5 Strategies to Improve Your Online Scheduling Software

cafe owner working to improve her online scheduling software

Around every aspect of booking a meeting is a marketing opportunity and a chance of conversion. Whether you’re arranging appointments with partners or prospects, organizing online lectures or scheduling services sessions, there are dozens of ways to leverage opportunities in online appointment scheduling. 

The first step is acquiring an appointment management system. 

An appointment scheduling software can make meetings the driving force behind your organization’s success. Some of its key features include configurable calendar for scheduling demands, automated rebooking reminders, and real-time round-the-clock booking capabilities across multiple channels, to name a few. 

While your appointment management system consists of a bundle of extremely useful functions, you might still be looking for tips on how you can use these capabilities for fruitful online scheduling and help you gain an edge in whatever field you’re in. That’s where this post comes in. 

If you want to make the most out of your online scheduling system and build trust between you and your collaborators and customers through your engagements with them, then look into our guide below. 

  1. Get your prospects to schedule appointments online

If you want your customers to make online appointments, you need to inform them about this possibility. Some good strategies include stating that you accept online appointment scheduling on your business card, preferably next to your website’s URL. You can also email your customers and prospects about this and spread the word via traditional advertising methods such as newspapers and magazines. 

Why’s this important? Go ahead and ask yourself: What’s the use of a good appointment management system if you have no one to schedule engagements with? 

  1. Organize scattered information 

Most of the time, companies possess excessive information in a lot of places in their pipeline. To effectively arrange appointments, they need to switch back and forth between multiple platforms. They also need to sift through these data to discover which one is relevant to the client, class or partner they’re meeting with or supplying services to. Both efforts contribute to the waste of time and energy, which can be channeled to other productive matters that can increase revenue or foster business growth. 

To solve this common problem, businesses can turn to the functions of a software for online appointment scheduling. They’re reliable and efficient when it comes to organizing your appointment data and making your schedule conveniently accessible, whether you’re traveling to another country to close a deal with a prospect, heading to your next arrangement with a customer or just sitting at your office desk. 

Your appointment management system is equipped with a customizable calendar that answers all your scheduling needs and streamlines your bookings, assets, workforce and locations. You can construct your calendar in any way you wish. Assign colors and labels for particular information, control calendar settings and arrange your schedule in a layout that’s pleasing to the eyes and easy to understand. 

Use your online scheduling system to obtain quick information about the person you’re scheduled to meet with. Determine if they’re a new customer, if they pre-paid for your services, if they made a booking through the internet or if they’re a returning client. 

This can help you deliver a more personalized experience, since the latest research from Gladly state that today’s customers expect an individualized service that makes them feel exceptional. 

To support this, the paper shows 79% of respondents put personalized experience on a higher pedestal than personalized marketing. It also declares that 77% of customers will refer organizations that supply personal services to friends and family, thereby broadening your potential customer base. 

View all employee schedules on your calendar to avoid scheduling errors and ensure that there’s no overbooking and that each team member can attend to each engagement efficiently. 

As an added bonus, you can also use your platform to send confirmations and notifications that can remind your customers about their bookings. No-shows are costing you more than you think, so it helps to also be equally organized on this aspect of your appointments. 

  1. Share your schedule across different platforms

So you’ve already discovered the calendar and have decided to set it up live. This is the perfect opportunity for you to share your scheduler or appointment sign-up link on your website, your social media platforms as well as your newsletters, so that your customers can conveniently book their appointments. 

A robust appointment scheduling software provides omni-channel booking, which means that your scheduling channel is open for prospects across various platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Google. This helps you make the most out of your automotive appointments. 

However, if you’re focused on being a website with booking system, then make sure your calendar or sign-up link is placed in a strategic or highly visible area on your page, so that clients can access your schedule easily. Your software can also get your bookings organized if you wish to concentrate on appointment scheduling on your website. 

  1. Ask clients to request appointments 

While it’s easy for customers to have the agency to instantly schedule appointments by themselves, it’s equally easy for you to lose control of your bookings without implementing certain restrictions. This is why having an appointment scheduling software is a necessity if you want to remain competitive and if you want to both boost efficiency and foster customer loyalty, as per Forbes

Your appointment scheduling software should have functionalities that prompt prospects to request appointments first. Upon making these requests, they can choose which service they’d like,which professional on your team should administer it and which time and date they would be most comfortable with. 

On your end, your platform for online appointment scheduling should display these requests on an organized dashboard or window where you can approve or decline them according to staff availability, operating hours and current workload. 

  1. Don’t limit your website with booking system to aspects that induce macro conversions

We get it. You want to make the big break through your meeting with a prospect, but you can’t ignore that getting micro conversions can also help increase sales. After all, they provide more useful data regarding revenue boost, customer intent as well as points of improvement in the conversion pipeline. 

Some online scheduling software come with extra tools that can help you determine which micro conversions are linked to your website’s main objective. They help you keep tabs on them and suggest modifications so that you can optimize these opportunities. 

Additionally, looking at micro conversions in the purchasing experience of your customers can also become one of the pillars of your engagements with prospects. Did they understand your product better upon watching a video about it? Did they look at your pricing information and decide that your services were worth the bang for their buck? Did their scheduled appointment with you initially stem from the curiosity sparked by the commercial banners on top of your site? 

Analyzing the smaller actions taken before closing a deal are important, because they are what leads your buyer to finally make the decision to support your products or services. You can even apply this knowledge and compare it to your interactions with other prospects, and you can even use this information to significantly improve your marketing strategy. 

Your platform can do more than just efficient online appointment scheduling, so take a look at the host of features it has to offer and use them on other factors that can increase sales. For other softwares your start up should adapt to, this list is a good start.

Make your website with booking system work efficiently

Now that you’ve finished our short guide, we hope these 5 ways of improving your appointment management system can increase your scheduled appointments online. Your platform should be able to help you make these engagements both organized and personalized, regardless of which industry you operate in and which product or services you provide. 

With the current COVID-19 pandemic, you might also need help with other aspects besides online appointment scheduling, so check out this article on setting up a home office for remote work guide from FinancesOnline. 

If you still don’t have an online scheduling system, you should start looking for one today. Most platforms are affordable and easy-to-use, and some even have extra solutions that can take care of point of sale and manage your customers through detailed profiles.

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