Online booking is in early access, so we switch it on for the accounts that ask rather than opening it to everyone at once. Open Skills, find Online booking and hit Request access. We will come back to you on your support ticket, and once it is switched on you install it yourself from the same page.
Online booking gives your business a page where a customer picks a time themselves, instead of the back and forth over text. You can send the link, print it as a QR code, or put a Book online button on your own website with one line of code. Everything a customer books lands in your diary, your clients and your leads, with nothing to copy across.
What the customer sees
- Their postcode first. If it is outside the area you cover, the page says so straight away and takes their details instead, and you get an enquiry to follow up.
- What they need. The price list items you have ticked Share with receptionist, with the price if the item has a plain one. If their postcode is in one of your pricing areas, the prices they see already include that area's uplift and its travel charge, so the figure online is the total the quote will come to. The quote itself still shows the travel charge as its own line. A free visit, such as a free quote, stays at £0. They can also describe something else, which lands as an enquiry for you to price.
- When. Only the times that are genuinely free in your diary, in the way you promise times (exact times, morning or afternoon, or your own slots). With travel time switched on, a time the van could not reach from the job before or after is not shown at all.
- Their details. Name, a mobile number or an email address, and the address looked up from the postcode.
Then either Requested or Booked, depending on how you set it up below.
There is also a chat on the page. It is the same receptionist that answers your phone: it knows what you do, checks the diary and can pencil a booking in, and it always says what it is.
How a booking lands
Ask me first is the default. The booking is pencilled into your diary and you get a card to approve with one tap, exactly as a phone booking does. The customer is told you will confirm, and hears nothing else until you do. If nobody looks, Mucka reminds you before the slot.
Book straight in puts it in the diary immediately and sends the customer your booking confirmation text or email. You get a heads-up card.
Either way, a customer who books is added to your clients. Until you confirm, they sit under Leads.
Setting it up
Online booking has its own screen at Online booking in the sidebar. It shows what the page has actually done: bookings that came in, enquiries from people it could not book, and the chats Mucka had on the page. Tapping a chat shows you exactly what was said.
Installing opens a short setup in a panel over that screen, and every step is re-enterable later from the Settings button on it or from Settings → Customers → Online booking:
- Your link. The address customers use, book.mucka.ai/your-name. Keep it short enough to read out loud. The longer app.mucka.ai/book/your-name also works, so any link you have already handed out keeps working. Your logo and colour come from Branding.
- What can be booked. Untick any shared price list item you would rather talk about first. A length on the item decides how much diary a booking holds.
- When. How your diary promises times, the notice you need, and how far ahead the page offers.
- Where you work. The postcode areas you cover, on a map. Either type a distance, like everything within 30 miles, and hit Fill the map, or tap areas yourself: tap an area (RG, SL, OX) to cover all of it, or open it up and pick single districts (RG1, RG2). A distance fills in every district whose middle is within that many miles of your office, so the edge follows district lines, and you can still add or take off districts on the map afterwards. That is how you cover part of a big county without all of it. A customer outside your patch is asked for their details instead of a time. Your office postcode and travel time are set on the When step.
- A travel charge further out. Tick Charge for travel further out and say how far and how much, for example up to 50 miles, add £15. Customers between your standard patch and that distance can still book, and the prices they see already include the travel charge. It is saved on your price list as a pricing area, so your quotes, invoices and receptionist add the same charge. Setting it needs permission to change the price list.
- What can be booked also takes a picture per service. Add one and it shows on the tile a customer taps; without one the page draws a trade icon from the service's name.
- How bookings land. Ask me first, or book straight in.
- Chat. Whether the page has a chat, and its first line.
- Put it live. Nothing is on the internet until you switch it on. Copy the link, the QR code and the one line of code for your website from here.
Putting it on your website
Copy the code from the last setup step and paste it anywhere in your site, or send it to whoever looks after the site. It draws a Book online button in the corner of the page, with a speech bubble beside it carrying your logo and a line of your choosing; the button opens your booking page without leaving the site. If you would rather have the booking page sit in the middle of a page of your own, add data-mode="inline" to the code.
What the button says, the bubble's line, and which corner it sits in are set on the last step of the wizard, and a change lands on your live site straight away: the code never needs pasting again.
Your site's own buttons can open it too. Give any button or link the class mucka-book and it opens the booking panel. And ?mucka_book=1 on the end of any address on your site opens the panel the moment somebody arrives, which is handy in a text or on a flyer.
On Google, open your Business Profile, choose Edit profile → Booking and paste your link as the appointment link.
Things worth knowing
- The page is only ever as free as your diary. If your diary holds one engineer's work but you run three vans, the page will look busier than you are. Per-engineer availability is on the way.
- The chat is capped per day so a busy site cannot run up a bill; past the cap it says so and the form still works.
- Switch the page off at any time from the last setup step. The link then answers as not found.