“Auto-Arrange your appointments for the shortest drivetime! “
When we were looking for a new dog grooming software for our mobile grooming business, we saw this “mapping feature” being offered by more than one outlet and it struck me as… odd.
It just didn’t make sense…
Well, the part about wanting to have the shortest drive time made sense
As for the rest of it, take this theoretical schedule:
- 9AM – Town A
- 10AM – Town B
- 11AM – Town A
Obviously in a perfect world it makes sense to do town A first, then town B so I am not shuffling back and forth. But chances are, if it is booked that way it is booked that way for a reason.
Maybe my 11AM could ONLY do 11AM leaving me with a 10AM gap that I thankfully filled by hitting Town B really quick. Or maybe we didn’t realize this inefficiency when we were making the booking, but now the clients don’t want to move because they’ve now scheduled their day around this appointment.
If my schedule is booked that way, it’s likely booked that way for a reason
What use is it to click a button that does nothing but sort my appointments based on drive time? It’s like arranging small to large numbers in an Excel spreadsheet, there’s no real logic there that aids us groomers. Furthermore, this is done with no input from my clients? Do they just receive a message saying:
“You’re appointment is now at this time”?
This never really seemed professional or effective to me.
Wouldn’t it be better if your dog grooming software had a suite of tools to allow you to group appointments effectively at the time of booking? This is the far better approach in our opinion.
Instead of trying to make up for ineffective appointment grouping, get something that allows for effective grouping the first time.
Wouldn’t it be better to have a suite of tools to allow you to group appointments effectively at the time of booking?
This is where the MethodPet booking theory comes in. We’ve put in place tools that allow you to book (or rebook) appointments grouped together. Our mapping also encourages this and we’ll get to that in a moment, but we think we’ve taken the necessity to have to use maps (because that’s the only current option) mostly out of the equation thanks to our app.
Instead of trying to make up for ineffective appointment grouping, get something that allows for effective grouping the first time.
Let’s set up an example using MethodPet dog grooming software instead.
I am about to book Client A for an appointment, we haven’t quite started discussing dates/times but they’ve called and would like to know some availability.
I click on the schedule and pull up a new appointment (or use the quick actions to pull up a new appointment immediately)
I use the dynamic search and pull up Client A. In a near instant I am offered multiple dates that we will be in Client A’s town, not only that – these dates are color coded by employee allowing me to see on the fly who is on what date.
Now, I may not have a suitable timeslot on that day, or the town is large and Client A is on the far side of it, but this is a terrific jumping off point as I start to offer my client some potential dates. It also gets me closer and closer to having a really tight grouping of clients on a given day, eliminating the need for some sort of “re-arranger” because I wasn’t given the tools to make the appointments close the first time around.
Future versions of this MethodPet feature will check the average time it takes to groom at Client A and cross-reference it with time slots. This will allow the system to hide any days that we’re in that town, but don’t have the time.
This tool is also offered for rebooking!
Using MethodPet Mapping
The mapping we use for our dog grooming software is designed to be a pro-active tool to fill gaps in appointments and visualize your service area.
Users can select clients based on certain criteria and have them populate as pins on the map.
This allows you to quickly identify clients in your system who:
- Have appointments
- Who do not have appointments
Click on the pin of a client who does not have an appointment to see client details and when their last appointment was. Maybe they’re due for a groom, maybe you have some time in your schedule. Quickly identify them and get a close-by client in for an appointment.
The clients are also listed on the left hand side of the screen. Click on their name to view their client profile. If they have an appointment booked for the future, you can click on it and be taken right to their appointment screen.
We feel this is a common-sense solution and something that could be useful.
We sure wish we had it before!