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The company I work for would like to implement scheduling their services online. This differs from selling gift certs and singular shipped products. They would like to schedule appointments for service to new and existing customers online. Scheduling has been handled over the phone for 22 years.
They use Borland databases that live in house. I have advised that they look into moving to SQL before ever thinking about offering booking online, am I right? I don't want them to get the "cart" before the horse.
It appears to me, after researching hundreds of shopping carts, that shopping carts aren't what we need in this scenario, am I right?
It appears to me that we need an in house ( term used loosley ) home cooked solution that would integrate the in house data with an external interface to handle booking. It looks some companies offering this are using .NET and we would prefer not to. Any suggestions?
I am foreseeing a huge project here, with registering customers, allowing them see account info and history, change account info, extending warranty periods, opt-in/opt-out offerings, referrals, up to the minute booking to avoid scheduling mishaps with inside sales dept., accurate information gathering to avoid confusion for the customer at point of sale or future feelings of misleading sales tactics ( reason for this is as with any service there can conditions that warrant more information to be provided or special conditions that require alternate information or methods to meet expectations ). To tie intranet with Internet site will be critical, while protecting client data, and providing excellent service and communication will be extremely important as well.
I think they want to make booking easier and relieve the need for a large in house sales force, but I am not certain that all issues have been considered when deciding to go down this path.
Any suggestions would be helpful regardless of how small or large.
Does anyone know of a purchasable product that can handle this type of need?
Last edited by Nobunaga; 05-12-2009 at 02:26 PM..
Reason: Forgot an important question
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