The line of work you are in doesn’t matter because your appointment scheduling system must be excellent. It doesn’t only affect the clients’ and patients’ experience, but it also has a significant impact on your employees’ productivity. Due to this reason, the time has come to update this aspect of your business and switch to online appointment scheduling. You still don’t believe this is necessary? Here are some major downsides of the traditional pen and paper system.
Poor efficiency
One of the best ways to boost any business is to help employees be more efficient. It is a fact, and achieving this is every manager’s primary goal. They implement new tools and technology to enable workers to complete their tasks faster and have more time to focus on new projects. However, this is the main problem when it comes to the appointment scheduling system.
Let us paint a picture. It is a busy day, and your employee is trying to do multiple things simultaneously. Then, a client calls to cancel or reschedule their appointment. Yes, the receptionist has to stop everything, find the appointment book, go through it to find the client’s details, and input new information.
In this type of situation, human errors are most common. It is very easy to write down the wrong date or time, which will cause additional problems in the future. No, this doesn’t have to do anything with the employee’s skill because even the most experienced ones occasionally do this.
Customer experience
While discussing rescheduling appointments, we have to investigate this task from the client’s perspective. When they need to make this change, they have to wait for your office hours to contact you. They cannot call you outside your business hours, right? Considering that they will also probably be at work or running some errands, this task can easily slip their mind.
Well, this is not the case when you implement an online appointment scheduling system. This way, they can send you a notification at any time of the day, and you will be notified the moment you check the software. You have to admit that this is highly beneficial when it comes to last-minute changes since you will immediately have a clear view of your schedule for the day, and therefore, be able to make new appointments in those time slots.
Personalized service
Nowadays, with all the technology we use daily, clients expect to receive personalized service from everyone. This isn’t very surprising considering that this has become a standard and the main advantage companies use when competing with others. Not only this, but they also expect to complete this errand as soon as possible.
However, you cannot meet their requirements if you don’t use the online appointment scheduling system. When you implement this software, customers won’t have to wait for your employee to locate the appointment book, find their name, look for available time slots, etc. In addition, they also won’t misspell or mispronounce the client’s name. Even though these examples may not seem too significant, they can prove to be crucial in most cases.
Disorganization
Businesses that use traditional paper documents and clients’ files are at a higher risk of losing vital information than those that use online appointment scheduling software. Can you imagine what sort of issues this can cause? Naturally, first of all, there is the efficiency of all the employees in your office. Then, the communication between them will also likely suffer, which will have a further impact on the overall company. Finally, there is also the matter of customer privacy and your reputation. Every single person that walks into your office expects all their personal data to be safely stored. Unfortunately, you cannot guarantee this if you cannot find their file. The bottom line is that this can have a severe effect on your reputation and relationship with potential clients and partners.
Laila Azzahra is a professional writer and blogger that loves to write about technology, business, entertainment, science, and health.