Customers requesting specific times for service calls

Hi,

Just thought I’d post up to see if any other consultants have any input regarding a small problem I am having. Whenever I try to book a service call with them to solve a problem they are having I usually say that I can call around between 0900 and 1300 or 1400 and 1800.

However many of them always ask for more specific times – I always explain that I have a number of service call to make each day and I cannot commit so specific times as some jobs take a vastly different amount of time to complete than others. I realise that I can schedule them 1st in the morning or 1st after lunch but as I regularly do up to 8 service calls a day invariably more than 2 customers are unhappy with my scheduling approach.

Anyone have any insight on how to deal with this situation?