ZUGSEIL Service Scheduling (SRS)

Scheduling appointments between suppliers and customers is an important aspect of every customer-supplier relationship. Appointment-making can either happen as part of the sales process or part of the procurement process.

In both scenarios the same two parties are involved:

• the supplier party offering the appointments, which needs to make sure that the resources required for performing the services are available and
• the consumer side, which has to reserve the time for the appointment in which the services are performed.

Service scheduling in the sales process

In this setup, an appointment provider is offering a slot of time, not knowing exactly the products which will be sold (if any). So services provider just creates a service offering and hopes that an appointment consumer takes the offer and purchases services or products during that appointment.

The service provider has to define available appointment types through the appointment administration apps. So defined available appointment slots are then presented through the sales channels like sales websites or ZUGSEIL BEST Shop (BS) inside a customer digital.

Examples for these business cases are:

• Doctoral appointment
• Consultant appointments

You can read up more on the Dev:ZUGSEIL service scheduling on this site. (ZUGSEIL BEST SHOP - In-Sales Service Scheduling Extension)

The customer either:

• already knows the service provider digital, and receives the available appointment slots directly over MT. He creates appointment is his own digital over the appointment-making app (customer)

• or finds the offering over an appointment-making site, which operates the appointment broker role. The customer creates an appointment on the broker's appointment-making app (broker) website, ultimately leading to his digital knowing about the appointment with the service provider.

Service scheduling in the procurement process

In this setup, an product provider has been offering products to a customer, already knowing that these products require appointments. Once the customer purchases a product, the customer has to make one of multiple appointments.

The procurement process chains are triggered by customers from the ZUGSEIL BEST Shop (BS) , but are also required in the maintenance of products which is handled in the ZUGSEIL BEST Lifecycle Management (LCM) service bundle.

Service Provider / Supplier-side

When selling products over the b-op platform to customers, each supplier has the option to define service products, which can be used in these contexts:

Standalone service product

These are products, which represent a standalone service. Regarding scheduling the service provider may define these options for his service product:

• Does not require appointment making
• appointment making before order can be placed - the customer must select an appointment before he can place the order. If this option is selected, the service provider has to select an appointment type matching the product, and define whether the appointment making is mandatory or optional for the customer in the shopping environment, e.g. ZUGSEIL BEST Shop (BS) or ZUGSEIL BEST Lifecycle Management (LCM) Use case: Book an appointment with a hairdresser
• appointment making before fulfillment can start - the customer must select an appointment before the fulfillment can start (after the order). e.g. the customer has to visit a optician before correction-glasses can be produced. If this option is selected, the service provider has to select an appointment type matching the product. The system will send out appointment requests to the customer once the order is confirmed. Use case: Purchase a hairdresser as a present for a third party (you purchase and get a gift card, but your friend which got the present, needs an appointment with the hairdresser to get the service)

Bundled service product

A product can be marked a product bundle (formerly set articles). This means that a product does not exist as one physical product, but also comes along with a set of other (service) products. Product bundles are distributed over the regular b-op catalog server process. A product bundle may contain other products, which may even cascade through product bundles containing other product bundles. Each product bundle may also contain service products, with these service specific settings relevant for scheduling:

• Does not require appointment making
• appointment making before order can be placed - the customer must select an appointment before he can place the order. If this option is selected, the service provider has to select an appointment type matching the product, and define whether the appointment making is mandatory or optional for the customer in the shopping environment, e.g. ZUGSEIL BEST Shop (BS) or ZUGSEIL BEST Lifecycle Management (LCM) Use case: optician appointment when ordering a pair a correction glasses (to allocate the resource at the optician)
• appointment making before fulfillment can start - the customer must select an appointment before the fulfillment can start (after the order). e.g. the customer has to visit a optician before correction-glasses can be produced. If this option is selected, the service provider has to select an appointment type matching the product. The system will send out appointment requests to the customer once the order is confirmed. Use case: Made to measure try-on for a tailor-made suit (before production can be scheduled)
• appointment making to finish the fulfillment process - the customer must define an appointment when the fulfillment process is finished. If this option is selected, the service provider has to select an appointment type matching the product. The system will send out appointment requests to the customer once the order is confirmed and the goods are ready for shipment. Use case: Typically this is made for handover-meetings of products to the customer. E.g. Made-2-Measure Suite try on.

Appointment making requests

When appoints have to be made after the ordering interaction between the service provider and the customer, the appointment-making is triggered by the provider. They either:

• send an email, asking for appointment making on the appointment-making app (broker) embedded in the service provider's webpage or
• send an MT message to the service receiving party, requesting an appointment to be made inside the customer digital's appointment-making app (customer)

Related articles

• ZUGSEIL BEST Shop (BS)
• ZUGSEIL BEST Lifecycle Management (LCM)

Related technical articles

• Dev:B-Op technical foundation for appointment making
• Dev:B-Op Appointment making options
• Dev:ZUGSEIL Appointment-administration apps
• Dev:ZUGSEIL Appointment-making app (customer)
• Dev:ZUGSEIL Appointment-making app (broker)