Saying How Far Ahead You Are Booked

The wait nobody mentions

In the busy season, many contractors and clinics are booked weeks ahead. The website does not say so. Neither does the voicemail greeting.

So the customer finds out late: at the end of a twenty-minute phone call, after a quote visit, or when the confirmation arrives with a date a month away.

Some of those customers would have waited happily and booked straight away had they known. Others needed the work this week, and both they and the business spent time on a job that was never going to happen.

One line on the website, kept current, sorts the two groups before anyone picks up the phone.

Who the lead time helps

• Customers who can wait book sooner, knowing what they are agreeing to.
• Customers in a hurry go elsewhere without wasting a call.
• The person answering the phone stops repeating the same explanation.
• The estimator stops visiting jobs that will not wait.
• Customers comparing quotes can weigh the date as well as the price.

The fourth is the costly one. A quote visit takes an hour or two of a skilled person's day, and a visit for a customer who needed the work this week was lost before it started.

Say it where the decision is made

A lead time buried on a questions page helps nobody. It belongs beside the phone number and the booking button on the home page, and again on the quote or booking form.

Repeat it in the automatic reply to a form, in the voicemail greeting and on the Facebook page, so the answer is the same however someone gets in touch.

Whoever answers the phone should give the same date early in the call, before the caller describes the whole job.

Keep it as text, not inside an image, so it reads on a phone and whoever updates it does not need design software.

A date beats a number of weeks

"About three weeks" leaves the reader to do arithmetic and to guess when the line was written. A date does not.

Write it the way the calendar actually stands: now booking new work for the week of September 14. Add the day it was last updated, so a reader can trust it.

If the wait differs by type of work, give each its own line. A clinic's new patients and existing patients, or a contractor's repairs and larger projects, rarely share the same calendar.

A worked example

A custom golf club fitter runs a small studio with a launch monitor and a hitting bay, fitting golfers for drivers, irons and putters, then building the clubs to order.

From May to September, fittings are booked two to three weeks ahead, and the clubs take another two weeks or so once heads and shafts arrive from suppliers.

The website said book your fitting today. Customers did, and some learned only at the end of the fitting that their clubs would not arrive before a golf trip they had planned around them.

Others phoned in a hurry before a tournament, waited through the explanation and booked elsewhere.

The fitter added a line beside the booking button giving the next available fitting date and the current build time, updated every Monday.

A second line offers quicker services, such as regripping and adjusting loft and lie on clubs a golfer already owns, usually within the week.

Golfers with a deadline now say so when they book, and hear at once whether it can be met.

Keeping it true

A lead time that goes stale does more harm than none. A customer told one week who is then offered a date six weeks out feels misled, whatever the reason.

Give the line an owner and a day: whoever runs the schedule updates it every Monday, and again whenever a big job is confirmed or cancelled.

Make it a field staff can change in a minute rather than text buried in a template. That is a small job for whoever looks after the website, and it is what keeps the line honest.

And state the wait as it is. Shortening it to win the job, or stretching it to look in demand, makes the line one more thing customers learn to ignore.

A list for cancellations

Calendars move. Jobs are postponed, patients cancel, and weather shifts outdoor work, which opens gaps at short notice.

Offer customers who would like something sooner a place on a cancellation list, with a simple form asking for their name, phone number and how much notice they need.

Be honest about the odds. Say that you call people in order when a slot opens, and that many on the list will still keep their original date.

Somewhere to send the urgent ones

Some customers cannot wait at all: a burst pipe, a cracked tooth, a lock that will not close.

If you take emergency work, say so and say how. If you do not, name the kind of business that does, or keep a short list of people you trust and offer it on the phone.

A referral costs nothing, and the customer remembers who helped when they could not. Some will come back for the work that can wait.

The counter-case

A business that can usually fit customers in the same week has little to announce, and a line saying so is only worth adding if it is reliably true.

Online booking calendars already show availability, so a clinic using one needs only a note for anything the calendar does not cover, such as new-patient appointments.

But for anyone whose calendar fills weeks ahead in season, the lead time is the most useful line on the site. State it as a date, keep it current and offer a route for those who cannot wait.

Before Monday

1. Find your real lead time for each kind of work.
2. Write it as a date, not weeks.
3. Put it beside the phone number and booking button.
4. Add the date it was last updated.
5. Name who updates it every Monday.
6. Offer a cancellation list with honest odds.
7. Prepare a referral for urgent work.

Step five keeps everything else working. A lead time that nobody owns is accurate for a fortnight and misleading for the rest of the season.

Telling customers about the calendar is the other side of booking next season during the off-season.

Frequently asked questions

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