: Monday to Friday, 9:00–19:00 local time; everything else, including whole weekends, counts as outside working hours. Percentages are rounded so that each table adds up to 100%.
When do clients message a beauty salon?
The chart shows how many messages arrive in each hour of the day. Dark bars mark the hours before 9:00 and after 19:00.
Peak at 12:00: 6,077 messages. From 10:00 to 16:00 there is a plateau of 5,252 to 6,077 an hour. Dark bars add up to 19,550 messages, or 27%. The chart combines all days of the week, weekends included.
Three things stand out.
Morning starts before opening. From 6:00 to 9:00, 4,725 messages arrive, 7% of the total. People write on their way to work while they still remember they wanted to book. If the salon opens at 9:00, such a message waits up to three hours.
The evening doesn’t end at 19:00. From 19:00 to midnight, 13,055 messages arrive, 18% of the volume, almost three times the whole pre-opening morning. At 19:00 there are 3,636 messages, at 20:00 another 3,252, and at 23:00 still 1,407.
The night isn’t empty. From midnight to 6:00, 1,770 messages arrive, 2% of the volume. Not many, but in the morning that client will first see either a reply or silence.
How many messages arrive at weekends?
Saturday and Sunday bring 21% of messages, one in five. Many salons are open on Saturday, so weekends have their own row in the table. If your salon works on Saturdays, look at the 27% rather than the 43%. Even on a working Saturday, the receptionist is often alone at the desk and busy with clients.
| When the message arrives | Messages | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Mon–Fri, 9:00–19:00 | 41,379 | 57% |
| Mon–Fri, before 9:00 and after 19:00 | 15,436 | 22% |
| Saturday and Sunday, all day | 15,269 | 21% |
| Total | 72,084 | 100% |
How many salon clients go unanswered?
In August, 6,182 conversations started outside working hours. Here is how they ended.
In 3,840 conversations a staff member replied, in 1,900 only the AI, in 442 nobody did.
442 conversations, 7% of all evening, night and weekend requests, got no reply. These are salons where the AI isn’t connected or only runs during set hours, and no staff member answered. The client may have written again, called, or booked at another salon. The data doesn’t show that; it only shows that nobody replied.
The 1,900 conversations without staff don’t mean receptionists do a poor job. In salons with AI, staff often don’t write at night because the client has already had a reply and been offered a time. In effect, the AI took over that night-time load.
How fast do salon staff reply to clients?
We measured the time from a client’s first message to the first staff reply in the same conversation.
During working hours, seven minutes looks good. The problem is the tail: one in ten staff first replies arrives more than 17 hours later. Among conversations started outside working hours, 652 got their first staff reply after more than 8 hours. Those messages were only picked up in the morning.
What this means for the client depends on the salon. In salons with AI, the client had already been answered and offered a time. In salons without AI, they waited, and an evening message answered in the morning is often no longer relevant: overnight, the client may have booked elsewhere.
What do unanswered messages cost?
We won’t calculate your lost revenue for you: it depends on your average ticket and how often a conversation ends in a booking. But with your own numbers it takes five minutes.
Illustrative example, not a forecast. In our sample, a conversation has 5 client messages on average, and 42% of conversations start outside working hours. A salon with 400 client messages a month has about 80 conversations, about 34 of which start in the evening, at night or at the weekend. Say one in five of them doesn’t turn into a booking without a quick reply. That is 7 bookings a month. With an average ticket of €40, the salon loses €280 a month, or €3,360 a year. Plug in your own ticket and share.
A benchmark from the same data: where the AI handled the conversation, 2,144 of 6,852 conversations, or 31%, ended in a booking it created itself.
Which messengers do salon clients use?
Most conversations start in WhatsApp (38%) and Instagram (36%), followed by Telegram (15%) and Facebook (10%); calls and website chat account for about 1%. Individual chains look different, so we cover channels by country in a separate article.
The takeaway for this article: whoever answers in the evening needs to see every channel in one inbox. Otherwise they check WhatsApp while the client wrote on Instagram.
How to reply to beauty salon clients after hours
First, check how big the problem is for you. It takes about fifteen minutes.
- Open the last two weeks of conversations in all channels.
- Mark messages that arrived after closing and on days the salon is closed.
- Count how many of them waited until the next morning for a reply.
- Check how many of those clients ended up booking.
If more than a couple of conversations a week wait until morning, pick an approach. There are three, and they can be combined.
1. An on-call receptionist on their phone
Set up an on-call rota instead of “whoever sees it”. Agree on a rule, for example: first reply within 15 minutes until 22:00. Keep ready answers to common questions at hand: prices, address, parking, free slots tomorrow.
This works while message volume is low. The downsides: people get tired, weekends still slip, and conversations on a personal phone don’t stay in the salon’s history.
2. An auto-reply with an online booking link
Better than silence: the client sees they’ve been heard. Make the auto-reply useful by adding your Altegio online booking link. Some clients will book themselves without waiting for the morning. Scheduled away messages can be set up in WhatsApp Business, in the Meta Business Suite inbox for Instagram and Facebook, and in Telegram Business.
The downside: an auto-reply can’t answer “does Anna have a slot on Saturday after 16:00?”. That client still waits until morning.
3. An AI receptionist that books into Altegio
It replies within seconds at any hour, sees staff schedules, services and prices in Altegio, offers free slots and creates the booking directly in the calendar. In our sample, the AI created 2,418 bookings on its own in August and handled 88% of its conversations without handing over to a person. When a question is beyond its knowledge, such as a medical one, it hands the conversation to a receptionist with full context.
The AI doesn’t replace the receptionist: it covers evenings, nights and weekends and takes first replies off the team. We’ll look at exactly what it does on Altegio, and what it doesn’t, in the next article.
| Approach | Nights and weekends | Books by itself | Team workload |
|---|---|---|---|
| On-call receptionist | Replies until they get tired | Yes, manually | High |
| Auto-reply with a link | Replies with one message | No, the client books via the link | None |
| AI receptionist | Answers the actual question | Yes, into the Altegio calendar | Complex questions only |
What this looks like in an eight-salon chain
LASERGOOD is a laser cosmetology chain: eight salons in eight Ukrainian cities, each with its own social media pages and its own Altegio calendar. In August, the AI receptionist created 756 bookings across the chain by itself. How a booking reaches the right branch, and when the AI calls in a person, we’ll cover in a separate case study.
Frequently asked questions
When do clients message beauty salons most?
Most messages arrive between 10:00 and 16:00, peaking at 12:00. But clients send 27% of messages before 9:00 or after 19:00, and another 21% on Saturday and Sunday.
How should a salon reply to clients at night and at weekends?
There are three approaches: an on-call receptionist, an auto-reply with an online booking link, and an AI receptionist that replies and books into the calendar. Set up the auto-reply in any case; it’s free.
Does a salon need an auto-reply on WhatsApp and Instagram?
Yes, if clients write after closing. Put your online booking link in it so some clients book themselves. It won’t answer questions about a specific stylist or slot.
Is this data only about beauty salons?
Yes. The sample includes only salons: nails, hair, cosmetology, laser hair removal and barbershops. Clinics, restaurants and hotels were not included.
How was “outside working hours” defined?
Monday to Friday, 9:00 to 19:00 in each salon’s time zone. Everything else, including whole weekends, counted as outside working hours. If your salon is open until 21:00 and on Saturdays, your share will be lower, which is why the article separately shows the 27% of messages that arrived before 9:00 and after 19:00.
Doesn’t the AI in some salons skew the picture?
Partly. In salons with AI, staff write less at night and reply later because the client has already been answered, and clients may be more willing to write where replies come fast. That’s why we don’t call the 1,900 conversations without staff a failure, and we don’t present staff reply time as client waiting time.
What does the AI do when it doesn’t know the answer?
It hands the conversation to a receptionist and tells the client a person will reply. If it’s night, the reply comes in the morning. The question and the receptionist’s answer are added to the knowledge base, so next time the AI answers it itself. The exception: medical questions and complaints always go to a person.
Solwees and Altegio. Solwees connects to your Altegio and takes over client messaging completely.
All channels in one inbox. Instagram, WhatsApp and WhatsApp calls, Telegram, Viber, TikTok, Facebook, phone, email and website chat. No message gets lost between channels.
AI receptionist. Replies to each client in their language, sees your Altegio schedule instantly, books into the calendar, and adds the client to the waitlist when there are no slots. Takes over most of a receptionist’s routine work.
Clients show up and come back. The agent sends visit reminders to cut no-shows, messages clients who haven’t booked in a while, and collects reviews after the visit to keep the salon’s rating high.
Broadcasts on WhatsApp and Telegram. On WhatsApp, officially, with Meta-approved templates, up to 1,000 recipients a day to start. The number won’t be banned just for sending broadcasts, as happens with unofficial services, and there’s no long wait for templates. On Telegram, via the salon’s bot. We handle all the setup for your agent.
Connection is free and we set everything up for your salon. Test it for 14 days on real bookings before you decide to pay.
Next in the series
What an AI Receptionist Actually Does on Altegio (and What It Doesn’t)
An honest breakdown of what the AI handles on its own, when it calls in a receptionist, and where its limits are. Link to be added after publication.
