Waxman,
I stumbled upon on-line booking recently on someone else's site. We went on-line Sunday night and got first booking in less than 12 hours followed by four more this week. That almost matches last month's total bookings. Don' know why we were so slow in May because the Detailing page had 1000 hits.
Just finished a vehicle and queried the customer about his on-line booking experience. He recently purchased a private sale used car that was in desperate need of washing so he googled "car wash", found us and saw we also did detailing and booked on the spot. Couldn't have made it easier unless we picked up & delivered.
Check out
www.genbook.com
It's very user friendly and pretty economical compared to some I was looking at last night. When a booking is made I receive a text message that I forward to my asst. mgr. who puts it on our off-line calendar so as not to double book. This program confirms, then reminds customer and follows up with the opportunity for the customer to rate the service. We chose to require cc to set appt. to discourage no-shows.
I would highly recommend going this route, if only for the free trial period.
Cheers,
MC