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Case Study
Our Client
The Ohio Automobile Club is part of the American Automobile Association (AAA) and offers home, auto insurance, roadside assistance, car care and travel bookings. With knowledgeable travel agents, AAA helps members receive travel deals through special member offers and bookings through AAA preferred partners.
Traditionally, services were offered in-store and over the phone. However, with the new Covid epoch, virtual appointments were offered to accommodate and book travel arrangements.
Executive Summary
AAA Ohio needed to implement an online and centralized calendar for their AAA Ohio travel stores. Management required a system where executives could analyze individual locations and agents to oversee booking performance and metrics through custom-built dashboards.
With a fully implemented, company-wide online schedule and live website bookings, AAA Ohio successfully added a simplified booking process for members and a more transparent workday for staff.
Challenges
Prior to the solutions implemented by Yocale, our client was creating bookings and internal activities using a mixture of pen and paper and Outlook calendar. Members had to shuffle between branches at different locations to find the one they needed.
This method was inefficient and resulted in muddled schedules, which became problematic when trying to track and analyze staff or location performance. Bookings were made only during business hours and came in the form of walk-ins, in-person, or phone calls. Managerial reporting was limited to store created reports and lacked automation and accuracy.
Overcoming Challenges
AAA Ohio has been operating with Yocale’s scheduling calendar and online client booking widget since 2018.
By adopting solutions recommended by Yocale, the appointment scheduling system and data collection reporting was modernized. These ten highly effective methods helped with overcoming challenges:
- Configurable Online Booking Widget – Personalized booking links were added throughout the travel website. This gave members the ability to book specific locations online through direct location booking links.
- Unique URL – Agents added their unique booking URL to email signatures for direct booking. To create a professional and unique experience, they also customized the aesthetics of their booking widget, added their logo, and utilized the filtering fields
- Precision in Scheduling – A 2-way, Outlook calendar synchronization (Outlook was highly used by our client) created a centralized source of truth, store-wide online calendar ensuring staff calendars were always up to date.
- Administrative Savings – Offering smart technology for bookings online resulted in reduced administrative costs.
- Dashboards and Insights – Offers transparency with drill-down slice and dice capabilities. Management can now view the business performance and volume of bookings in real-time by each location, appointment type, and even down to each specific agent’s utilization. They can quickly see the past or future booking volume for how busy each store or agent has been in any given time interval (1 day, 2 weeks, 3 months etc.) With real-time access to quantitative and qualitative data, marketing campaigns and budgets were also better allocated.
- Google Analytics – Incorporated within the booking widget, management is now able to view comprehensive data at a glance. For instance, which marketing campaigns or promotions led to increased traffic and increased bookings for a certain type of service.
- Captured Data – With Yocale’s drag and drop form builder, our client was able to create and capture the required forms and collect data faster (providing much more clarity for agents). Members were electronically able to provide the required information from the comfort of their home.
- Client Management – With Yocale’s appointment based, industry-specific CRM, tracking appointment history, automating client communications and storing important information could all be done securely in one place.
- Agent Usage Adoption – Surprisingly, staff members that found the system to be easiest to use and highly effective were the senior (non-millennial) agents who were using the pen and paper method for 20+ years!
- Multi Location Management – Previously, members had to shuffle between branches to find the soonest availability. With adding online scheduling through Yocale’s Smart-Matching booking widget, members now had access to real-time branch locations, available staff and travel expertise, all within a couple clicks! User experience and satisfaction improved.
Findings
By incorporating smart technology, AAA Ohio’s vision to create a better client and management system was successfully implemented.
Improving accessibility and creating a centralized, store-wide online calendar contributed to this success. More importantly, up-to-the-minute, in-depth reporting and transparency drastically improved. Dashboard insights shows:
- Online bookings jumped from 0 to 12% within 2 months
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Percentage of appointment booked online increased to over 27% within 1 year
• A significant reduction in admin costs due to booking and scheduling online - Appointment no shows were reduced by 74%
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Weekend and after hour bookings increased to 32% after 1 year
• 24/7 bookings - For anyone, anywhere
Conclusion
Once the Yocale Booking Widget was implemented, our client experienced a reduction in no-shows, an increase in online and after hour bookings, better accessibility to insights and analytics, agent productivity and much more.
In measurable terms, Yocale was able to reduce no show appointments by 74%, increase after hour bookings by 32% and convert 27% of all appointments into online booked appointments.
Staff member adoption to the new system was surprisingly the more senior agents who had been using pen and paper methods for 20+ years!
A smooth online scheduling process has lead to lower customer acquisition costs and administrative savings from a decrease in manual bookings and an elimination of pen and paper.