Bookings

Three channels, one inbox: what happens to a booking request

An enquiry arrives at 22:40, long after you have locked up. Here is every step between that message and the customer walking in.

Booking enquiries do not arrive tidily. They arrive on whatever the customer had open at the time. A form on your website at lunchtime, an email in the evening, a message on social late at night, sometimes all three from the same person in the same week.

The usual result is three places to look and no single answer to “who is still waiting to hear from us”. Here is what the alternative looks like, step by step.

22:40, the enquiry arrives

A customer asks whether you have anything on Saturday morning, and whether they need to pay anything up front. Nobody is working. Nothing is lost, because the message does not need a person to receive it, only to answer it.

It lands in one inbox, beside everything else that came in that day, whichever channel it used. If this customer has been in before, their record sits right beside it: past visits, what they paid, any notes the team left. If they are new, a fresh record starts with this message.

An enquiry that waits somewhere everyone can see is an enquiry nobody has to carry in their head until morning.

22:40, a reply is drafted

Freemi drafts a reply in your voice, using your real services, your real opening hours and the times that are actually free. It does not send it. The draft waits in the inbox for a person.

This is the part that is easy to miss. A draft saves the typing; a person decides what goes out. The customer gets an answer written the way you would write it, and nobody has promised a time the diary cannot keep.

08:50, a person approves it

First thing in the morning, someone on the team opens the inbox, reads the draft, changes a word if they want to, and sends it. The reply carries a link to book, on your rules: the service, how long it takes, the gap you leave after it, and the deposit if you take one.

The customer picks a time and pays the deposit online. Card details go to Stripe, not to you. The booking appears in the right diary, and the deposit lands against that customer, not in a column somebody has to match up later.

The day before, the reminder

A reminder goes out on its own. If plans have changed, the customer moves or cancels from the link in their confirmation, without a message back and forth. The time is free again in the diary today, not discovered empty on the morning.

What the record shows afterwards

• When the enquiry arrived and which channel it came in on
• Who approved the reply, and when
• The booking, the deposit and the reminder
• The visit itself, and anything paid on the day

None of that requires anyone to copy anything across. It is a by-product of doing the work in one place rather than three, which is the whole idea behind Freemi Custom: one inbox, one diary and one record per customer, in the same system.

Your services and prices, opening hours, team and booking rules. Freemi Custom is set up around them, and if your business needs something more, talk to us.

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