Scheduling your dog walks and diary management
Scheduling your dog walks can be challenging when running a dog walking business, so it is always vital to have a good idea of how many walks you can offer during the day. This is particularly important when it cones to group walks, which tend to bring in the most income.
Often clients who work 9-5 will want their dog walking at lunchtime, but obviously this will soon become unfeasible if all your new clients want their dogs walking at noon time. Often it is better to have times frames for group walks such as 8am till 11am, then 11am till 2pm, 2pm till 5pm etc. This gives you more scope to pick up dogs and walk them in groups. This is only an example, but in this case, it would allow you to walk three groups of dogs during the day. How you work out your scheduling depends on your circumstances, the distances you have to travel between picking dogs up and dropping them off and what services you end up offering.
The key thing is you need to carefully manage the customers’ expectations. One of the ways you can do this in advance is to show the time frames for walks on your website. When you meet a client for the first time, they will only be thinking about the needs of their dog, so you need to discuss how long their dog is left in the home and agree on a time that they are happy with and fits in with one of your dog walking time frames.
Initially when booking walks, it is easier to use an online calendar on your phone or even just a pencil and paper diary – customers will often change their mind, so you need to be on top of who you are walking and when at all times.