September 4, 2024
10 Things to Consider Before Choosing Your Appointment Booking Software
10 things to consider before choosing your appointment booking software
10 things to consider before choosing your appointment booking software
Appointment management requires dedicated personnel, time, and skill. Most service providers such as doctors, pathologists, salon professionals, artists, photographers, small diners, exclusive retailers, masseurs and masseuses, mechanics, etc. rely on appointment bookings to manage their resources and time. While the traditional way to ensure appointments for customers was to either walk into the business place and schedule an appointment or do so through a telephone call. Although with the advent of technology, appointment booking software brought about a much-needed transformation in the industry. With a ton of software options to choose from in order to manage your appointment bookings, it is necessary that you choose the right fit for your requirements.
Here's a comprehensive list of things to consider when choosing the right appointment booking software for your business:
Depending on which industry you belong to, the nature of your business varies in terms of working hours, business peak, appointment volume, customers, geography, flexibility, urgency, etc. While a patient at the doctors would have an urgent requirement of the doctor's services, this may not be necessarily true in the case of a hairdresser's salon. This differentiation is a factor that needs to be noted when purchasing an appointment booking software.
The software must be able to capture the true nature of your business. Some examples would be for the software to allow real-time appointment bookings and updates for time-sensitive services; team access for multi-service providers; reminders and notifications for long time services or recurring services; group appointments for services that cater to multiple customers in a session and more.
Every business has a process or system that is perfected over time by learning and modifying to become better. This business process is usually unique to every business as it takes into consideration the human element within it. While some salons would be gifted with experienced hairdressers and receptionists who can manage appointments and deliveries in a short time, a newly opened business may not thrive with the same system.
Your appointment booking software must fit right into your system without disturbing the existing flow and structure. Change, usually, is not welcome in smooth functioning business systems, so change management must be kept to a minimum. Ensure that the software has the right features and integration capabilities that work in tandem with your software stack while also boasting of an easy-to-use UI that can be adopted by all employees without any elaborate training.
As the old saying goes, it takes a village to raise a child and also to deliver the perfect service. Service providers design their services keeping customer satisfaction in mind and in doing so build a team that works towards fulfilling that dream. Every customer that walks through a dentist, a spa, a salon, or a mechanic shop, interacts with multiple people when experiencing the service. For example, a patient converses with the appointment scheduling team, receptionist, nurse, doctor, after-care staff, pharmacist, cashier, and so on. The customer's experience is thus, affected by their interaction with each of these individuals.
Appointment booking software gathers all the primary information regarding each appointment in one place. To ensure that all the information regarding all these appointments is available to the team that caters to the customers is of utmost importance. The software must have the ability to onboard customer-facing team members with access controls.
Another important thing to keep in mind is the customer profile. Every service has a customer type or an underlying characteristic that every customer who requires the service, possesses. For example, the common characteristic of customers at a dentist would be patients with tooth-related complaints, at a salon would be individuals who give importance to their grooming requirements, at a mechanic would be vehicle owners, etc. Customer profiling, though, is not that simple. Each target group has multiple characteristics that are unique to the group and hence their decisions lead to availing a certain service. As service providers, it's important that we identify these characteristics and classify the audience. This allows small businesses to cut costs, improve customer satisfaction as well as the bottom line by catering to "high return and low cost of acquisition" target group.
Your appointment booking software must also have the flexibility to cater to all customer profiles. While some would prefer to schedule their appointments through a website with no personal contact, others would prefer doing so over a phone call with a human on the other side. Make sure the software covers all channels of appointment booking before choosing.
The scale of appointments in a day depends upon how much time it takes to serve a customer for the company on an average day. While some services take days to complete, such as a car repair workshop, others take merely a few hours, such as a trip to the hairdressers. The volume of appointments also depends upon the time of the day or the season for many people. While doctors see a sudden influx of patients, chances are it is flu season, others might see a higher influx on a weekday such as at the salon.
The appointment booking solution must be scalable when needed but be reasonably priced to handle a moderate level of appointments.
The most important thing, that we have already mentioned in the previous point, is the software's ability to integrate with the customer's existing software stack. If the appointments and the individual calendars of the team members don't sync, it is highly inconvenient for the employees to track their days. The software should also be able to integrate with the mail bare metal server system to automate notification email workflows and other requests.
Most businesses, after receiving an appointment request, share the availability and finally the confirmation of the appointment to the customer whether via an email or a text. All customers also receive a call/message reminder, a day or a few hours before the appointment for most service appointments. While this help prevents no-shows and cancellations, it is difficult to track and ensure every appointment is catered to with a reminder not to mention the need for a dedicated full-time employee.
An appointment booking software that can ensure the reminder and thank you notifications reach out to the customer automatically before and after a service has been delivered. Automated workflows remove human errors and help optimize service delivery ultimately improving the customer experience.
All software solutions across industries evolve, grow, and improve as their customers increase. This can happen only if the software companies listen to their customers. Software glitches, update issues, version discrepancies, etc. are common topics of concern raised by customers.
Ensure your appointment scheduling software has a robust customer support team that helps iron out any issues and answers queries as and when they arise regardless of the customer's status. A quick look at customer reviews regarding the software on various authorized websites would help understand the software's support services better.
Another important point, which one cannot miss, is the budget. There are multiple options in appointment scheduling software in the market, but the best combination of the most value obtained within the budget is a careful selection process. It is easy to find multiple options within one's budget in this market, although evaluating and choosing the one that is the right fit for your company is the way to go.
The amount of data that an appointment scheduling software collects over time pertaining to each customer and their behavioral patterns can be analyzed to pull reports that further help optimizes business processes. This makes it possible to ensure that each customer receives a specially curated service designed and built for them based on their past experiences, feedback, and suggestions.
Your appointment scheduling software must either have the reporting capabilities or have the ability to pull the data in a format that can be analyzed such as .csv format. Most embedded analytics tools work well with a .csv file and would be able to modify, collect, analyze and showcase data in a consumable format for quicker decision-making.
Once you have considered each of the above points and evaluated the software market accordingly for your appointment scheduling needs, you would have the right solution aiding your business. Appointo's appointment scheduling software is designed to suit most industries across all sizes and has all the above-mentioned features such as real-time appointment booking across all channels such as website, applications, or manual scheduling, easy to use UI, scalable, allows multiple team members with admin access controls, automated workflows, etc. The software has been loved by customers across industries and the customer reviews here prove their customer support team is no match for any competitor across the market. Check out a free live demo or avail a free trial now!
