Appointments hiding availability can be a serious problem

[DaoDeJing]

When a customer makes a booking with Appointments online, the system blocks out availability based on the time and service they select. This is understandable, as it's giving them time to complete the booking process without fearing that someone else will come in and claim that time out from under them.

Unfortunately, fairly often a customer thinking of making a booking will click around, use the back-page in their browser, and examine their options "just to see". Then, when they see available times, many options are no longer listed! They could assume someone took the time out from under them, and may give up. Or they look at other times, and possibly repeating the problem. They are both unaware that they themselves are removing the availabilities, and more upsetting their actions are also blocking availability to any others who may be trying to make a booking.

I'm not sure how the technical details of this process could be changed to mitigate this problem. But at the very least the time delay could be shortened. One customer just today accidentally blocked out all of my availability for the entire Easter weekend, and the blackout seems to have lasted over 20 minutes. I don't think more than 5 should be necessary. Perhaps a countdown timer could show them how long they have to complete the booking process? This seems to work for other booking programs. Just some ideas.

I'm not sure what the solution is. I've been trying to educate my repeat customers about this behavior in the booking site, but the problem persists. It's just so disheartening to discover my booking page is telling customers I have no availability when in fact I have a lot of openings. Especially right before a holiday weekend when many people are trying to make bookings for my family entertainment service.

Thanks for listening. 

[DaoDeJing]

This issue is compounded by some glitch that seems to freeze up the booking process and about once or twice a week kicks a customer out of the process before they're done booking. Confused, they then try again only to find the system has made the time they want unavailable.

[Tom]

Thanks for surfacing this, @DaoDeJing—we don't want anyone to miss out on an opportunity to book an appointment.

I went to check on this, and when an available time slot in your calendar is selected, the system should only hold that slot for a total of 15 minutes. This period of time was built in to make sure that the client has enough time to complete the booking process. If they don't complete the booking, the hold will timeout after 15 minutes and the slot should become available in your online booking calendar again.

If you or your customers are experiencing time slots being held longer than the 15 minute mark, you may want to see if these browser troubleshooting tips clear things up. All this being said, I can certainly see how having more control over this setting would benefit different business types—I will be sharing your experience with our Appointments Team. We'll circle back with any other insight or workarounds.

[DaoDeJing]

Thanks for the reply.

My feedback then is that 15 minutes is far too long to be blocking out availability, especially when the customer themselves is blocked from proceeding if they do something like navigate away from the page before finishing.

I'd think 5 minutes is more than enough time to fill in name, email, phone, and card info. An argument could be made for 7 or 8 minutes. But 15? I suspect that length was chosen rather arbitrarily, and in practice is causing almost as many problems as it's preventing.

[Helen]

Thanks again @DaoDeJing, we'll share your posts with Appointments Team. If Appointments aren't released for 20 minutes or more and your customers aren't experiencing other browser-related issues please call our CS team so we can escalate this to our engineering team to investigate.

[Helen · Accepted solution]

@DaoDeJing After I shared your post with the Appointments team they let me know that they've actually just fixed the issue you mentioned in your second paragraph:

Unfortunately, fairly often a customer thinking of making a booking will click around, use the back-page in their browser, and examine their options "just to see". Then, when they see available times, many options are no longer listed!

As of today if a customer clicks around and then comes back to book an appointment, they time they first selected will still be available for them. 

The team is still working on reducing the time a 'viewed' (but not booked) appointment becomes available to other clients and I'll share any updates as soon as they're available! 

[DaoDeJing]

Awesome! This will reduce a lot of headaches for me and my customers. Please pass on my thanks to the team! 😄

[ElinosBeauty]

Hello @Helen Is the appointments team planning to add the "appointments are scheduled" to 2-hour increments? That will be helpful for my business. Even better if they allow us to customize it our selves! I've followed the steps you provided, using a different browser, adjusted my service times to lower in duration, and the availability still does not show as I would like. Do you have another work around? 

Thanks!

[Drea245]

I second this! Regardless of the settings, it still appears that it’s not showing actual availability. What clients can’t see, they can’t book. 

[Kassi_]

@DaoDeJing @ElinosBeauty @Drea245

Thank you so much for the feedback. We don't have a timeline for this feature request yet. We appreciate your patience while we continue to evolve our products to seller needs.