When Availability Updates After a New Booking
The moment a booking is confirmed — whether by the AI on a call, by a customer online, or by a staff member in the dashboard — the available slots for that time are updated. Here's how it works.
Near-real-time slot removal
When a booking is created:
- The booking is saved to the dashboard immediately.
- A background job triggers to update the availability for the affected date and time slot.
- The slot is marked as occupied in the availability cache.
- The next caller who asks for that time will not be offered it.
The update happens within seconds of the booking being confirmed. In practice, there's an extremely small window between a booking being made and its slot being removed from available options.
Concurrent booking scenarios
In a high-volume scenario where two callers are checking availability for the same slot at the same time, both may initially see the slot as available. The first to confirm the booking takes the slot. The second caller's booking attempt for the same slot will either fail (triggering the AI to offer an alternative) or, in rare cases, result in a double-booking.
Speako is designed to minimise double-bookings, but as with any real-time booking system, simultaneous calls for the same last slot present a small inherent risk.
What to do if a double-booking occurs
If two bookings appear for the same slot, this will be visible in your dashboard calendar. You'll need to:
- Contact one of the customers to rebook or cancel.
- Resolve the conflict manually.
Consider enabling the online booking page with a maximum party size limit to spread booking load across channels.
Manual bookings and dashboard changes
Bookings created manually by staff in the dashboard also update availability. If a staff member adds a walk-in booking, that slot is immediately reflected in the availability cache — so the AI won't offer the same time to a caller right after.
💡 Tip: Dashboard-created bookings update the AI's availability just like any other booking. Train your staff to add walk-in bookings to the dashboard promptly so the AI's slot count stays accurate.