Arrival windows are the middle ground between “we’ll be there Tuesday” and a promise to ring the bell at exactly 9:00. The customer gets a time they can plan around, and the crew keeps enough room for traffic, a stubborn job or a gate code that doesn’t work. Done well, they cut “what time are you coming?” calls and make your company look organized.
A window is not a start time
Keep two things apart: the planned start the office uses to build the day, and the window the customer is told. The planned start can move by twenty minutes as the day is reshuffled; the window should not. If you only track one time, every small change becomes a broken promise.
How long should a window be?
There is no single right length. Think about:
- How predictable your visits are. Short, repeat visits like storefront glass are easy to predict; a diagnostic call is not.
- Where the visit falls in the day. The first stop is easy to keep. The sixth depends on everything before it.
- Who the customer is. A homeowner taking time off work wants a tight window. A business that’s open all day may be happy with “morning.”
Many companies settle on a two-hour default for most visits and a half-day window, like 8 AM to noon, for longer or less predictable work.
Once told, it holds
The most important rule is simple: until the customer has been told a window, it can follow the schedule as you rearrange the day. Once they’ve been told, it stays put. If the office later moves the visit so it would start outside the window, that’s a problem to solve on purpose, usually with a phone call, not something to discover when the customer calls you.
Tell them more than once
A window only helps if the customer remembers it. Put it in the booking confirmation, repeat it in a reminder the day before, and let the technician send a heads-up when they leave the previous job. We cover the reminder side in appointment reminder emails.
How Sentra Scheduler handles arrival windows
Every scheduled visit in Sentra Scheduler can carry an arrival window separate from its planned start:
- A company default. The window starts at the hour of the planned start and runs for the length you set; with the usual two hours, a visit at 8:30 is promised 8–10 AM. Set the length to zero for no windows.
- Your own window, or none. In the schedule dialog the office can keep the usual window, set its own (8 AM–12 PM, say) or choose none for that visit.
- It follows, then holds. A usual window follows the planned start until the customer has been told it in a confirmation or reminder. After that it holds, and the dialog says so: “Customer sees 9–11 AM (already told; it stays unless you change it).”
- Outside the window. When the planned start falls outside a promised window, the visit gets an “outside the arrival window” conflict on the schedule, so the office knows who to call.
- Everywhere it matters. The window shows as a chip like “8–10” on visit cards, on Today in the crew app, on the customer’s tracking page and on the job ticket.
When the day slips
When a job runs long, “Push the rest of the day” moves the following visits later in order with the drive between them. Any visit that ends up past its promised window is flagged, so the office calls those customers first instead of finding out from an unhappy one. There is more on planning realistic days in drive time between jobs.
What to say when you’re going to miss it
Sometimes a window can’t be kept. A truck breaks down or an emergency call comes first. Customers forgive a late crew far more easily than a silent one. A good habit:
- Call as soon as you know, not when the window has already passed.
- Offer a new window, not an apology without a time.
- If the visit moves to another day, confirm the new date and window in writing.
The office can only make that call early if it can see which visits are at risk. That is why the warning matters more than the window itself: it turns a missed promise into a planned phone call.
Getting started
- Pick a default window length you can keep on a normal day.
- Use longer windows for work that’s hard to predict.
- Tell customers the window in writing, at booking and the day before.
- Treat a visit outside its window as a call to make today.
Arrival windows are a small promise, but customers remember whether you keep it. See how the confirmation, reminder and On my way emails fit together on arrival windows and reminders.