Booking
A calendar that is right when you look at it.
Most booking systems fail for one of two reasons: they offer times you cannot actually do, or they need you to live inside a new app. This one reads the calendar you already use and allows for the drive.
A booking, start to finish
Booked, confirmed and reminded, without a single phone call.
- Trigger
They ask for a time
From the website, a text, or the missed-call thread.
- Logic
Qualified first
What the job is, where it is, and whether it is something you actually do.
- Decision
Is this a job for you?
Inside the area, inside the trade.
- Yes, offer real timestaken
- No, say so politely and stop
- Action
Three times offered
From your actual calendar, with travel time already allowed for.
- Action
Booked and confirmed
In the calendar, with the address, the job and their number on it.
- Action
Reminded the day before
The message that stops no-shows, sent without anybody remembering to.
- Result
A day that runs itself
You look at the calendar and it is right.
- 10:04:11booking request · channel: sms thread #4821
- 10:04:12qualify: hot water cylinder · Renwick · in service area
- 10:04:12accepted · trade match: yes · travel: 14 min
- 10:04:14offered: Wed 08:00, Wed 13:30, Thu 08:00
- 10:09:52booked Wed 08:00 · calendar event created
- Tue 17:00reminder sent · "see you 8am tomorrow"
- Wed 08:02attended · no chase, no no-show
Demonstration of a system we build, not a recording of a live client system. Times, numbers and names invented.
Demonstration of a system we build. The job, the customer and the times are invented.
The part everyone gets wrong
Booking is not a calendar widget. It is a short conversation with a decision in the middle: is this a job for you at all. A form that lets anybody book any slot means you spend your evenings ringing people to unbook them.
So the qualifying happens first. What the job is, where it is, and whether it is inside your trade and your area. Only then does it offer a time.
Three times, not a grid
Offering somebody an entire month of availability makes them choose, and choosing is work, and work causes delay. Three real options gets an answer the same day, nearly every time.
The reminder
Sent the afternoon before, saying where and when, from your number so a reply reaches you. It is the least clever part of this and it does more than the rest of it combined.
Where it stops
- It does not accept a job outside your area or your trade.
- It does not book over the top of anything already in your calendar.
- It does not quote what the visit will cost.
- It does not reschedule you without telling you.
Questions
Before you ask.
- Will it double-book me?
- It offers times from your actual calendar, and it holds a slot the moment it is offered so two people cannot take the same one. If your calendar is right, it is right.
- What about travel between jobs?
- Travel time is built into what it offers. A job in Renwick and a job in Picton an hour apart is exactly the kind of thing a booking form gets wrong and a person never would.
- Do I have to use a different calendar?
- No. It works with the one you already use. A system that needs you to move house is a system you will stop using in a fortnight.
- What stops no-shows?
- The reminder the day before, which is the single most effective message in the whole chain and the one that never gets sent by hand.
How much of your day is arranging your day?
Booking, confirming, reminding and rescheduling is usually an hour that nobody invoices for.