Sign In Scheduling offers various customization options for your booking process, including manual/automatic booking approval, custom booking questions, customer satisfaction surveys and much more.
This guide will explore the booking process customization options available within Sign In Scheduling and will explain how to use them. To get started, head to 'Manage' > 'Booking Process' > 'Booking Options'.
SECTIONS:
How to add custom booking questions
Approval of customer booking requests
Notify me of customer bookings
Applying changes to services
At the top of the page, you'll find an 'Apply changes to:' drop-down menu. You can use this to decide which services you'd like to apply your changes to. By default, changes are set to be applied to all services. To change this, click to open the drop-down and select the desired service.
You can then select 'Use different settings for [service name]' to apply individual changes to this specific service. To apply the same settings to this service as all of the others, select 'Use "All services" settings for [service name]'.
Customer information entry
Under 'Customer information entry' you can choose whether to require your customers to provide their email address and/or phone number when they place bookings with you. Simply click on the tickbox to select an option.
You can select either option, both, or neither - it's up to you. When these options are ticked, customers will have to provide the required information in order to complete their booking.
If you're wanting to contact your customers after they've booked, we recommend requiring at least one of these options.
How to add custom booking questions
Custom booking questions provide a great way to collect relevant information from your customers at the time of booking. To start creating custom booking questions, head to the 'Customer information entry' section and click 'Add new question'.
If you'd like the question to be compulsory, click the switch next to 'Required'. The switch will be green when on, and grey when off. Customers must provide an answer to required questions in order to be able to book.
If you'd like to store the answers to your booking questions in your customers' records, click the 'Store answer on customer' switch.
Type your custom booking question into the text box. You can then click the 'Type' drop-down to choose a format.
The available formats are as follows:
- Text: customers freely type their answer
- Checkbox: customers use checkboxes to select pre-defined answers
- Yes/No: customers select either yes or no
- Choices: customers select answers from a pre-defined list of choices
- Hidden: these questions are hidden from your main booking page and can instead be included in custom booking links. See here for more info.
When adding a multiple-choice question with the 'Choices' option, you'll need to provide each of the answers your customers will choose from. Click the '+ Add options' button to add a new answer and repeat as necessary.
Note: you'll need to type an answer into the option box before you're able to add another one.
To delete an answer, click the red trash can icon next to it. The same applies to the booking question itself.
You can customize the order in which your questions appear. To do this, drag them using the two lines at the far-left edge.
Note: if you'd like to include the answers to your custom booking questions in your customer emails, there's a tag you can use for that. {{answers.xxxxxx}} (with the 'xxxxxx' being replaced with the number from the custom question's key) will populate the message with the customer's answer to the booking question(s) you choose. For more information on email tags, click here.
Sign In Scheduling also offers you the option to add service-specific booking questions. To do this, select the specific service from the drop-down menu at the top of the page, and select 'Use different settings for [service name]'.
Then, follow the same steps as above to add custom booking questions for that service.
Consent and opt-in questions
Under 'Consent & opt-in questions' you can add questions asking for customers' consent. To add a new question, click the '+ Add' button.
You can then enter the name of the opt-in question and the content of the question itself. Once you're happy with the question, click 'Set live'.
To delete a question, click the red trash can icon.
Note: The 'Consent to contact' question is essential and cannot be deleted.
All of the consent and opt-in questions you create and set live here will appear on your booking page for your customers at the time of booking. They can agree to give their consent by clicking the relevant checkboxes.
Taking payments
Within Sign In Scheduling you can choose whether to take payments for your bookings. Under the 'Take payments' section you'll find a 'Set up payment' link.
Clicking this link will take you to 'Manage' > 'Integrations' > 'Payment providers'. Here you can choose to record payments, connect Stripe or PayPal, or opt not to take payments.
For more information on taking and recording payments with Sign In Scheduling, click here.
Approval of customer booking requests
Under 'Approval of customer booking requests', you can choose whether to allow Sign In Scheduling to automatically approve your customers' bookings, or approve all new booking requests yourself.
If you select 'Approve customer booking requests automatically', your customers' bookings will be automatically approved and placed into your calendar without any action needed on your part. When customers place their bookings via your booking page, they'll be notified that this has been done.
If you select 'I want to approve new requests myself', your customers' bookings will be placed on hold in the form of a booking request which you can accept or reject from your inbox or your calendar. Your customers will be notified on your booking page that their appointment is yet to be confirmed.
In your inbox, booking requests can be found under the 'Booking requests' tab. Unactioned requests will display a 'Pending' status. You'll be able to see who the booking request came from, when it was received, along with the details of the requested appointment. You can click on the request to open a sidebar to the right, where you'll find the option to accept or reject it.
In your calendar, booking requests will appear as appointments with an exclamation mark in the top right corner to indicate that they're pending. You can click on the pending appointment to open a sidebar to the right, where you'll find the option to accept or reject it.
Email domain constraints
Under the 'Email domain constraints' section, you can choose whether to constrain bookings to a specific email domain. When this option is enabled, this means that only customers booking with a particular email address will be able to successfully book appointments.
This option can be very useful for institutions such as schools and colleges who, for example, may wish to make bookings available only to students using their school email addresses.
Once you've clicked to select the checkbox, you'll be able to enter the domain to which you'd like to constrain bookings.
Notify me of customer bookings
Under the 'Notify me of customer bookings' section, you'll find a 'Set notifications' link to set up booking notifications for staff.
Clicking this link will take you to 'Manage' > 'Messaging' > 'For Staff' where you'll be able to configure the booking notifications and reminders your staff members receive. For more information on managing your staff messaging, click here.
Customer satisfaction surveys
Under the 'Customer satisfaction survey' section, you can enable/disable the customer satisfaction survey which is sent out to your customers by default 2 days after their appointment has taken place.
Clicking to tick the checkbox will enable the satisfaction survey. Clicking it again will remove the tick and disable it.
For more information on customer satisfaction surveys, click here.
Customer notifications
Under the 'Notify customers' section, you'll find a 'Set notifications' link to set up the booking notifications and reminders your customers receive. Clicking this link will take you to 'Setup' > 'Customer messaging'. For more information on managing your customer messaging, click here.
Need more help?
We hope this guide has been helpful! If you have any questions, don't hesitate to reach out to our support team who will be happy to assist.