Go-live checklist for first bookings
The order we recommend when a new org wants chat live today and phone soon after - without skipping calendar truth.
Start with the boring org facts
Finish signup, verify email, and set the organization timezone before you touch agents. Wrong timezone is still the #1 reason “available” slots look insane to customers.
Create locations next, even if you only have one. Call it “Main office,” “Downtown,” or “Virtual.” Providers need somewhere to hang. Skipping this and fixing it after the first public booking is how confirmations go out with no address.
Invite a second admin only after the first booking works end-to-end. Too many cooks during setup creates conflicting calendars. One person owns the first pass; everyone else reviews transcripts later.
Services and who delivers them
Add the services you actually sell, with durations that match the real visit - not the marketing promise. If a consult usually runs 50 minutes, don’t publish 30.
Add providers, map them to services and locations, then set weekly hours plus buffers. Empty hours = an agent that apologizes a lot. If you need 10 minutes to chart between visits, put that in the product.
If one provider shouldn’t take new patients, don’t map that service to them. Routing follows your maps, not telepathy. Same for “virtual only” services - encode it or the agent books the wrong chair.
Knowledge before channels
Crawl the live marketing site (up to 200 pages). Skip staging URLs with fake prices.
Upload the intake script or fee PDF your front desk already trusts. If it isn’t written down, the agent will guess - and guessing is how you get angry callers.
Skim a few indexed chunks after the crawl. Look for last year’s fees and closed locations. Fix the source, then retrain. Prompt surgery will not override a PDF that still says $99.
Calendar, then one channel, then celebrate
Connect Google Calendar or Microsoft 365 and confirm busy blocks show up. Place a dummy busy event on the external calendar; if the agent still offers that slot, fix sync before you embed anything public.
Embed chat on a hidden page first. Place a real test booking. Only then put the widget on the homepage. Phone and WhatsApp come after chat is trustworthy - parallel go-lives invent different answers about Saturday hours.
When chat is clean for a few days, turn on the next channel. Keep a Friday habit of reading Conversations so early mistakes don’t harden into “how we always did it.”