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Ideas, tips and techniques for new generation selling and customer support.
Category Archives: scheduling software
2010
“Strong and lasting relationships with our patients”: Berkeley HeartLab optimizes both care and costs
So many aspects of healthcare are arcane, complex, almost magical. Many of us have a healthcare miracle story to tell. I have my own from when I battled cancer three years ago. These are the feel-good medicine and medical stories that get passed along when friends, family and colleagues become ill.
But for every magical or miraculous story, there is another—especially in the area of customer care—that shows healthcare is too often behind the times. Customers spend more time in healthcare waiting rooms than any other industry, and despite constant cost pressures, staff time is too often used inefficiently.
Technology can help. In this, the third podcast in our series Reinventing Healthcare with Technology, we hear from a 
TimeTrade customer about how they’ve improved operations terrifically, producing both better efficiency and better customer outcomes – while saving $125,000 a year, far more than the system costs them. How smart is that?
Matt Sitter is Director of Marketing for the Disease Management Program at Berkeley HeartLab (BHLInc.com). Listen as he shares his first-hand success at transforming the business of care: “It’s incredibly gratifying to see the success that a number of our patients have with the 4MyHeart program.”
Podcast: Play in new window
Filed under: Podcasts, healthcare, scheduling software
2010
New: Increase Sales Productivity with TimeDriver for Salesforce
Now Available on the Salesforce.com AppExchange
We’ve often talked about TimeDriver, our personal appointment scheduler, which was recently named Hot Selling Tool of the Month by sales guru Nancy Nardin. Great news: TimeDriver is now available on the AppExchange, for use in the Salesforce CRM system.
TimeDriver improves sales productivity: it helps you get more confirmed appointments – and saves you the time-consuming hassle of appointment ping pong too. More appointments mean more sales and more sales mean more money.
How do we know TimeDriver produces more confirmed appointments? We did a controlled “A/B test” comparing an email with a TimeDriver schedule button to an email that asks people to propose a few times when they are available for a call and found that the TimeDriver button delivered 56% more confirmed meetings!
It gets even better. Now, if you’re using Salesforce as part of your arsenal of sales productivity tools you can easily connect it with TimeDriver. Get started by downloading your free TimeDriver for Salesforce tool from AppExchange. It’s an enhancement to TimeDriver that enables your sales team and others to easily invite customers and prospects to schedule time for sales demos, account reviews, and other interactions.
Appointments flow into your Salesforce, Google, or Outlook calendar. And, all TimeDriver appointments are automatically logged in Salesforce as events, associated with the invited leads and contacts. Possible uses include:
- Sales professionals can drive more appointments, generate more revenue and advance customers in the sales process more quickly
- Technical support and customer service can settle on client appointment times with none of the usual back-and-forth negotiation.
- Everyone (including customers) saves time and eliminates frustration because there’s never any phone tag or email tag to set an appointment. Invite. Click. Done.
As always, we’d love to hear what you think. So leave us a comment or send us a Tweet (@TimeDriver).
As we said, Nancy Nardin of Smart Selling Tools thinks TimeDriver is so hot, she named it hot tool of the month! And, in her new sales productivity ebook she called it “extremely easy to use and addicting.”
Addicting: how’s that for praise?? See for yourself – take TimeDriver for Salesforce for a test drive.
2009
“Reforming a system that’s badly broken”: an interview with Jay Parkinson MD
Friday we introduced our new podcast series, Reinventing Healthcare with Technology. It’s an educational series about how this vitally important industry can modernize, improving efficiency and costs and customer service.
Today we start by laying out, with brutal frankness, how far the industry has strayed from being “all about the patient.” Next we follow up with how visionaries are moving us to patient-centered care.
Our first guest is Jay Parkinson, MD: innovative, controversial, HelloHealth entrepreneur; featured in Fast Company’s Doctor of the Future and Most Creative People in Healthcare.
Dr. Parkinson describes in detail how (and why) American healthcare today too often fails to serve the patient with good price, quality and service – and how technology can help.
As host Paul Gillin interviews Dr. Parkinson, listen for these insights and think about your own experience getting healthcare:
- Because of insurance middlemen, healthcare providers are not connected to their customers. This causes customer care problems.
- Price and quality are important when providers do speak directly to patients.
- Let’s modernize. 41% of people over 65 use email, but only 20% of doctors do.
There’s more – lots more – in this series opener. Open your mind and listen for the future – for how we can reinvent healthcare, with technology.
This piece starts with a brief excerpt from Parkinson, then the series introduction by host Paul Gillin.
My Podcast Alley feed! {pca-829b619a0e4bc6463fb8c34351213e75}
Podcast: Play in new window
Filed under: Podcasts, customer service, healthcare, scheduling software
2009
New podcast series from TimeTrade: “Reinventing Healthcare with Technology”
TimeTrade Appointment Systems spends a lot of time serving healthcare: as our healthcare solutions page [left] says, online appointment scheduling brings customer service to healthcare and improves efficiency.
In so doing, it advances the cause of patient-centered care, as promoted by thought leaders such as Planetree: “the importance of delivering healthcare in a manner that works best for patients … [healthcare] providers partner with patients and their family members to identify and satisfy the full range of patient needs and preferences.”
To make this point, TimeTrade is about to launch a short series of podcasts titled Reinventing Healthcare with Technology produced by social media guru Paul Gillin. It’s an educational series, mostly not about our customers. Rather, it’s designed to open minds about the real opportunities for this enormous industry to improve customer service using technology that’s common in all other industries.
And when we say customer service, we mean patient service. My 2007 near-death cancer experience left me intimately familiar with what that means, and I’ve become an avid healthcare blogger as e-Patient Dave, so this has personal relevance to me – as it will to all of us, sooner or later.
This series has three parts:
Continue reading »
2009
TimeDriver: “Better Service, Better Price – Brilliant!”
We don’t often use this space to crow, but this time we gotta: here’s a great piece by “Marketing Materials Maven” Karin Witzig. For two years she’s used a competing product, and yesterday she updated her blog post because she’s switched to TimeDriver.
She starts out talking about her previous experience, then tells how happy she is with TimeDriver.
New Online Scheduling Software – Beats All the Rest
2009
We’re “Hot Tool of the Month” at Smart Selling Tools!
How cool is this? Last month at Dreamforce, the massive global conference for Salesforce.com, our TimeDriver personal appointment scheduler was seen by legions of show-goers. Among them was the legendary Nancy Nardin of Smart Selling Tools. And boy did she like TimeDriver: she’s named it Hot Tool of the Month for December!
You can go to the award page and vote us up. (TimeDriver users, leave a comment!)
Why did she pick TimeDriver? In her Dreamforce report she says…
Continue reading »
2009
Five Growing Markets For Appointment Scheduling Software
I like having an appointment, and I hate waiting. Both my doctor’s office and day spa get this and thus have appointment scheduling software to serve and satisfy customers like me.
However, such software is also being used in other markets on an increasing scale. Here’s a look at five vertical markets that are rapidly adopting appointment scheduling, and why appointment scheduling software makes sense for them:
Continue reading »
2009
How Online Software Saves Big Money
The challenge: Identifying the proper tools to reduce costs without sacrificing critical customer care.
One company reporting success in this effort is Bosley, the Beverly Hills-based men’s hair restoration subsidiary of the $850 million Aderans Holding Co.. A Computerworld article reports that Bosley’s IT Director, Mark Davenport says the company’s previous Siebel system had “gaping holes” that created double bookings, angering customers and forcing the company to revert to a semi-manual process. When Bosley adopted the SaaS tool, TimeTrade, Bosley’s consultants and medical personnel could input their available times at all 19 surgical offices. Customers were able to view available slots and set appointments convenient to their schedules — and no overlap occurred. Bosley chose a logical cost reduction tool — something effective, inexpensive, and simple.
Other ways online software saves money:
• Increases operational efficiencies
• Slims down staff overhead
• Reduces staff training expenses
• Offers quick implementation & fast application
• Frees you up from capital spent on computer & office equipment
Before you consider cutting back on necessary enterprise building tools like advertising and good customer service, consider eliminating items that are not required for you to stay in business. The idea is to cut any unnecessary expenses, not sacrifice efficiency or professionalism. Using a proven SaaS tool can help.
Pamela Taylor & Lisa Letchworth
TimeTrade Blogging Team
Image Credit: InMagine EV204040
2009
Running a Virtual Business with a Client Base? Don’t Forget Online Scheduling Software
In many cases, operating a virtual business means you’re the sole manager of client appointments. This can be a nightmare if you’re not taking advantage of a simple, affordable tool: online scheduling software.
Many small business owners manage their client base using tools and methods that don’t scale, such as scheduling by phone or appointment books. These are costly in time and convenience, and they limit on how much a virtual business can juggle at once. Online scheduling software solves it.
Continue reading »
2009
Appointment Software Can Help Small Businesses Make It Through the Downturn
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The reality of a tough economy has already come for many small businesses, as indicated by the over 10% quarter-by-quarter increase in the number of business bankruptcy filings over the last few quarters. Downsizing, smaller budgets, and more fickle customers mean that small business owners need ways to get their employees to work better as a unit to improve customer care. One tool that can assist in this effort is appointment software. Appointment software can unify your team’s schedules and provide real time information about employee-customer relations.
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