How booking works
What has to be true for your agent to book an appointment, and what it does when it cannot.
Booking is what turns an answered call into revenue. Your agent offers real times and takes the appointment while the caller is still on the line, rather than promising a call back.
Two things have to be true
- Something is connected, a calendar or a booking system. See Connectors
- It knows when you accept appointments, from your own hours or from the platform's. See Hours and slots
Two kinds of diary
The difference decides how availability is worked out.
| A calendar | A booking platform | |
|---|---|---|
| Examples | Google Calendar, Outlook, Apple iCloud | Mindbody, Square Appointments, Booker |
| Who decides free times | Voksha, from your working hours and what is already in the calendar | The platform, from its own rules |
| Services | None. An appointment is just a time | A real service list, each with its own length |
| Staff | None | Real staff, and only those who perform that service |
With a calendar you tell Voksha your hours. With a booking platform you do not, because the platform already knows them better than a copy would.
What a caller experiences
- They ask for an appointment
- On a booking platform, the agent establishes what they want, because a 30 minute haircut and a 90 minute treatment are not the same slot
- The agent asks the platform or the calendar for real open times and offers a few
- The caller picks one, gives their name and number, and the agent books it
- The agent confirms, and the appointment appears in your own system straight away
When it cannot book
Sometimes the answer is honest rather than perfect, and the agent is built to say so rather than guess.
| What happened | What the agent does |
|---|---|
| The slot went between being offered and being taken | Says so, and offers another time |
| The platform refused for a reason the caller cannot fix | Takes the details, says your team will confirm, and records the request |
| Nothing is connected | Takes a message instead of a booking |
A recorded request appears in Appointments as awaiting your confirmation.
An agent never claims an appointment that was not made. If a booking failed, the caller is told the team will confirm, and the request is written down for you rather than lost.
Cancelling and moving
Your agent can cancel on some platforms but never reschedules by phone, and on Booker it does not cancel at all. Cancelling is available to you in the dashboard on every connector that supports it.
That is a deliberate limit. An agent that can cancel on the phone can cancel the wrong appointment for a caller who sounds confident, and the business gets no chance to intervene.