Wasp nest season: handling the summer peak of call-outs

Let customers book non-urgent nest treatments online, in slots grouped by area, and keep truly urgent cases on the phone: a nest by a front door with a child who's allergic, or wasps inside the house. Ask in the booking note where the nest is, how high, and whether it's wasps or hornets if the customer can tell, and ask for a photo by message. Your summer days fill in an order that makes sense on the road, and the phone stays free for the cases that can't wait until tomorrow.

Nests grow through spring and become visible, and noisy, in summer. Requests arrive in waves on hot days, by phone, sometimes while you're up a ladder with a sprayer. Each call is a conversation: where is it, how big, when can you come. By evening, you have a list of messages to return, and customers who called three days ago are still waiting to hear when you'll pass.

Not every nest is an emergency. A nest under a roof tile, in a hedge at the bottom of the garden or in a shed can wait a day or two without danger if people keep away. Those are the requests to move online.

On Book, each service has a name, a price and an optional description shown on your public page. Each slot belongs to one service, with its own start and end. Customers pick a service, then a free slot. With one place per slot, a booked slot is full and disappears from your page.

Lengths and prices are examples: set your own. Say in each description what's included, when the treatment takes effect, and whether you remove the nest or leave it after treatment.

At the top of each description, write what counts as urgent and your phone number: a nest inside a living space, at a door or window used every day, near someone with an allergy, or near a school or nursery. Those callers shouldn't pick a slot for tomorrow. Keep a few gaps in each day, not created as slots, to fit them in.

In peak weeks, driving becomes the bottleneck. Assign days or half-days to parts of your area, say in the descriptions which towns each covers, and create short slots on those days with travel time between them. Repeat them each week until the end of the season. If someone books outside their area's day, call them and move the booking to a slot on the right day from your bookings list; Book doesn't email them about the change, so confirm it yourself.

The public booking form asks for first name, last name, email and phone, plus an optional note that you read in your new-booking email. In the description, add safety advice until you arrive: keep away from the nest, don't block the entrance or spray it, keep windows near it closed.

As summer ends, reduce the number of slots and move to the rest of your work: rodent control, insect treatments, prevention visits. Customers who call can still be booked: pick a free slot in your calendar and enter their name; email and phone are optional, and with the email they get a confirmation. Book doesn't take payments, so say how you're paid on the day. Book costs €5/month, everything included: unlimited services and bookings, no commission, no contract.