Unbeknownst to me, back in July 2013 Yelp and DemandForce partnered to allow DemandForce customers appointment requests from their Yelp listing. While this may sound like a great idea, I’m a little cautious when it comes to Yelp.

Earlier this week one of my clients called to ask if I could stop the appointment request feature on Yelp. At first I thought she was confused, but after some investigating I found out that DemandForce added this feature to the client’s Yelp listing- even though DemandForce didn’t have access to their listing.

The client told me that there’s confusion with the call to action. Technically, the user is not booking an appointment (like you would on a hotel website), but are requesting an appointment. I have issue with this. Hypothetically the patient shows up for a their appointment (which they only requested) only to find out that they don’t have an actual appointment. Where are they going to go to voice their frustration??? Hmmm. Lemme guess…. Yelp.

Now I know what people will say- it’s the front desk’s responsibility to communicate with the patient as soon as possible. I agree, but I’ve witnessed many occasions where emails get filtered in spam folders, or the email gets buried in the inbox.

I logged into the client’s Yelp account, but there was no option to disable the Book an Appointment feature. So I logged into the client’s DemandForce dashboard and after a few minutes I found the option to disable this feature.

In the DemandForce dashboard, go to SETTINGS > ONLINE BOOKINGS and disable the “On your Yelp Business Profile” option. Be sure to save your changes.

I’m curious to know if other dentists and business owners have any experience with this feature. Do you like it? Do you hate it? Any feedback is greatly appreciated!