Feature Request: allow 'Where do you accept appointments?' to be assigned on a service item level.

[amjessey]

Hi @tranguyen and @JessRog 

Having a look at the new Appointments. It looks good, but I've noticed the following areas for improvement.

1) Some of our services are only available on the phone whereas others are only be available at the customer's location, e.g. we want to create a "kerbside pickup" service item but only be available at our location, and we also want to create a "style consultation" service item but want this only be available at the customer's location. Currently, this is not possible.

The solution is to allow 'Where do you accept appointments?' to be assigned to each service item, so one can differ to the other.

Allowing the user to choose which appointment locations are available for each service will give him much greater control of his appointments; without this functionality it's confusing for the customers and some users like us may be put off from using Appointments.

2) Currently, the options are: "At my business" or "At the customer’s location" or "At both my business and the customer's location" or "Phone only". We also need "At the customer’s location and phone", "At my business and phone" and "At my business and the customer's location and phone".

3) Please give us the option to rename "Phone" to something else, like "Remote, i.e. phone call or video call".

Thank you.

[tranguyen]

Hey @amjessey, thank you so much for your feedback! I'll make sure to share them with our Appointments team as well. 

[amjessey]

Thank you @tranguyen.

Regarding my point 1, we want to create a "kerbside pickup" service item but only be available at our location, and we also want to create a "style consultation" service item but want thi only be available at the customer's location. How can we do this without this granular control I have suggested?

Thank you. 

[tranguyen]

I had a look into the first point @amjessey and because at the moment, where you accept appointments applies to all service items, the only alternative I can think of is to clarify it in the service description. I will keep my eye peel to see if there are any other workaround but right now, that would be the most straightforward one. 

[amjessey]

Hi @tranguyen 

Hopefully, the product team will build this functionality into Appointments. It would be good to hear their opinion on this feature request. 

Some other configurations that we think will benefit from being applied at the service item level:

1. Times in the day the is service is available: each service is available at different times/days of the week, so we need to be able to reflect this in the booking calendar.
2. Online Scheduling> Appointments must be made in advance: some services need different preparation time, eg one of our services requires additional time for preparing stock and travel whereas another service is done on a video call and we can prepare for that in a fraction of the time.
3. Block Extra Time Before Appointment: This would be mainly used to account for travel. When a booking is made we need to make sure another booking that is arranged later on does not end too near the beginning of the following appointment, or else there isn't enough time to travel to the location. It would be smart if it could dynamically adjust the block of extra time depending on the distance from the location of the staff member to the location of the appointment using a map service like Google Maps to calculate the likely time it will take to travel, plus a a pre-set buffer (which admin decides) to allow for unforeseen delays such as traffic and parking.    
4. Cut-off time for allowing clients to cancel or reschedule: for the same reasons as point 2  above. 

Thank you.

PS - can you please add the new "Appointments" tag to this post?

[amjessey]

Hi @tranguyen 

As you can see, the inability to set the location of specific services to "phone" and at the same time others to "at customer's location" is resulting in confusion for our customers. See our appointments page, which attempts to make it as straightforward as possible for the customer.

As you can see, I have decided to use "At customer's location" in Appointment settings, even though some of our appointments are remote (phone), as we think this is the least confusing for them considering the limitations in Appointments Settings. For these remote services, it still means clients are asked to provide their address even though the service will be delivered remotely online/ phone. Click on one of our first two "Meets" in the Meet Online section to be taken to our Square booking page. It then asks the customer to provide his address under the title, "Tell us where we will be performing the service."

I hope the product team will address this issue in some way quickly. This could be giving us a way to edit the line "Tell us where we will be performing the service." We could therefore write something that is more relevant to our set-up.

Many thanks for your attention on this matter.

[cdonahoe]

I just came here to say that I agree 100% with all of amjessey's suggestions on this thread, with the main one being allowing users to choose where appointments are suggested for each individual service. Confusion is the enemy of online sales, and I can't use the booking portal at all for my initial phone consultations while also having a service that is done at the customer's home because having a "your location" option on the booking screen for phone appointments confuses customers. The longer it takes them to figure out how to get through the portal, the more chance they have to leave and sign up with someone else. Please prioritize this feature.

[TheBergamotRoom]

Great list of extras here - the extra flexibility is vital to be able to accurately sell a variety of services online.