Here are a few answers to the most common questions we hear at iConvene...

Q: How does iConvene keep up with my room availabilty?

A: iConvene includes an online scheduling system that looks and works a lot like Microsoft Outlook's Calendar.  This scheduler will become your master schedule.

Meeting Service vendors typically keep this scheduler running on the reception/front desk so that they can easily check and enter any new bookings directly on the iConvene scheduler.  When appointments are booked on the scheduler, this tells iConvene that the venues are not available during this time...so no double bookings can occur.  Likewise, when customers book your services through the iConvene portal, this scheduler gets updated with the order details, so you can easily see who booked and the details of their order.

The scheduler has a recurrence feature so that you can easily schedule recurring meetings and you can apply a color to a meeting so you can denote things like tentative meetings, or when a certain department books a meeting. 

The best thing about the scheduler is that you can view and update it from nearly any Internet Browser.  You can also designate who can access the scheduler too.

Q: How do I know when a booking occurred through iConvene?

A: You'll get an email from iConvene.  It can also be setup to fax you too.

Q: How do I control who books my rooms?  I don't just want anyone here!

A: Here are two ways of controlling who uses your meeting rooms...

1. Refund customers after you've checked them out.  When a customer rents your facility through iConvene's technology, you will get an email with their contact information.  From here, you can check them out and decide to refund the customer if you don't want them in your facility.  This allows you to take advantage of 7/24 sales while keeping you in control of who can book your facility.

2. Only allow certain users to be able to book services on iConvene's technology.  This requires the user to create a login and then you (the Vendor) give the user the right to book services on iConvene.  This method works well for Clubs that only allow their members to book services.

Q: In addition to smaller meeting spaces, I've got Large Event/Expo space that is too complex to sell online.  How can iConvene handle this?

A: iConvene can be setup so that customers can check the availability of the large event space online and then send an eRFP to you.

Q: My customers are used to negotiating with me for a price, how will iConvene affect that?

A: There are a few ways to handle this. 

1. You can give certain users a negotiated discount, so that when they book, they automatically get the discount you intended.

2. You can setup iConvene so that it just takes the deposit to reserve the space, allowing you to negotiate with your customers for the balance.

3. You can keep handling these customers the way you always have.

Q: I'm a hotel that offers discounts to customers that purchase rooms, how does iConvene handle that situation?

A: Simple...Coupons!  When customers purchase guest rooms, give them a coupon (which is simply a word/numbers) that they can use on your iConvene powered site.  These coupons represent a discount that YOU set and can be expired at a future date.