📚Appointment-based Services
Understanding appointments in Cubu.
Last updated
Understanding appointments in Cubu.
Last updated
An appointment-based service is a service that requires the customer to book an appointment in advance.
Appointments are booked by agents using the Calendar tool or by customers using the Portal when applicable.
When an appointment is booked, a case with Planned status is created.
Customers must check in to their appointments before they can be served. Agents can check in customers to their appointments using the Calendar tool. Customers may self-check-in using a Kiosk (in a face-to-face scenario) or the Portal (for video call meetings).
A typical case lifecycle in an appointment-based service looks like this:
Note that you cannot check in for an appointment too early or too late. The allowed check-in window is defined by service.
To book an appointment, you need to have a Calendar. Calendars are created for appointment-based services.
You can schedule appointments for different service types in a calendar. The duration of each appointment is determined by the Estimated Work Duration setting of each service type.
For each day, one or more calendars can be created for a service, with each calendar representing a distinct agent. The number of open calendars determines the service capacity, i.e., the number of appointments the organization accepts.
The number of available calendars may vary daily based on agents' availability and your organization's needs.
The following diagram depicts a service with a different number of calendars opened each day. Some calendars have allocated users and some are "anonymous":
Once you have created a calendar, you can allocate a specific agent to it.
Doing so will ensure that the agent's schedule is clear, conflicts are avoided by preventing double allocating agents to multiple calendars on the same date, and personal appointments can be managed efficiently.
A calendar allows booking appointments during the service's hours of operation.
When you open a calendar on a specific date, the hours of operation are determined by the service's working hours. You can change working hours for individual calendars on specific dates to reflect the varying availability of service providers.
The number of appointments a calendar can accommodate is influenced by the appointment duration, based on the service type, and the calendar's availability, determined by its working hours. Cubu ensures that the total duration of booked appointments aligns with the calendar's availability.
When significant no-show rates affect organizational performance, Cubu can be configured to overbook appointments to offset expected no-shows.
We create a daily plan for our appointment-based service to determine the required number of calendars to open on specific days.
Each calendar represents an individual agent, thus enabling us to determine the appropriate staffing levels for optimal service provision.
The number of calendars, working hours, and appointment duration determines the maximum number of daily appointments for a service.
If you use the same daily plan repeatedly, you can save the plan as a template and create plans based on that template.
You can set up the template to open calendars automatically on specific days based on a schedule.
Each day, new calendars are opened for future dates, following the guidelines set by the Booking Window parameter, which determines how far in advance appointments for a service can be booked.
