Case 1: wrong shipment, late, from a company from whom his wife has often bought. Worse: no calls returned.

Case 2: Capital One, the credit card company with a huge ad budget, not returning calls about adding more cards! In Johnson’s words, “I’d be more productive trying to hoist the goods from Fort Knox.” What’s in your to-do list, Capital One?

Commenters drive home the takeaways. Richard Turcott, Chief Marketing Officer of Ratepoint, says

Healthy businesses focus on delivering a great experience to their customers, an experience that their customers will be delighted with and want to talk about. Marketing, support and product quality all influence customer experience…

And commenter Tim Orr adds

This is exactly what Emerson meant when he said, “What you are shouts so loudly I cannot hear what you say.” …Marketing and branding are an inside job.

Hey, marketing execs: is bad service slashing the results of your outreach, while you get blamed?

(p.s. For a sweet postscript, three weeks later Johnson notes that the opposite happened when his wife’s bracelet broke. Nice.)

Kelley Kassa
TimeTrade Blogging Team

Image Credit: InMagine RDS032354

For the past two years businesses have dug in, deepened the trenches, reduced staff and cut costs to the bone. Now, in 2010, economic progress reports suggest the time is coming to start building and growing again.

But you don’t need to hire new employees or add a lot of costly equipment to turn these resolutions into realities. Every one of them has been attained by real companies using web-based appointment scheduling software. Read their stories in our case study library, and then make some resolutions for your own business in 2010.

Rich Silverman
TimeTrade Blogging Team

Public domain Image by Ivan Akira courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Here are some top benefits for personal service providers:

• Expanded hours for scheduling appointments. Most salons are open five days a week; three to four weekdays and one to two weekend days. Clients who call on a closed day to schedule an appointment will need to call back on a day when the business is open. Loyal customers will. New customers may just call another salon. With appointment scheduling software, clients can go online whenever convenient for them, and book their appointments.
• Fewer missed appointments. When clients miss appointments, businesses lose revenue. With scheduling software, the beauty salon can automatically set up appointment reminder emails.
• Greater efficiency = more clients serviced. Some personal services require a set block of time. For example, a massage is usually 60 or 90 minutes. Other services, such as hair coloring, can vary in time based on the client’s requirements, individual practitioner and number of concurrent appointments. With a scheduling software solution in place, the salon owner can get information on average times for appointments by various factors (day, stylist, etc.) and use that information to maximize the number of appointments per day.

Kelley Kassa
TimeTrade Blogging Team

Image Credit: InMagine FAN2034838

In both 2005 and 2006, Mercedes ranked #8 in the same survey, due in part to poor survey results from both Consumer Reports and J.D. Power.  According to Automotive Fleet.com, Mercedes launched a worldwide initiative three years ago aimed at improving customer satisfaction.   The car maker made a concerted effort to improve the quality of its cars, implementing an “intensive, continual and long-term” training program for employees.   To date more than 150,000 Mercedes service-department employees have been through the training.  The company climbed to #6 in 2007, #4 in 2008 and finally to its current #1 spot.

For a manufacturer, quality or resale value may be the key this year, price or dealer incentives the next.   But for any service-based business, the convenience, speed and ease with which customers can use a company will always be of paramount importance.

Rich Silverman
TimeTrade Blogging Team

Image Credit: InMagine U23209699

• Lifetouch Portrait Studios, which operates more than 700 Target and JCPenney photography studios, surveyed customers and found ease of online scheduling is the #1 guest “satisfier” for their business.
• Another international portrait studio chain, with 3,100 retail locations, used online scheduling to reduce costly call volumes by 23%.
• Ritz Camera has realized a significant drop in customer no-shows, which they attribute to online appointment scheduling with automated appointment confirmations.
• Petco, which offers pet grooming services in addition to products, offers customers online appointment scheduling, enabling the pet grooming specialists to focus on customer service, not administrative scheduling.
• David’s Bridal chose online scheduling software to smooth traffic at peak service times.
• Janovic, a subsidiary of Benjamin Moore, provides in-home custom window treatments.  With online scheduling software, Janovic has streamlined the scheduling process and allows the company to better track the locations of their installers.

These retailers demonstrate the significant benefits of online appointment scheduling software. And they’re all TimeTrade customers. For more information, see our customers page and our case studies.

The biggest benefit of all could be repeat business from happy, satisfied customers.

Kelley Kassa
TimeTrade Blogging Team

Image Credit: InMagine AM11021008098

It is worth noting that the iPhone – which can only be used with AT&T right now – was the highest-rated phone in the survey with 98% of users saying they would buy it again despite having to use AT&T.  Given this dissatisfaction with AT&T service, questions are already being raised about what will happen to AT&T when its exclusive deal with Apple ends, or another company offers the next top contender.

The takeaway from this is that having the hottest new product or a more attractive price than a competitor can only take you as far as your customer service record.  If long wait times, poor scheduling and misinformation are the overriding theme, the shiny new product can really only hold a consumer’s loyalty until they can get the next new and better thing.  Something to ponder, indeed.

Rich Silverman
TimeTrade Blogging Team

Image Credit: PTG00462034

Google “busy lives” or “time management techniques” and you get endless tips to manage more in less time.  From Franklin Covey to the local organizing specialist, options abound to deal with lengthy to-do lists. What if service providers became part of the solution?

There’s an easy way to do this: let customers self-schedule appointments.  Not only does it give greater flexibility in matching your open appointments with customers’ calendars, it lets both you and the customer avoid multiple phone calls, waiting on hold, and other nuisances.

We think self-service scheduling will soon be an expected service.  Busy moms, business travelers, executive assistants, and night-owls all want to manage appointments on their own time, at their convenience.

Kelley Kassa
TimeTrade Blogging Team

Image Credit: InMagine PE0063738

In July our post The Psychology of Waiting Lines cited a classic paper whose introduction notes that “The bitter taste of how long it took to get attention pollutes the overall judgments that we make about the quality of service.”

Business consultant David Spark wrote recently about his experience waiting for technical service on a paid customer support line. His saga begins with “Why I love public transportation and hate HP” and continues with “HP responds to ‘Why I love public transportation and hate HP.” It may appear to be a complaint about a long wait on hold, but it’s not.  His complaint is really about not knowing how long his wait would be.

Thankfully, some organizations are recognizing this new customer expectation: to have reliable information on  how long their wait will be. This lets the customer decide if they should stay (on hold, in line) or go.  Organizations using technology to communicate waiting times include public transportation (subway signs saying “Next train in 4 minutes”), DMV offices, etc.

Providing customer wait times is not only respectful of a customer’s time, but it is also becoming a hallmark of excellent customer service.

Kelley Kassa
TimeTrade Blogging Team

Image Credit: InMagine SMP0013233

1.  They reach more customers

Consider the list of potential customers that competitors can reach with this software:

• customers who don’t like speaking on the phone
• customers who have difficulty hearing over the phone
• customers who have problems understanding unfamiliar accents
• customers who have poor reception or weak signals
• customers who are accidentally dropped or disconnected
• customers who are in a significantly different time zone
• customers who have limited cell phone minutes
• customers who have to pay long distance to call your business
• customers who are on vacation
• customers who remember tasks that they’ve forgotten to do that day at 3 AM
• customers who are unable to make personal calls from work
• customers who only have a few minutes to schedule an appointment
• customers who dislike automated phone systems
• customers who hang up after being on hold for too long
• customers who are have a bad interaction with a receptionist

With the convenience of online scheduling software, your competitors can reach the people that your business cannot.  Collectively, that’s a large number of people they get to do business with.

2.  They have real-time knowledge about their customers

Think of it — your competitors have instantaneous knowledge about the customers who made appointments because they supplied basic information when they scheduled it.  This information is accessible from the database, so businesses can start searching using various factors, such as what kind of customer schedules for the first appointment of the day?  Without the software to help answer these kinds of questions, a business owner is left to flip through an appointment book and try to answer this question using the hunt-and-peck method.

3. They can manage their customer relations easily

Adding customer advantage to competitive advantage, competitors using online scheduling software can also communicate immediately with their customers through automated email and reminder systems.  That means that they can implement strategies to ensure that the first appointment of the day happens, thereby avoiding the domino effect of late or missed appointments because customers forgot the time, day or location.  Furthermore, they can extend their customer relations after the appointment by surveying customers and sending them further correspondence, such as press releases, newsletters, or follow-up emails.

If your competitors reach more customers, know more about them and manage their customer relationships easily, they have the advantage.  For most industries, they’ll have the kind of advantage that will translate into continuing success, and that advantage could be yours.

David Hill
TimeTrade Blogging Team

Image credit: InMagine DP1835651

MIT's "Dr. Queue" (Photo: Tim Gray, Boston Globe)

The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine recently interviewed MIT professor Dick Larson, a.k.a. “Dr. Queue.”  The piece includes tips for both consumers waiting in line, and for retailers bracing for the busiest shopping time of the year.

For the retailer, there were results that don’t surprise us a bit:

In an informal poll, Larson found half of people polled reported they would not return to a store because of a bad experience waiting in line. He even notes that long, unpleasant lines have a greater impact on consumer behavior than low prices.

One piece of advice Larson recommends includes serpentine lines (first come, first served) over parallel lines (consumers select a line).  He cites a Duke University study that found consumers prefer the first come, first served approach.

Larson cites Apple stores as offering excellent customer service that eliminates lines all together. Similarly, leading brands like TimeTrade customer Best Buy use online appointment scheduling software to streamline the customer experience.

As the heavy shopping begins, perhaps it’s time retailers change their approach to how customers wait in line.  Clearly, the experience consumers have waiting in line can have significant impact on where they continue to spend their money.

Kelley Kassa
TimeTrade Blogging Team