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Improving Your Customers’ Booking Software Journey

August 7, 2022

The quality of your customers’ booking software journey could be the decider between making a sale and seeing customers abandon their baskets. People want the convenience that a booking system offers, but if it isn’t designed with the user experience in mind, people can quickly lose patience. 

BookingLive provides a seamless booking experience to keep your customers happy whilst taking care of your business admin. In this blog, we’ll explain the customer’s booking journey with BookingLive and the features we use to improve the experience. 

 

The customer’s booking journey 

With BookingLive, customers can book their appointment, course, activity or experience in five simple steps.

 

Step 1: Choose the booking 

Customers will browse your bookable items in the system and see available slots in a sleek calendar. You can set the time window of these slots to the nearest 15 minutes. This allows you to fit in as many bookings into your day that you wish. Whist giving precise time windows helps customers plan their day around the booking.

It’s at this first stage that you can boost revenue by upselling. Whether it’s merchandise, equipment or an upgraded package, it’s easy to put these added extras in clear view during the booking journey. Making it simple for users to navigate your offering and add extras with a few clicks is proven to increase revenue without customers feeling like they’re in a sales pitch. 

Read more about optimising the online upsell with your online booking system here. 

 

Step 2: View the basket 

BookingLive’s basket functionality means that customers can continue shopping if they wish and add more items to their basket. You can customise a timer that allows customers to secure their bookings before purchase. At the checkout, you can automate discounts as well as allow customers to input promo codes.

 

Step 3: Complete customer details 

To secure a booking, you’re going to need some contact details! If it’s the first time a customer is using your services, they will need to share their email address. For returning customers, they will need to provide their password and then BookingLive will autofill the rest of the information. 

In step 3, the customer will fill out the booking form, agree to terms and conditions and select contact preferences. As a business owner, you can customise the form so you can gather the exact details you need.

 

Step 4: Booking summary

If you charge for your services, this is where you take the payment. The customer can choose how they would like to pay and make any deposits required. With BookingLive there is a range of payment gateways to choose from, including PayPal, WorldPay and Stripe. If you are a small business and want to take advantage of our free booking system, the Stripe payment gateway is used. 

You can view our comparison of booking system payment gateways here.

 

Step 5: Booking confirmation

In the fifth and final step, the customer can view their order summary and booking ID. An automated confirmation email will immediately be sent to the address previously provided. This is completely customisable but will contain details like booking and payment taken. You can learn more about how to write appointment confirmation emails to reduce no-shows on our blog.

As well as email confirmation, you can send personalised SMS notifications too. This helps you target customers on multiple platforms and increases the chances of your message being seen. Make sure you’re consistent with your branding and tone of voice across your separate communications with customers during their booking journey. This will make your business appear credible, professional and trustworthy. 

 

Features of BookingLive’s booking software that improve customer experience 

BookingLive’s five step booking process couldn’t be simpler, but there are a few more features that have been included with the customer experience in mind. 

 

FAQ section 

On every page of the booking process, you can add an FAQ section with common customer questions. For step 1, you could answer questions about the service such as explaining what customers may need to bring, and whether there are any restrictions on who can book. For step 2, you could include FAQs about promo codes and whether you offer discounted rates for group bookings. 

An FAQ for step 3 could be about what customers should do if they’ve forgotten their password. For the booking summary and payment section, FAQs should cover the payment and currency types you accept, as well as how quickly you will take the payment and whether refunds are issued for cancellations. Finally, FAQs on the booking confirmation page could be related to how customers can amend their booking or how to follow your business for the latest updates.

The FAQ section of the online booking system saves time for your business as you won’t be interrupted by as many customer queries – whether that’s via phone or email. This allows you to be more productive and spend time doing the things you love.

Dropdown displays in the item selection stage 

Within the first stage of the booking software journey, customers can select the items they want to book along with the date and time they are taking place by simply clicking the dropdown arrow. 

Previously, all this information was displayed on the booking page, which looked very text-heavy and meant users were having to scroll down to view this information – not a very user-friendly experience. This dropdown feature is also great for purchasers who are booking on more than one participant, as it provides them with a breakdown of who is booked on to what.

 

Dropdown displays in basket stage 

Once customers have proceeded to the basket stage of the booking software journey, they are again able to view information about the products they have selected. In addition to this, they can also quickly and easily remove items from their basket by clicking on the rubbish bin icon. 

These booking software journey improvements are enabling us and our clients to stay ahead of competitors, as well as mirroring high-end e-commerce journeys such as Amazon. 

Get started with BookingLive today 

Discover more features of our online booking system to see if it’s the right solution for your business. The system is designed to streamline the booking process, help you schedule your staff, automate admin tasks, take care of your marketing and more. 

To see our booking software in action, book a free demo today. If you have any questions, please contact our team of experts at sales@bookinglive.com or call 0800 1310 342.