Online booking and reservation are exponentially becoming the norm in many businesses worldwide. If you run a company that includes appointments, bookings, or reservations, you will require online booking software to make your services fast and easy to access. Standard booking methods, like phone calls, emails, SMS, etc., may not be sufficient to satisfy the customers’ demands in this fast-pacing world.
Many companies have now adopted and implemented online reservation systems to make booking faster, easier, and more suitable for customers. Also, stats show that the annual gain rate of the online booking system market will have reached around 15%. Furthermore, every business owner knows keeping the customers satisfied is the key ingredient for success. So, in this article, we will show you 5 ways to enhance customers’ online booking experience.
1. Make Enrolment Process Easier
Whenever a customer reaches an online platform for booking, he wants an easy enrolment or registration process. However, that is not an easy task; as an example, if your enrolment process is complicated and needs visitors to fill out a lot of input before they can access your services. That is why an online booking system can affect your business significantly. By making the enrolment process easy, you can remove visitor input load and ensure a smooth customer experience, which ultimately leads you to increase bookings and keep your business blossoming.
To make this happen, start assessing your existing enrolment or signup process and try finding out how you can turn visitors into customers. Unless you have participated in the entire process, you may never even find out how many signup conversions you are dropping. It is also crucial you collect the info required to process bookings and decrease the customer bounce rate.
2. Take Customer Feedback
Customer feedback is important for almost every service. You can use your collected feedback to get the customers’ opinions about your website, service, booking process, etc. You can collect feedback for many things. For instance, ask customers to give feedback on their experience immediately after a successful booking. You can also ask about how much they are likely to suggest your service to others.
Besides this, you can also add a quick rating survey after a chat or query to see how happy customers are with the support and service. If your customers are pleased, which means your customer satisfaction rate is high, you can start an affiliate program to promote and spread the word about your work and service. Getting feedback from visitors staying to purchase products or services everything is crucial and can be game-changing for your business.
3. Deals and Discounts
Offering alluring deals and discounts not only enhances customers’ online booking experience; but also helps you to convert leads into sales. Drawing visitors with the right offers and discounts can be very effective, especially if you are making a good profit even after that discount. Consider it a long-term investment, keeping in mind the lifetime value of your customer.
However, you can’t just throw huge discounts all the time; standard discounts like signup and first purchase bonuses are fine. But when it comes to jaw-dropping deals, timing is very important. Analysing market trends and determining when to start your bonus campaign to get shoppers on board should be the best choice. Also, ensure you have a fully functional online booking system in place during the discount period, so all your visitors can make their bookings easily.
4. Use Multiple Payment Gateways
By providing different payment gateways, you can reach various types of customers, including customers across borders. Credit or debit cards and PayPal may be the obvious picks for most customers. However, if you are targeting large-scale businesses, including the B2B or other sectors, consider adding invoice payments to your list of payment options.
You are preventing the customer getting frustrated at not being able to use their preferred payment option by using multiple payment portals. As a result, when your customers book online, providing them with different payment options can lower the retention in the flow of customers to your business. It also decreases booking cart abandonments. Besides providing multiple gateways, ensure that these payment gateways are secure so that your customers have assurance and are safe while using them.
Furthermore, getting customers to pay in advance will make them less likely to cancel the booking and allow you to convert potential sales. Providing flexible payment gateways can become a smart marketing strategy, targeting various audience groups.
5. State Booking Cancellation and Refund Policies Clearly
Flights and hotel booking cancellations are relatively common in the online market. According to stats, the average cancellation rate is almost 40%, which jumped by 15% more during the pandemic. So, it is not unique for hotels and other businesses to not allow booking cancellations to prevent revenue loss. Therefore, you must clearly state your booking cancellation and refund policy to keep your customer´s loyalty. Also, stating these policies lets you sidestep cases where the customers are dissatisfied because they were clueless about these policies while booking.
On the other hand, a refund policy can also be hard to decide, like when you do a full refund, partial refund, or decline a refund. When deciding on a refund policy, you must describe refund conditions to avoid the risk of losing customers or damaging your business. While a rigid booking policy is one way to cut off the satisfaction of booking, not providing a flexible cancellation or refund choice can eventually backfire and lead your business to getting a poor reputation with loyal customers. A golden rule is to set an appropriate t period for cancellations and refunds to enhance customer satisfaction and experience while booking online.