In this article
Scenario
You'd like to balance the removal of physical locations from your online booking process with maintaining a high customer satisfaction rating. Because, when change can cause disruption, maintaining happy customers is key.
Suggestion
Create and implement a location archiving plan. This plan can help your organization leverage the archiving of locations as a way to engage with customers and increase adoption of digital engagement methods.
Read on for a recommended flow and some helpful hints to consider when creating your plan.
Where to begin?
Recommended flow
Coconut suggests the following flow when your organization is considering archiving locations:
Set the location to private
Communicate to employees that the location will not be available to book appointments through Schedule as of the archive date and to begin limiting the number of appointments scheduled at the location
Review scheduled/upcoming appointments at the location and re-assign these appointments
Confirm re-assigned appointments are communicated to customers
Archive the location
Recommended best practices
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Align how long a location is set to private with the appointment lead time at your organization
For example, if a client/member can book at that location up to 4 weeks in advance, plan on that location being set to Private for 4 weeks before the closure date
This will prevent clients/members from being able to book beyond the closure date while staff will still be able to book appointments at the location through Schedule
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Include messaging in your internal communications that employees can use to answer customer questions
This helps ensure consistency in how the change is shared with customers, and enables employees to effectively navigate the change
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Leverage internal and customer-facing messaging about the archiving of a physical location as an opportunity to encourage digital engagement methods
When an alternative is made easy for your client/member, there is a greater opportunity to see increased adoption of that engagement method
Additional resources
For how to archive a location, please refer to this article.