One of the most important ways you can grow your business and get more customers is to hit your customer's service the exact date they request.
Why does Rescheduling matter?
There are 2 reasons for that:
It doubles your chances your customer schedules weekly service after your first audition mowing. Think about it... if their first mowing is delayed... they probably won't be back to schedule more with you, and probably won't leave a good review for you.
Hitting your customer's appointment dates on their originally requested dates boosts your reliability rating.
This is a simple calculation that tells your potential customers how often you mow your customers lawns on the days they schedule, you can see it here:
If you are unable to hit the day they want, there is a 1 day flexibility, so that gives you a 3 day window to hit your customer's date.
So you if absolutely need to, you can reschedule your customer's day 1 day and only 1 time. Keep in mind this lowers your reliability rating each time you do it.
By the way... You will still need to update your customer's appointment date by pushing the blue reschedule button. Here's why... this will send a nice email to your customer letting them know that you have to delay their service so they are not wondering when you are coming to get them serviced.
See what I mean is this illustration, put another way, you can reschedule a day before or day after without your customer's approval and it will change on your dashboard.
You might be wondering… If you change the day outside of that date range, your customer gets an email asking them to log in and approve it.
It's been my experience that you will also need to nag them to actually log in and approve. So send them a text and email also asking them to approve your date change, otherwise it will not change on your account, and you may get locked out due to a late appointment. Account lockout is covered in a following chapter.
As it turns out… it's usually just easier to simply mow your customer on the day they want, a day earlier or within their 3 day date rage. So we recommend only rescheduling unless it's absolutely necessary so you can keep a high reliability rating.
What does this mean for you?
If you have rescheduled a customer and it has not changed on your dashboard yet… Then that is because you are attempting to move the appointment outside of their 1 day flexibility and your client has not logged in and approved it yet.
Bottom line... Most people are cool with moving the date 1 day, however if you push your customers date 2 or 3 days, most of the time they cancel and find someone else on GreenPal. So don't bid on them if you cannot hit their requested mowing date.
The good news is... When you hit their date is scores you positively boosting your reliability rating and in most cases your client will book ongoing mowings with you so you can build up more reviews which makes it easier to get more customers using GreenPal.
My experience building your lawn care service with GreenPal works like a snow ball...
Hitting your customer's dates gets you a higher reliability rating... which makes it easier to win new customers, and then new customers get you more reviews... which get you more customers and so on.
But wait there's more.
What if your customer agrees to a totally different schedule than what they booked, or if tons of rain has their schedule all messed up.
Well there is a solution for that.
All you need to do is first get their approval over the phone or text message for the new schedule and then cancel the appointment. After that... set them up for a fresh schedule and it will override anything that they previously booked.
So for example… let's say you have a client booked for tomorrow and it's setup for Tuesdays however you can't get to them because you're only in their area on Fridays.
First reach out to your customer and explain the situation.
Then after they are in agreement, next cancel the appointment for tomorrow.
After that... Click the blue button "Setup Recurring Service" and select the new start and stop date and it will override everything they previously had scheduled.
The good news is... no matter the situation, if you are proactive about managing your schedule you can always stay out in front of any scheduling issues.
