Since its release in June 2024, KUKUI's Live Scheduler has rapidly evolved, with continuous enhancements inspired by feedback from our beta clients, early adopters, and repair shops nationwide. Our Product team has been hard at work, not only responding to valuable input but also identifying top features across scheduling platforms to keep the Live Scheduler on the cutting edge. Leveraging 13+ years of expertise in the auto repair industry, we’ve developed a tool designed to meet the unique needs of diverse shop setups. This post clears up some of the misconceptions surrounding our latest features and highlights the benefits Live Scheduler brings to your business.

KUKUI's expertise extends far beyond just scheduling. While our calendar features reflect our ability to balance and manage appointments effectively, our Live Scheduler is the only one built with direct feedback from repair shops nationwide. Backed by 13 years of experience in the industry and a team with over 300 years of combined experience in the aftermarket automotive sector, we ensure that our scheduling tool is always optimized to meet the unique needs of your shop.

Setting up your scheduler is intuitive, but a member of our KUKUI Support team will walk you through it.

Yes, other schedulers are more complex than they need to be. KUKUI's Live Scheduler was built to balance robust configuration options for shops with a user-friendly experience for customers. Shops have access to a range of settings to tailor the scheduler to their needs without overwhelming customers or causing high abandonment rates. Appointment confirmation is also customizable—shops can choose automatic confirmation or manual review to align with their workflow. Plus, integrating Live Scheduler with our full suite of marketing tools means customers benefit from follow-ups, reminders, and other retention campaigns, ensuring a seamless and connected experience.

 After gathering feedback from our shops and analyzing reasons for appointment abandonment, as well as reviewing other non-automotive scheduling applications, we designed our scheduler using the KISS principle. This approach ensures a seamless user experience with minimal barriers, boosting appointment completion rates and reducing abandonment. That said, we’re always evolving. In fact, just this week, we released the ability for customers to upload images, videos, and audio to their appointments, enhancing the experience further.

Every customer receives an email and/or text notification with their appointment details and confirmation, which includes an .ics file that enables them to easily add the appointment to their preferred calendar. Additionally, our marketing features provide automated appointment reminders, also with calendar integration options, as well as post-appointment follow-ups to keep customers engaged and increase show rates.

We absolutely agree with the importance of highlighting declined services during scheduling. That’s why we recently introduced a new feature that allows logged-in customers to view and add their previously declined services, not only through My Garage but also directly within the appointment booking flow. This enhancement makes it easier for customers to address outstanding service needs, creating additional revenue opportunities for your shop.

KUKUI's Live Scheduler is designed to support both customer retention and a seamless appointment experience. With the My Garage feature, customers have a single location to view their service history, track recommended or declined services, and see upcoming appointments, in addition to booking new ones. For those who prefer a faster process, they can bypass logging in and go directly to scheduling. This flow is optimized for both conversions and aligns with typical online user experiences. Plus, one of our recent enhancements (August)  detects if a guest is an existing customer and prompts them to log in, ensuring a smoother experience for everyone.

KUKUI’s Live Scheduler captures and notifies shops of abandoned appointments, providing all the collected data so shops can follow up and convert these into actual bookings. This feature was launched in September 2024. In October 2024, we introduced our Live Scheduler dashboard, which organizes this data in an easy-to-read format, making it simple for teams to follow up effectively and boost conversions.

We provide a direct URL to the scheduler that can be used to generate QR codes, link from other websites, or be utilized across various marketing channels to increase visibility. However, KUKUI loves to make things easier for our shops, so we appreciate the suggestion and will certainly consider adding this feature in a future release as we continue to innovate and improve our offerings.

Our Live Scheduler incorporates this functionality within the abandoned appointments feature. If a customer exits before completing their booking, we prompt them for additional information. This data is included both in the notification email to the shop and on the dashboard for easy follow-up. Additionally, we analyze this information to continually improve the user interface and scheduling experience.

Shops have the ability to configure the contact form to include only the fields they consider necessary, whether for their specific needs or state regulations. While this may result in some scrolling, it’s important to note that this form is only required for new customers. With KUKUI’s full platform and our shops experiencing an average retention rate of 70%+, customers won’t need to fill out this form again in the future, streamlining the process for returning clients.