A customer without an email address

Every salon has them. The customer who has been coming for years, always phones for the next appointment and has never given an email address. ‘Email? Don't bother, I'll call.’ Or someone who walks in for a quick trim.

Until now, Stippa couldn't add those customers. A customer without an email address simply didn't exist. Which of course didn't match how a salon works. As of today, the email address is optional.

What changes

When you add a customer in Stippa yourself, the email address can stay empty. A name, and a phone number if you have one, is enough. The same goes for recurring appointments you schedule for a customer.

Online booking still asks for an email address. If you book yourself, you get a confirmation, and it has to go somewhere.

No address? No email

Stippa doesn't try to email a customer without an address. The email is skipped, and that's neatly recorded too. If someone later asks why a customer didn't get a confirmation, the answer is right there.

In the customer list and on the customer's own page, a small grey mark shows when there's no email address. Grey and small on purpose, because a customer without email isn't a problem customer. It's just that regular who prefers to call. From the customer profile, one click takes you to the form to add an address after all.

Two Jans

There is a tricky side. Normally Stippa recognises a customer by their email address, so the same person doesn't end up in the list twice. Without an address that isn't possible. Two customers without an email address are never merged automatically, not even if they're both called Jan.

The phone number is deliberately not used to merge customers either. Better two Jans in the list, which you can merge yourself (opens an external site) if it really is the same Jan, than two different customers quietly becoming one.

There's more on how Stippa works in the case study.