Running a business can be a huge source of stress. You are constantly pulled in multiple directions, putting out fires, striving to be profitable, and managing your employees. Above all else, running a business means keeping your current clients happy and always striving to gain new ones.
Keeping clients happy and garnering new ones means being accessible to them. You don’t have time to take all their calls and schedule meetings with them yourself. In the past you’d have to hire a secretary to take care of this and maintain your schedule, someone to take client calls, pencil them in, and simply keep you aware of when you’re meeting with whom.
This process wasn’t without its problems, of course. Secretaries are human. Humans are an expense, as well as a source of potential mistakes.
The good news for any startup, is that with the exponential growth of the internet, there are exciting alternatives. Scheduling applications make it possible to take the responsibility of maintaining your itinerary and scheduling new appointments away from a secretary, and puts it firmly on the clients themselves.
Tech wise, scheduling applications are usually cloud-based systems that allow users to manage their meetings via an intuitive interface. But what makes them special, is that they give clients the ability to schedule their own appointments.
What’s Wrong With the Old Way?
Consider how a client would schedule an appointment in the past. Let’s say they found your service via a good old Google search and would like to meet with you. They’ll have to establish contact and this could mean filling out a “Contact Us” form or finding a phone number and making a call.
As the saying goes, “Strike while the iron is hot.” It’s important to realize that when a potential client fills out an online form to set up a meeting, the “iron” starts to cool as soon as they click submit. They can do nothing but wait so now they’ll drift off to some other corner of the internet or, worse yet, begin to peruse some of your competitors while they wait.
If they call you, it’s not much better. Assuming their call gets answered, they’ll be speaking with your front office staff. Now begins the complex negotiations as they look over their schedule and your assistant looks over yours and they pass prospective meeting dates and times back and forth like salesman and customers negotiating price at a used car dealership.
During this time, your potential client may begin to feel rushed and pick a date and time that they later regret. This will lead to, either starting the whole process again, or, more likely, the client could decide they perhaps don’t need your services as much as they thought.
How Is Using a Scheduling Application Better?
Using a client scheduling app addresses all of these issues created by outdated systems:
- Ties appointment scheduling directly to a Call-to-Action (CTA) on your website – Rather than having the prospective client fill out a generic form and wait for a callback, you can put a CTA button on your site that will allow them to schedule their own appointment.
- Your schedule is there for them to see – Now the client will be able to see your entire schedule (or as much as you want them to see) and choose from your available times at their leisure.
- Clients that choose their own appointments are more likely to keep them – When clients choose their own times, they feel in control and will generally be happier with the process. This positive feeling will stick with them as the appointment draws near.
In addition to addressing these issues, scheduling applications also present new opportunities:
Reaching New Demographics
These types of scheduling solutions also have the benefit of opening up entirely new demographics. It’s no secret that the much sought after millennial generation of 18-34 year olds simply don’t like talking on the phone. With such a preference for texting and using social media, they certainly don’t want to call and talk to someone in order to schedule an appointment.
Increasing Communication
Despite their lack of desire to communicate, these scheduling applications give you a means to communicate with your clients. You can proactively communicate your working hours to them by simply showing them your calendar. In addition, you can leverage whatever reminder system your solution has to send messages to the clients.
Optimizing Appointment Reminders
Speaking of the reminder system, it offers huge benefits over the old system. It’s possible that calling prospects and reminding them of their appointments has always been an option, but that can backfire as well. A 2016 study found that reminder calls resulted in an up to 26% cancellation rate.
Most scheduling applications will remind the clients with either an email or an SMS message, notifying the client of the appointment, but requiring more action to cancel the appointment than to keep it.
Expanding Availability
Finally, when you use an online scheduling application, clients aren’t restricted to your working hours. While the majority of your foot traffic and phone calls may occur during the classic “bankers hours”, that’s not necessarily when they are searching for your services. How many times do we sit in bed, idly searching for answers to the questions that plague our minds while sleep eludes us. A recent study showed that 40% of online appointments are scheduled outside of normal working hours.
While it’s cliche to say it at this point, technology has and continues to change the way we do business. Online scheduling applications go beyond simple client scheduling. The use of operations scheduling with applications in manufacturing and services has increased as well, changing the way project scheduling, job shop scheduling, and workforce scheduling are handled.
For any business looking to modernize, it is important to embrace the opportunities presented by this new wave of online scheduling services by, either using an existing scheduling application, or working with software solutions experts to create a custom solution. Using these technologies to streamline your scheduling process is a clear way to help clear off your overloaded plate.
