GUIDES
Online booking for SMEs: what should you look for?
Ben Schmidt, Owner of Flowrenix · Updated:
Short answer
Online booking only works day to day if it reliably knows your free slots from your calendar, sends confirmations and reminders by itself and enforces your rules for cancellations and lead times. For many small businesses an off-the-shelf booking platform is enough; your own solution pays off when booking has to be linked to customer records, payment or invoicing and a platform cannot handle that.
When online booking is worthwhile
Online booking is worthwhile if your customers currently call or write just to arrange an appointment. Every one of these calls interrupts your work, and outside opening hours nobody reaches you. Booking on your website takes appointments in the evening and at weekends too, without anyone sitting next to it.
It is less suitable if every appointment needs a conversation first, for example because you have to clarify the scope or prepare a quote. In that case a good enquiry form with the right questions is more honest than a calendar in which every appointment still has to be confirmed by phone.
The calendar: one source for free slots
The most common source of errors is the calendar. If the booking does not know that you are at the dentist on Tuesday afternoon, someone will book exactly that slot. So ask of every solution whether it reads busy times from your existing calendar, for example Google, Outlook or iCloud, and whether booked appointments are written back there. Also ask how quickly this sync runs.
If several people work in the business, each needs their own calendar with their own availability. If an appointment also depends on a room, a device or a vehicle, that has to be free as well. Also clarify buffer times between appointments, travel times for on-site jobs and lead time: how short notice may someone book?
Confirmations and reminders
After every booking a confirmation should go out immediately, with date, time, place and a link the customer can use to reschedule or cancel the appointment. Before the appointment a reminder follows, for example the day before.
Email reminders cost almost nothing. Text messages and WhatsApp cost per message; many providers process data outside Switzerland, so check where your provider is located. How such workflows are set up in principle is described in the article Automation for SMEs.
Cancellations and no-shows
An appointment that is missed without cancellation costs you the time and the slot another customer could have used. Booking cannot prevent that, but it can make it easy for customers to cancel in time and apply your rules consistently.
Cancellation deadline
Until when is a cancellation free of charge? The deadline should be visible when booking and in every confirmation, not only in the terms and conditions.
Self-service rescheduling
Anyone who can reschedule with one click is more likely to cancel than simply not to show up. The freed slot is immediately open for booking again.
Prepayment or deposit
For long or expensive appointments, payment at booking can make sense, for example by card or TWINT. Clarify beforehand how refunds work for cancellations within the deadline.
No-show fee
Whether and how much you charge for a no-show should be stated in your terms beforehand and shown explicitly when booking.
Data protection in online booking
A booking collects personal data: name, contact details, often the reason for the appointment as well. Only ask for what you really need for the appointment. Clarify where the booking data is stored and which services are involved, for example for calendar, email, text messages and payment. All of this belongs in your privacy policy.
Particular care is needed if the appointment allows conclusions about someone's health, for example in practices or therapies. Under the Swiss Data Protection Act, health data counts as sensitive personal data. What a website needs in general is covered in the article Website and data protection.
Platform or your own solution?
Both have their place. If an off-the-shelf platform covers your rules, use it. I say so in the first call as well.
Booking platform
Quick to set up, with a monthly fee. The data is stored with the provider, and design and rules can be adapted as far as the provider allows. Check whether you can export your customer data completely.
Your own solution
Follows your process rather than the other way round, the data sits in your own database, and booking is linked to customer records, payment and invoicing. In return there are one-off costs and ongoing support.
When your own solution pays off
In my experience the balance tips towards your own solution when several of the following apply:
- An appointment needs a person and a vehicle, a room or a device at the same time.
- Customers buy packages or credit that should be deducted with every booking.
- After the appointment an invoice with a Swiss QR-bill should be created automatically.
- Staff, customers and administration each need their own view of the same appointments.
- Excel lists still run alongside the platform because it does not know part of the process.
What this looks like in my projects
For the driving school Alfadrive in Olten, booking runs in a system of its own: multi-step online booking with Stripe, TWINT and instalments, a calendar per instructor with availability, confirmations after every booking and reminders before the driving lesson. You can find the case study under Alfadrive. At the restaurant Gusto d'Oro in Winterthur, table reservations end up in a database instead of an inbox; groups have their own event enquiry.
What is binding is the capped price in writing in the quote.
COMMON QUESTIONS
Frequently asked questions
Not necessarily. If an off-the-shelf booking platform covers your rules for availability, lead time and cancellations, it is usually the cheaper solution. Your own solution pays off when booking has to be linked to customer records, packages, payment or invoicing.
That depends on the solution. Ask whether busy times are read from your calendar and new appointments are written back, and how quickly that happens. For your own solution I clarify this before the project starts, based on your calendar's interface.
A reminder before the appointment, an easy cancellation via link, a clearly shown cancellation deadline and, where needed, payment at booking. How much this helps in your business only shows when you compare before and after.
The amount depends mainly on how many calendars, rules and payment methods the booking has to handle. Before we start, you receive a capped price in writing, and you do not pay more.