Why NZ Service Businesses Lose Good Clients to Missed Calls
TL;DR:
- Good clients want to book when it suits them, often in the evening. If the only way in is a phone call you can’t answer, many of them book someone else.
- Online booking lets clients see your free times and book themselves, within the hours you set, while you get on with the job.
- You don’t need a developer or a big budget any more. Gallop builds a booking website and the app you run it from in a few minutes, free to build.
You do good work and you charge properly for it. But when someone wants to book you, what happens? Often they ring while you’re mid-job, get your voicemail, and you call back at 7pm. By then, plenty of them have already booked someone else.
The work isn’t the problem. The way in is.
Why do clients go elsewhere when they can’t book online?
Because booking is the first taste of what working with you is like. If it means phone tag, people assume the rest will be hard work too, and the ones with options use them.
Think about when people actually sort these things out: on the couch after tea, on a lunch break, at 10pm when they finally remember. A plumber under a sink at 2pm, or a barber with a client in the chair, can’t answer. A booking page can.
It also changes who you lose. The clients most likely to move on are the busy ones with money to spend, exactly the people you’d most like to keep.
What does online booking actually fix?
It takes the back-and-forth out of booking. Clients see the times you’re free, pick one and get a confirmation, without you stopping work.
In practice that means:
- No more phone tag. The booking comes in while you’re working, and it’s waiting for you when you look.
- Fewer forgotten appointments. Clients get a confirmation email when they book and a reminder before they’re due.
- Your hours, your rules. Clients can only book inside the working hours you set, and time off is blocked out.
- One place for everything. Bookings, customers and services live in one app on your phone, not across a diary, texts and a notebook. Bookings can also show in your Google, Apple or Outlook calendar.
Online booking won’t fix everything. Some clients will always ring, and some jobs need a chat or a quote first. That’s fine: a good setup lets people book the simple things and ask for a quote for the rest.
Isn’t a booking website expensive and complicated?
Not any more. Five years ago it meant paying someone to build a site, then bolting on a separate booking tool and hoping the two talked to each other. Today you can describe your business in plain words and get a working site in minutes.
That’s what we built Gallop for. You tell it what you do, your services and your hours, and it builds:
- a website with your services and prices, team, location, hours and photos of your work
- online booking, or quote requests for jobs that need a price first
- the business app you run it all from, on iPhone, Android or the web
You see a working preview before you pay anything. After a free period there’s one plan, priced for your country; the details are on our pricing page.
What Gallop doesn’t do yet
We’d rather you knew now than found out later:
- No online payments yet. No deposits, prepayments or memberships. You take payment in person, by cash or on your own card terminal, and Gallop records it with a receipt.
- No text message reminders. Confirmations and reminders go by email.
- No social media posting. Gallop doesn’t post to Instagram or Facebook for you.
If one of these is a deal-breaker for you, tell us. We’d rather build it into Gallop for everyone than leave you stuck.
What to do this week
- Count the calls you miss in a normal week. Most people are surprised.
- Write down your services, prices and the hours you’re happy to take bookings.
- Decide which jobs people can book straight away, and which need a quote first.
- Put a booking link everywhere clients find you: your Google listing, Facebook page and email signature.
Describe your business and see your booking site in a few minutes. It’s free to build. Run a barbershop? See Gallop for barbers.