You’d be forgiven for thinking that when confirming appointments and sending booking reminders to your customers, you’re limited to confirming either a fixed time, or just the day of arrival.
However, that’s not the case!
If you switch on the Services add-on, ServiceM8 will offer an ‘arrival window’ setting.
To access this setting, make sure you have the Services add-on this, go to ServiceM8.com > account > settings > preferences > job settings > arrival window
You can then use a new field in your email and SMS templates: {job.next_booking_arrival_window} to bring this time slot into your customer communications.
As an example –
Let’s say you set an arrival window of 2 hours.
If you book an appointment into the ServiceM8 calendar for 10am, the arrival window will be 9am – 11am.
If you book an appointment into the calendar for 2pm, the arrival window will be 1pm – 3pm.
It splits the window in half around your booked time.
This approach is great for reducing ‘where are you?’ phone calls and yet still providing an idea of arrival time for your customer to be able to plan their day around your visit. It gives you a bit of leeway when you get caught in traffic, or when the fix you thought would take 5 minutes takes a couple of hours….
Want to stick with more rigid morning / afternoon times?
Set the arrival window to be 4 hours and book morning appointments in the calendar at 10am (to give a window of 8am – 12pm) and 3pm (to give a window of 1pm – 5pm).
Do you do this already? Or do you use a different approach?
One Response
I use the wording “Please note the appointment window is 1 hour 30 mins, we always plan to be with you as close as possible to the agreed start time but we may arrive at any time during the appointment window due to circumstances beyond our control. If you have any questions, please contact us.” Then when booking I tell the customer the same and that the engineer will send a text when on route.