In the service-based business, you know how important it is for your customers to keep their appointments. But we all know life happens and sometimes the appointment needs to be canceled or needs to be rescheduled. You want to provide tools to your customers so they can take action on their own without needing interaction with you. In DoTimely, the customers can make a request to make changes to the existing appointment. The appointment is not updated until you accept the requested changes. Then, with one click, everything is updated and no more tracking needed on your side.
Last minute cancellations are not good for your business. You are losing the spot where you could have served another customer or you still have to pay your staff. Either way, you are losing revenue. That’s why a well-crafted cancellation policy is a must. You need to ensure your customers have read the cancellation policy and understand they will have to still pay if the cancellation is outside of your agreed window. In DoTimely, you can create your client policy. This policy needs to be acknowledged by your customers before they are allowed to request the appointment. If they decide to cancel the appointment that is within your cancellation policy window, then DoTimely does show your cancellation policy message so the customers know additional charges may be applied.
Now, if last minute cancellation needs to happen then we offer you tools to manage them. DoTimely lets you charge late cancellation fees to your clients or add credit if the client already paid for the service. Here are a few actions you can take based on the cancellation situation.
Charge for Service: You can charge your client for a canceled appointment if it's not paid already. You'll have an option to charge them the full or partial amount. You also have an option to record payment for your staff if they were on their way for the canceled appointment.
Add Credit: You can issue credits to your client who has canceled an invoiced appointment i.e., pre-paid appointment. These credits will be added as 'Customer Credits' under invoices and will be automatically applied to the next appointment invoice.
Package/Subscription Appointment: If you offer package deals to your customers, then you can also unlink package/subscription appointments from the edit appointment screen; this will renew the package balance by 1 for the client.
Reset Appointment: If you canceled an appointment by mistake, you can always go ahead and reset the canceled appointment by changing the appointment details.
We can’t control your clients' canceled appointments, but we definitely give you more power to make your own choice, be it by charging late cancellation fees or adding customer credits so you don’t lose any revenue or happy customers. Sign-up here to start your free trial.