How fast you have to answer a booking request

A request lands at twenty to ten on a Tuesday night. You see it Thursday morning, and it was for Wednesday.

Nobody plans that. It happens because "I'll get to the requests" isn't a time, and a list of pending bookings doesn't get louder when you ignore it. The decision worth making isn't how fast you'd like to reply. It's the longest you'll ever leave someone waiting, because that's the promise you make the moment you let requests in at all.

The clock started when they tapped

They booked from the couch after work, the way they order everything else at that hour. They're not watching your queue. They're weighing you up against the shop whose page said yes on the spot, and nothing stops them going there while your answer is still pending. Your list won't tell you which of those names have already gone.

How long can a request sit before it's pointless?

Until the appointment it's asking for is too close to be worth confirming. Two deadlines are running, and the second one is what catches people out: one belongs to the person waiting, the other belongs to the slot. A Saturday request answered late on Friday is rude but it's still a booking. A request for tomorrow morning answered a day later isn't a decision at all, because the yes arrives after the groom would have started.

So the window you answer in has to be shorter than the notice on the slot they're asking for. If a day is a realistic reply for you, the next two days aren't request territory. That part of the diary has to be either bookable on the spot, for dogs you already know, or on the phone. Requests work on the part of the week that's far enough out to survive your answer.

What happens when you run out of time

Every approval setup has a fallback, and it fires on your worst days rather than your best, so it's worth deciding on a calm one. There are only two shapes it can take.

• It confirms without you. You keep the booking. You also get the exact thing approvals were there to catch, in the week you were too flat out to look: the matted double coat sitting in a tidy-up slot on Saturday.
• It cancels itself. The slot goes back and the diary stays honest, but a dog you'd have happily taken is gone over one busy afternoon.

Cancelling is the better default of the two. A booking that confirmed itself while you weren't looking becomes a problem you solve at eight on a Saturday morning with the owner standing in front of you. But a request that dies quietly reads as being ignored, and being ignored is not the same as being turned down. Whatever your fallback does, make sure the customer hears from it.

Set it for your worst Saturday

You'll pick the number while looking at a normal week. Pick the one you can still hold when you're a groomer down and the big dryer has died.

A fast no beats a slow yes

Declining feels like throwing work away, so it gets left, and leaving it is how a queue goes stale. It's backwards. Turn someone down within the hour and you're the shop that actually got back to them, and they'll ask again for a date that suits you both. Say yes on Thursday to a Tuesday enquiry and you've spent the same goodwill on a booking the owner may have already replaced.

Two messages worth having saved

A wait with an end on it is a completely different experience from an open one, and neither of these takes longer to send than opening the app did.

• When you can't answer yet: "Got your request for Saturday 9am. I'll confirm by 7 tonight." Now the waiting has a shape, and you've bought yourself the rest of the day.
• When the answer is no: "Can't do Saturday 9, I'm full that morning. I've got 11:30 Saturday, or Thursday's open. Want either?" A no with a door in it keeps the client.

And if you can't hold any window at all, which plenty of one-person shops honestly can't, then requests aren't your setting. Let the dogs you know book straight in, and keep everyone else on the phone, where an unanswered call at least looks like the problem it is.

Keep reading

• Appointment requests — the queue itself, and what an expired one does while it sits there.
• Who gets to put a dog in your diary? — the three ways to run the diary, and why most shops end up splitting it.
• Why a nail clip shouldn't wait behind a full groom — drop-off windows give the day slack, which makes a slower answer cost less.
• Seglo for pet grooming.