Kickserv's Customer Center allows you to connect with your customers like never before. Enable online booking for your services, publish a marketing site, and directly message customers from within the Kickserv interface.
Marketing Site
The Customer Center includes a marketing site for your company that showcases your services, displays company hours, and allows customers to request services.
Home Page
You can customize the information that appears on your marketing home page. Providing a description for your company allows customers to learn a little more about you right away.
A header image will appear on the background of your marketing site home page, so choose an appropriate photo to use. Larger photos work best!
In addition to your company name and description, providing an address and contact information gives your customers an easy way to get in touch.
Company Hours
The Customer Center allows you to define company hours (and specific employee availability) which will aid in the booking process.
Adding Company Hours
You can define your company hours on the Company Hours panel within the Marketing section. For each day of the week, you can define periods of availability by choosing a start time and an end time.
If you need to add separate blocks of time (to account for lunch, as an example), just click the + button to the right. You can then use the first row of times for your hours before lunch, and the second row for your hours after.
Customizing Employee Availability
By default, any employee that has “User can be assigned work” enabled will use the company hours to determine availability. Obviously, this may not work if your employees work in shifts or keep different hours than your company’s “open” times.
You can adjust each employee’s hours in the Manage Users section of the Settings area. Adding hours for an employee functions the same way as adding company hours, so you can account for lunch breaks or other “off” hours easily.
Do you need to set up availability?
Setting up availability is required if you want to allow customers to request services through the Customer Center. It can also help you during scheduling as you’ll be able to see when your employees are available.
The easiest way to see the effects of your availability setup is to view your Resource screen. Time blocks that are not available will have a gray background. You can still manually schedule appointments at any time, but customers won’t be able to request appointments for those employees during those hours. See the Booking section below for more info.
Services
You can add your company’s services to the marketing setup. These services will be used throughout Kickserv, and you can choose which services your customers can book online.
Adding and Editing Services
You can add new services or edit existing ones directly from the marketing site setup. Bookable services are displayed within your marketing site and are available for online booking.
Description, Completion Time, and Cost
The Marketing Description is a great way to advertise your business to customers. It provides them a quick overview of the service you offer.
The Typical Completion Time must be filled out to allow for online booking. Kickserv uses the time you fill out in combination with your employee availability to calculate when appointments are available for booking.
The Typical Cost is displayed throughout the marketing site. The typical cost is not tied to your job charges in any way but can provide a general idea of how much that service costs to your customers. You can put in a single cost or a range.
Service Images
Service images are a great way to showcase your business and the services you provide. Images are displayed throughout the marketing site.
Accessing your Marketing Site
In Settings Customer Center & Contact Form, you’ll see a link to your finished marketing site (it will look like https://app.kickserv.com/abc123/connect). You can always go back and edit your company information and services. Changes are updated on your marketing site immediately.
Messages
Messaging allows you to communicate directly with your customers and gives them an easy way to contact your business.
Your Inbox
The Messages icon (at the bottom left of your window) brings you to the Inbox. Any time you receive a new message, an indicator will appear next to it.
Clicking a conversation in the list will show that conversation. For a Request, you can reply to the conversation, book the request on your calendar, or decline it. Read more in the Requests section below.
You can also Compose a new message if you need to contact one of your customers directly. Type the first few letters of a contact’s name and select it from the dropdown. Customers will be notified by email that they have a new message.
Contact Messages
Conversations with your contacts will also appear on the screen for the contact, in the Messages tab.
Job Messages
You can also send and receive messages about a job directly from the job's screen via the Messages tab. Customers can reply from within the Customer Center. Job messages will also appear in the main inbox and on the screen for the job's contact.
Message Permissions
You can choose who receives booking request messages in the Messaging Permissions section of the Customer Center & Contact Form settings screen.
Marketing Site Home Page
Your company’s marketing page is the "front door" of the Customer Center. That's where prospective customers can find your hours, contact information, and services. The marketing page is always available to customers, whether they are logged in to the Customer Center or not.
Work History
Customers can log in to view their past, present, and future jobs. The job view includes the basic job information: charges, messages, notes, and attachments. If you’ve generated an invoice for that job, customers will be able to view and pay the balance.
Messages
Customers have their own message inbox within the Customer Center. Here, they can see conversations they’ve had with you.
Online Booking
Prospective customers can request service from you online in the Customer Center, without ever having to pick up a phone (or you having to answer the phone). This takes the hassle out of the booking process and allows your customers to choose a time that works for them.
Requests
Booking requests are made via your company’s marketing site. Your customers can access your home page and list of services. After choosing a service, users can choose their preferred time--morning, afternoon, evening, or all three.
When a user requests service, any employee with request notifications enabled will receive an email containing the request information. Any user with message permissions will be able to view the request in the Inbox.
Booking a Request
If you want to book an appointment at the requested time, you can click the Book Request button on the request message. You’ll see a calendar view of the day the customer requested service, with the requested time highlighted in green. Just drag it to an available technician and time slot and click Book Appointment. You can include a message to the customer if you’d like. Kickserv will automatically notify the customer.
When an appointment is booked, a new job will be created for that customer, and an event will be scheduled at the requested time. Messages from the request will be brought over to the resulting job.
Declining a Request
If you can’t book an appointment at the customer’s requested time, or if you need to decline the request for another reason, simply click the Decline Request button on the message. You can add a personalized message to the customer.
Requesting Service via Marketing Site
As long as you have at least one bookable service, your marketing site will be visible to customers.
To book a job, customers choose a service from the marketing site menu. After that, they choose a date and time and add their location and contact information. They can also add photos or other relevant files.
If a customer has an existing account, they can log in. If they don’t, they can create an account. Afterward, they’ll be automatically logged in and brought to the request screen within the Kickserv Customer Center. In addition, customers will receive an email confirmation.
The confirmation email contains a direct link to the request within the Customer Center, so your customers can easily log in at any time to check on the status of the request, or to message you.
Requesting Service via Yelp
If you’ve connected your Kickserv account to Yelp, your customers will be shown a “Book Appointment” button on your Yelp company page. After entering their service address, they’ll be brought to a slightly customized version of the request form.
Customers can then fill out the form, choose a date for service, and book their appointment request. For appointments requested through Yelp, customers will receive a Yelp and Kickserv co-branded confirmation email. The email will contain a link that will automatically log them into the Customer Center, so they’ll have access to the same messaging and status features as any other customer.
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