You go to all the trouble and expense of setting up Pet Business booking software only for your customers to send email enquiries and call to make their bookings!
Grrr – frustrating! But what can you do….?
How to Get Customers to Use Your Pet Business Booking Software in Your Pet Sitting and Dog Walking Business
#1. Make it really easy to book using the software
Add booking links to your homepage, main menu and include a ‘Ready to Book’ button on most pages of your website.
Make sure it takes them straight to the software so they can make their booking.
Add booking links on all your social media and branding.
Use QR codes and/or shortened links that are easy for customers to use.
#2. Make it hard for them to contact you in other ways
If you don’t want customers calling you then you have the option not to publish your phone number.
This can seem quite controversial, and it definitely has pros and cons – but with social media messaging and effective links on your website you could direct people to those options.
Don’t publish your e-mail address. Instead you can set up contact forms with categories on your website that channel bookings, enquiries and existing customer contacts to the right place so that nothing gets lost in a generic inbox
#3. Lead your customers or they’ll lead you!
Be really clear on your processes, policies and contact methods from the outset
Customers will follow your lead, but if there’s not a clear process, they’ll do it their own way and all the different approaches customers take will leave you running in circles!
#4. Don’t be afraid to say ‘No’
If a customer won’t use your software and insists on calling or emailing you, are they really for you?
Booking software is there to make your customer’s life easier and avoid errors, it also makes life easier and is more cost effective for you the business owner
Don’t be afraid to firmly direct customers to the correct channel (assuming you’ve set it up so it’s nice and easy to access)
And if it comes to it, don’t be afraid to decline a customer. I wrote a post on how to decline customers that you can check out here if this applies to you
What else do you do to make sure people use your booking system? Let me know in the comments.
