Ahead of National Small Business Week, Facebook has announced about enhancing a couple of small-business focused tools. One of them refers to booking and managing appointments right on Instagram (and Facebook, of course). This is especially beneficial for service-based businesses. If business owners had to spend a ton of time on scheduling customer appointments, gathering important information on them and sending reminders to them before, now all this can be done from a single device – your smartphone. Got interested? InstaBF, a popular Instagram and IGTV provider is going to introduce this updated tool in more details.
More about the New Feature
Since early 2018, Instagram’s “Book” button has been around. This was the time when Instagram set up the CTA button for business profiles. You must have noticed that by tapping the “Book” on a business account, you were taken to an external landing page where you could fulfill the booking. Moreover, so that to manage various bookings (Appointments by Square, Acuity Scheduling, etc.) a third-party service was to be used. Today Instagram is working on a booking feature that will allow users to book appointments in real-time without leaving the platform.
How You Can Use the New Appointment Feature
So, if you have a small business on Instagram and the new appointment booking feature interested you, first you need to have a Facebook Page and connect your Gram business profile to it. Click the blue CTA button below the cover photo on Facebook. After this, click “Start Setup” and “Next” to show all the available appointments, if you want to. Otherwise, tap “Not Now”. Remember that in this case, people will be obliged to request an appointment from you by messaging.
After that, you will need to add services and service descriptions by clicking “Next”. This includes duration, price, images, etc. Once all this is done, it’s time to connect the feature to your Insta account. The moment you have connected it, you will see a new “Book” button below the bio. Whenever someone on Instagram taps the button, they can confirm the appointment time. People will also be able to request the service type, add any extra information and finally click on “Request Appointment” to have the booking process complete.
After this, it’s up to you whether to send appointment reminders to customers or not. The list of your scheduled appointments can be found in the section of “Appointment” in the top of your Facebook page.
Final Thoughts
The best thing about this new Appointment feature is that it can be equally well used on Facebook and Instagram. This tool makes it possible to manage multiple bookings from a single location. Beyond any doubts, the feature streamlines the booking process on both channels making it a hassle-free thing to manage all appointments across both platforms.
And finally, the fact that you can follow up with customers through Messenger, you’ll be able to keep the conversation on and your customers engaged with your brand.