Online booking

Online booking gives you one link to hand out. A customer opens it, picks what they want, picks a time you really have free, and leaves their name — and the appointment is in your diary before you've read the message.

CLEO describes it plainly on the settings screen: A page where customers choose an appointment type, a day and a time themselves, and it lands in your bookings.

Four things have to be true

The page only offers times CLEO can stand behind, so it needs the same facts the rest of bookings needs — and one more.

The first is the one people miss. Until CLEO has your hours, your answer about whether it sees your whole schedule, and how many appointments can happen at once, it won't offer a stranger anything at all. When CLEO can offer free times covers all three.

Turning it on

Under Allow customers to book online? choose Yes, and save. CLEO confirms: Saved. Customers can book online using the link below. Choose No and the page politely closes instead: Saved. The booking page now says online booking isn’t open.

With it on, Your booking link appears. Click the link to copy it. Put it on your website, in your email signature, or send it to a customer.

What the customer sees

Four steps, then a confirmation:

1. What would you like to book? — only the types you marked available online, each with how long it takes.
2. Choose a day — the days with room, up to sixty days ahead.
3. Choose a time — the starts that fit the length of that appointment, shown in your business's time zone.
4. Your details — Your name and Email are required; Phone is optional. Nothing else is asked.

Then: You’re booked. with what and when, and one instruction — Please make a note of the time — this page is your confirmation.

They can go back and change any choice before the last step. Each choice shows a Change link.

CLEO checks again at the moment of booking

The times on the page were true when the page was drawn. Between then and the moment someone presses the button, you might have booked that slot yourself.

So CLEO doesn't trust the page. When the booking is submitted it looks the whole thing up again — that you still take bookings online, that the type is still offered, that the time is still genuinely free under your hours, your rules and your capacity — and only then writes the appointment.

If the time went in the meantime, the customer is told plainly and sent back a step: That time was just taken. Please choose another time.

And pressing the button twice books once. A repeated submission is recognised as the same one and shows the same confirmation.

Who the booking lands on

The customer typed a name, an email and perhaps a phone number, and nobody has checked any of it. So CLEO never puts an online booking on an existing customer's record by itself. It looks for the same email address, then the same phone number, and:

• No match — CLEO creates a new lead from what they typed, and the appointment is theirs.
• One match — CLEO still creates a new lead for the booking, marked as possibly being that customer, and asks you whether it is. Same person — merge moves the appointment and its history onto the customer you already have; Not them — keep separate leaves the new lead as it is. Enquiries from your website explains the same rule in full.
• More than one match — a new lead, and no question. CLEO won't guess between two records.

Archived customers are never matched. Someone who books twice from the same browser, with the same details, stays one record.

Where it shows up for you

• Bookings and the calendar — as an ordinary appointment.
• Leads — a new lead is listed under Being handled, with They booked an appointment and when. They took a time themselves, so they aren't waiting to hear from you and don't appear under Needs you.
• Home — under While you were away, if it came in since you last signed in, marked as booked.
• CLEO noticed — only when the booking may be someone you already know, with the question to answer.
• The appointment's own History — Booked online by the customer, so months later you can still tell who made it.

Two more things as they are today

• Every online booking is recorded as taking place at the business. The customer isn't asked where, and can't choose. If it should be somewhere else, change it on the appointment afterwards.
• The page is deliberately plain. It shows your business name, what you offer online and when — and nothing else about you.

When the page says it isn't open

Three sentences a visitor might see, and what each one means:

In every case they're shown your phone number and email, if CLEO has them, so the person who wanted to book can still reach you.

A booking is one way someone arrives from the internet. The other is a message — Enquiries from your website covers where those land.