Precision Scheduling
Boulevard’s Precision Scheduling™ automatically surfaces the best times to book, just like your front desk would personally recommend specific times to a client.
This results in higher productivity, more revenue, and more quality time with clients, without needing to call clients to shift appointments after clients have already booked them online.
In addition to client self-booking, Precision Scheduling can also be used to schedule appointments in the Dashboard, with zero learning curve required to pick the best times. This promotes better booking, makes onboarding easier, and saves valuable time for both service providers and the front desk.
How Precision Scheduling works
To determine which bookings are the best, possible bookings are calculated and then evaluated from several viewpoints. The best bookings are those that result in the best outcome for everyone involved:
quality for the client (client experience)
quality for the service provider (fewer gaps)
quality for the overall business (overall revenue)
To determine the quality of a booking, Precision Scheduling considers:
each individual booking (for example, the number of service providers and resources required)
learned statistics (for example, the popularity of various services at the location)
predicted statistics (for example, the expected durations and revenue of your appointments)
Using these statistics, Precision Scheduling is able to automatically adapt to varying durations and prices on a provider-specific level, and larger trends in supply and demand.
Where Precision Scheduling is used
Precision Scheduling is available for all Boulevard customers, and it’s used by most forms of scheduling in Boulevard:
when your clients book appointments online
when your clients reschedule appointments online
when staff book appointments in the Dashboard using "View Times”
when apps and integrations like Facebook, Instagram, or Reserve with Google book appointments using Boulevard's API.
Precision Scheduling affects which times are surfaced and the placement of services scheduled. This is done in real time based on what's currently on the calendar, and specifically for the current combination of services.
Precision Scheduling also recommends times when you book appointments in the Dashboard using “View Times.” Available times shown during online booking are the same as "Best Times" in the Dashboard, except that the Dashboard allows:
booking with service providers that aren't bookable online
booking outside of online booking lead times
Note:
Precision Scheduling is not applied when staff book appointments in the Dashboard using “Select Time on Calendar,” in which case they are not held to the scheduling preferences and can select any time, including double booking.
Precision Scheduling does not impact available days offered.
Precision Scheduling learns over time
Precision Scheduling learns scheduling data for each location and service provider. These are based on the previous 90 days of bookings and the currently available services. Precision Scheduling then predicts how various bookings could affect future scheduling.
This process happens automatically on an ongoing basis; there isn't a specific time when all data is re-learned. However, usually, this occurs at least once every two weeks for a service provider at a given location.
Precision Scheduling and First Available
When Precision Scheduling is enabled, the “First Available” option in client self-booking and the Boulevard Dashboard assigns the best available provider for the selected time based on historical bookings. When bookings between several providers are equally opportune based on the calendar at the time, the service provider is chosen randomly.
Customizing Precision Scheduling
Precision Scheduling is built to match the needs of the majority of Boulevard businesses, but some businesses have additional needs outside of maximum utilization when booking appointments. Boulevard can modify your advanced settings to optimize the booking times offered.
Advanced settings include:
Showing more or fewer times than you do currently
Example You’re always heavily booked, and only want to offer the most efficient times to keep your calendar optimized.
Example: You’re rarely heavily booked, and would like to offer more options to clients to encourage them to book.
Showing times on a specific schedule (common for resource-based services like sauna)
Example: You’d like to have all times at the top of the hour for scheduled cleaning.
Preventing certain times from being shown
Example: You do not want to show a time like 10:25 and prefer to show 10:30 or 11:00 instead.
Allowing back-to-back group bookings in addition to same-time group bookings
Example: You’d like to offer back-to-back service times for group bookings if the same time is not available for both clients, increasing the number of possible group appointments.
Example: You’d like to offer parent-child group appointments with the same service provider performing both services
Restricting appointments with multiple services to a single service provider
Example: You’d like to prevent clients from booking appointments where they’d have to change service providers between services.
Adjusting how “First Available” bookings get distributed among service providers
Example: You’d like to build clientele for your least busy service providers and assign them bookings where the client does not have a service provider preference
If you have any questions or would like to utilize the advanced settings, please reach out to Help Chat or email support@blvd.co to learn how we might be able to adjust Precision Scheduling settings to better match your priorities.
Precision Scheduling for developers
See the developer portal article to use Precision Scheduling in apps and integrations.