Walk in vs scheduled

No, not Christopher Walken, Walk In. Like walk in appointments. Many service organizations have a scheduled-appointment-only policy, others have only walk in appointments only, and some mix both. There are certainly benefits to both approaches.

Walk-in benefits:

• Capture spur-of-the-moment business
• Allow new prospective customers to partake of your business/organization without forethought
• The customer comes to you!
• That Fatboy Slim video!(sorry, still thinking of Christopher Walken)
  

Walk-in constraints:

• You must be actively marketing your business so customer have some clue as to who you are
• You must advertise your business location, so people know where to go
• You must be able to deal with ebb and flow in your productivity
• Your location must be convenient to walk in activity

Scheduled Benefits:

• You can closely schedule your day to maximize productivity and overhead.
• provide consistency and an even workload for your employees
  
• you know your schedule, so you can make sure your providing your customers with all your attention

Scheduled Constraints:

• Prospects/customers may need you NOW, and you've already committed to being/helping someone else
• Delivery times, sickness, traffic, vendor shortages and weather can turn a well ordered day into a 3-day backorder
• You need to have enough product/staff available to handle 1.25 times a fully scheduled day in order to deal with problems that come up in the normal course of business
• If your customers aren't calling to schedule, your overhead and payroll skyrockets

Which is the right choice for you, is a little bit of both worlds the best approach? In both cases, increased customer workload can be even worse than no customers at all...