So you've got a customer who is reporting they are having booking issues? As with any booking platform there is multiple layers between the customer and you getting the booking made.
We've worked tirelessly to reduce any barriers as much as possible but in the very nature of taking thousands of bookings a day we will see people who have difficulties. Let's explore what these might be caused by, and how we can help.
Information, Information, Information!
We love to explore the users why a user has issues booking but there is limited we can do to help when we don't have the full picture. If the only information we know is a user 'can't book' then alas there is nothing we do to help.
Whenever you speak to people who have reported a booking issue try to collect as much information as possible from them; often you'll find you'll be able to explain where they might have made a mistake or if there is an issue they are facing you'll be able to let us know details we can use to improve the user journey.
Common Booking Failure Reasons
Users Technological Understanding.
This is one that, perhaps is hard to find a polite way of describing. Ultimately with tens of thousands of bookings we, like you, are going to experience the odd customer every now and then who finds interacting with technology difficult.
We're constantly refining our booking path to maximize booking success rates, and have some of the highest in the industry, however sometimes people just struggle regardless of what information they are presented with.
The good news is it's nothing you've done wrong, and ultimately it's a problem the likes of Apple deal with on a daily basis... well done, your basically Apple!
Solution:
Firstly if you know about it you've likely already spoken to the customer and in turn most of the time it's easiest to simply book them in manually.
If possible try to get an understanding of where they hit a road block and then feed that back to us so we can see if there is anything we could have done to improved their experience. Feel free to direct them to us as we'd be happy to guide a customer through the booking experience.
Slots Temporary Booked Out.
This is perhaps the most common thing you'll see in cases where you are dealing with a customer who tried to book, but can't. If you can't replicate the problem then there is a high chance it's because the slot they was trying to book was temporary booked out.
BookingNinja as with any booking platform be it for That Trendy Restaurant, or Oasis have to deal with parallel bookings. If you had multiple people hitting your website at the same time and then both try to book the last remaining slot. It would get messy at the final step - what happens if they both submit at the same time? You'd have to throw one of them an error, a pretty terrible experience. The alternative here would be if both are submitted at the same time then you'd be overbooked... even worse!
So what we do is have a stage of the booking form which we consider is the intent stage - a part of the process where the customers has progressed far enough to expect them to complete the booking. On most forms in BookingNinja this is during the details phase. At this point we inform the customer they 15 minutes to complete their booking and then in the system place a 'temporary' booking in the slot they are trying to book for.
If the user completes the booking that temporary booking becomes their actual booking - but if they don't complete within 15 minutes we throw them an error saying sorry and then release that slot back into the pool of spaces.
This can all mean that when the customer went to book a slot that you think should be free, in that moment of time it wasn't.
Solution:
This is a limitation of any booking platform. BookingNinja intelligently polls the customers browser to see if the session is closed to try to release the slot sooner, but we have to account for mobile devices which can often lose connection.
You're more likely to see this happening if people aren't aware of the booking conditions or costs upfront; so provide as much information as possible on your booking page.
Embed Issues On Your Site.
BookingNinja allows you to embed our widget on your website. This uses a widely supported technology called iFrames. You can add our embed to any site that supports JS tags, and that includes Wix, Squarespace and pretty much any other hosting provider or page editor on the web..
However there is a big BUT here - We have no control over how your site renders the content provided, and this includes the BookingNinja widget. You need to ensure your site is mobile responsive and working well!
How you do this varies a great deal and if you have a webmaster that manages your site simply let them know:
The container that holds the BookingNinja embed widget needs to be able to dynamically resize, so that if the site is viewed on a mobile the embed gets as much width as possible; so remove any padding on the left and right when on small screens. The iFrame dynamically adjusts height, so please make sure any fixed content doesn't overlap it.
If the above is gobbledygook to you then don't worry and read on!
Firstly reach out to us on support and we'll be able to let you know if there is any issues with your sites layout causing the embed to not render it's best.
Depending on your plan we might be able to jump in and do the edits for you, however in some cases we'll only be able to provide some guidelines.
Solution
Ensure your site is mobile responsive, or copy the above message to your web developer. Speak to us if you have any questions.
Or actually our recommendation most of the time - don't use the embed. The embed adds a layer of abstraction on top of the booking process.
In most cases it's a much better user experience to direct users to your LetsBookFor page. We'll never promote other venues on this page, and you can brand it to suit your brand.
When you link to the LetsBookFor URL our system automatically generates a mobile responsive version; we get complete logging so can inform you why a booking failed, and ultimately it's faster and cleaner for you.