If your company relies on client appointments, make sure they’re easy to schedule. If you use appointment scheduling software like the one offered by SuperSaaS, your clients should be able to see exactly which appointment slots are available and they’ll be able to self-schedule at their convenience.
Unfortunately, in the e-commerce process, appointments are sometimes forgotten as organizations focus on marketing and outreach. That’s unfortunate because an inaccessible (or perplexing) appointment scheduling software might derail an otherwise successful marketing effort.
As a result, one of the most critical free business tools you should have at your disposal is appointment scheduling software. This article will discuss the main advantages of using appointment scheduling software.
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1. Ease of Use
The most significant advantage of appointment scheduling software is that the ‘conventional’ method of scheduling appointments is painfully sluggish. Usually, a customer or client must phone your company to schedule an appointment. This frequently necessitates the hiring of more personnel, which raises costs.
Making appointments in the ‘traditional’ manner significantly raises the chances of miscommunications and blunders. Taking down phone numbers and email addresses by hand is time-consuming, and if you make a mistake, you’ll be unable to contact your client if you need to cancel or reschedule the meeting.
2. Service that is “always on.”
You’ll be more available for your clients if you move your appointment planner online. Clients often don’t have time to arrange appointments during business hours in today’s connected and busy world: research reveals that 35% of clients prefer making appointments outside of business hours, and 40% of internet bookings occur after hours. These are substantial figures.
An appointment scheduling software can provide your clients with access to your appointments system 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for a fraction of the expense of hiring a few extra employees to respond to inquiries outside of office hours.
3. Attendance is Increased
Clients failing to show up for appointments is inconvenient, but the implications are much more severe. Even if 5% of your clients fail to show up for their meetings, you will lose 5% of your revenue. Because high-value clients are typically the busiest and hence the most prone to forget an appointment with your team, the number might be as high as 5%.
The appointment schedulers can drastically reduce no-shows by automatically sending out appointment reminders and integrating with your clients’ online calendars. Healthcare companies recognized this many years ago and have had great success with it: In a research on the usefulness of SMS appointment reminders, the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine discovered that when institutions sent out text reminders, no-shows dropped by a whopping 39 percent.
4. Improved Safety
One benefit of appointment schedulers that is sometimes neglected is making your appointment system more secure than traditional methods. Administrators used to keep track of appointments in a centralized database that wasn’t sufficiently safeguarded and exposed data to considerable risk before the emergence of online appointment systems. A hacker with access to a company’s network might simply obtain an extensive list of customer names, phone numbers, and addresses.
Appointment scheduling software is fundamentally more secure than self-managed systems since they leverage cloud storage. Using a virtual private network (VPN) whenever you go online is an additional security measure. Most are compatible with Windows by default; however, you may need to look at comparison reviews to see ideal for your system. In the end, a VPN encrypts your data and hides your IP address, making it more difficult for the bad guys to track you down.
5. Improved Google Rankings
In recent years, Google has experienced an exponential spike in ‘near me’ queries, to the point where they now account for a considerable portion of all search traffic. Having a solid local presence is increasingly required for businesses of all sizes.
You can use a few strategies to boost your local presence, but a good appointment calendar is undoubtedly the most effective. The top appointment schedulers use Google’s Reserve with Google feature (RwG). Clients can use this technique to find companies in their area and book appointments directly from Google search.
6. Integrated Marketing
Converting traffic and interaction into appointments is one of the most challenging tasks that internet businesses face. You’ll lose a lot of business if you don’t include a powerful and simple CTA (call-to-action) in all of your marketing materials. A good call to action can boost software sales conversions by 32%. Another cardinal sin is failing to test your CTA.
Clients can view your availability and services from your outreach materials with an appointment booking system. You may provide them with a straightforward, no-obligation approach to check out your services by including a link to your booking system in an email, for example.
Links to your automatic appointment booking system can be found in various places, including your website, Twitter feed, and social media accounts. This will ensure that your marketing efforts are well-coordinated and that no client engagement opportunities are missed!
7. Improved Perception
The growing use of online tools gives a significant potential for businesses to gain a better understanding of themselves. Unlike more “conventional” methods, you can use online appointment booking systems to generate reports regarding how your firm performs swiftly.
These tools, in particular, can quickly show you what your busiest hours are and whether you need to start offering more appointment slots to keep up with demand. They can also show you if there are times of the day or week when you have relatively few scheduled appointments so that you may cut back during those times.
Finally, an appointment scheduler will considerably improve the efficiency of your marketing insight, both by providing additional insight and by helping you organize your business better.
8. Time, Money, and Paper Can be Saved
If you’ve ever worked with a paper-based scheduling system, you know how quickly it can become highly complicated. Every appointment must be manually entered into a master diary, after which each employee must create a copy.
That type of ‘traditional’ method is a complete waste of time, money, and paper. Given this, it’s no surprise that, according to a survey conducted by management consulting firm The Alternative Board, 60 percent of small business owners would prefer to spend less time dealing with paper systems, with 39 percent claiming that dealing with paperwork is the biggest waste of their time.
An online appointment scheduling software eliminates all of these issues, allowing you to concentrate on what matters most: engaging with your clients.
9. Appointments with Multiple Channels
Another significant benefit of online appointment schedulers is that they enable your clients to communicate with your company across a wide range of devices. Today, it’s highly regular for a client to drive by your storefront, look at your business on their laptop, and then try to book an appointment on their phone.
You’re missing out on revenue opportunities if you don’t allow customers to book appointments across all of these channels.
The most significant channel today is integrating your appointment system with cell phones. After all, this is where most people keep track of their appointments; therefore, it’s also where appointment reminders work best.
10. Making Fewer Mistakes
Many of the faults humans can add to appointment booking systems are also eliminated with automatic appointment booking systems. Making a customer’s contact information mistake can have serious ramifications, not just in terms of missed appointments and making your organization appear unprofessional.
An online appointment scheduling software does not make such errors. It will also allow you to create a database with all of your highest-value clients’ contact information, which can be utilized as a starting point for outreach campaigns.
Conclusion
Successful firms are those who make (and keep) their customers pleased. You may achieve a higher rate of successful reservations with online appointment systems, which leads to happy customers and higher earnings for you.
As a result, online appointment systems are a must-have for any company serious about online marketing. So, as you’re reading your next online marketing guide for 2019, keep in mind the importance of appointment booking systems in your whole marketing environment.
Of course, you may go much further. Some businesses have successfully incorporated AI helpers into their appointment scheduling software. These assistants will not only show your customers which services and appointments are best for them, but they will also be able to answer basic questions and provide customer care.
Whatever strategy you choose, keep in mind that appointment scheduling software is the new normal, and if you don’t have it, your clients will assume you’ve fallen behind.
