Should customers be able to book my home service business online?
Yes for most home service businesses. Plenty of homeowners would rather pick a time on their phone at nine at night than call during the day. Online booking works when it shows only the times you really have and puts the booking straight into the schedule your crew already uses.
Why do homeowners want to book online?
Many homeowners deal with house jobs in the evening, after work and after the kids are in bed, which is exactly when your office is closed. A customer who can pick a time right then does not have to remember to call you tomorrow, and a call that waits until tomorrow sometimes goes to another company instead.
Some people also simply prefer not to call. They would rather see the open times, choose one, and get a confirmation than wait on hold or trade voicemails. For a service they buy again and again, like a regular house cleaning or a junk pickup, booking online can feel easier to them than a phone call.
Which home service businesses are a good fit for online booking?
Online booking fits best when the job is predictable enough to put on the calendar without seeing it first. A residential cleaning company with standard visits, a pool service opening, a routine maintenance visit, or an estimate appointment are all good examples, because the company knows roughly how long the visit will take.
A junk removal company is a good example of the other side of the question. Weekends fill up first, and a customer who books online needs to see the time that is actually open, or the office ends up promising a Saturday it does not have. Online booking helps that business only when the calendar customers see is the same one the crew works from.
When does a job need a visit before anyone books it?
Some work cannot be priced or scheduled from a form. A roof replacement, a remodel, a new fence line, or a full house repaint all need someone to look at the job before anyone can say how long it will take or what it will cost. For those trades, letting a customer book the finished job online would set a promise the company cannot keep.
Those businesses can still let customers book something online, which is the estimate visit. The homeowner picks a time for someone to come out and look, and the company keeps control of the price and the schedule for the real work. Being honest about which part can be booked online and which part needs a visit keeps the customer from feeling misled.
What goes wrong when online booking is added on its own?
The most common trouble is a booking tool that sits beside the rest of the business instead of being connected to it. The customer books online, the booking arrives as an email, and someone in the office types the name, address, phone number, and job details into the scheduling software by hand. In a busy week that typing waits until evening, and until it happens, nobody has confirmed the booking with the customer.
The other trouble is a calendar that does not match the real schedule. When the booking page shows a time the crew has already filled, the office has to call the customer back and move them, and that call undoes most of the goodwill the easy booking earned. Both problems come from the same place, which is that the details a customer types go somewhere other than the job. That is the problem of typing the same customer details into three places, and it is worth fixing before or alongside online booking.
What a fix looks like
A homeowner picks a time on her phone after dinner, and when the office opens the next morning her visit is already on the schedule with her address and notes attached. The crew heads out with the details she typed herself, and the first thing the office does that morning is plan the day's work. The times still showing on the booking page are the times the crews really have open.
The Home Service Guild Marketing Operations System connects to Housecall Pro, so each online booking lands in the job with the customer's details and you get an alert when it comes in, as part of Operations.
Questions owners also ask
Will online booking replace my phone calls?
No, and it should not. Many customers will still call, especially for an urgent problem or a first job with a company they do not know yet. Online booking gives the customers who prefer it another way in, and the phone stays open for everyone else.
Should I show my prices on the booking page?
That depends on how predictable your work is. A business with a standard visit may be comfortable showing what it costs, while a business whose jobs vary will usually book a visit or an estimate and price the work after seeing it.
Does my website need a booking button?
If you offer online booking, the button to use it should be easy to find on a phone, along with a phone number that is easy to tap. A booking tool that only appears on one page deep in the site will not get used much. You can read more about what a home service website needs so homeowners call.
