No Lines, No Waiting
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Tag Archives: customer experience
2009
Enhancing Customer Experience with Online Scheduling
Sometimes it seems customer care improvement is at odds with streamlining operations. Financial Services Technology made the point beautifully with a script for an imaginary TV commercial about a surgeon who calls a helpline and gets put on hold: one humorous example of how some technologies make businesses choose between customer care and efficiency. Voice mail is another example of this; how many customers like reaching a voice mail tree?
But there are other technologies that deliver both improved customer care and operational efficiencies. Appointment scheduling software is one great example. Hard ROI numbers aside (and there are plenty of them), appointment scheduling software gives businesses the flexibility to work with customers when most convenient for the customer.
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Filed under: appointment scheduling, appointment scheduling software, customer service
Tagged: appointment scheduler improve customer service, appointment scheduling, appointment scheduling software, customer care, customer experience, customer satisfaction, customer service, efficiency, improve customer service, interactive features, online scheduling
2009
Appointment Scheduling Software + Personal Courtesy = Customer Satisfaction
Appointment scheduling software helps maintain customer loyalty through automation, so employees can focus on the personal courtesy side of good service.
An appointment is a reservation for service, both the service performed by the business and the personal attention received from employees. A satisfied customer needs to feel both aspects of customer care are handled well.
A Beagle Research White Paper, Improving Service Businesses with Appointment Scheduling, illustrates this. The CRM analyst firm found that “significant numbers of people believe that appointments should start exactly when or very near when they are scheduled — with virtually no waiting at all.”
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2009
Help!!! Our Customer Care Needs a Makeover
If you’re in a service industry such as a salon or spa that is heavily dependent on customer appointments, it may be time to seriously consider investing in appointment software that can provide customer reminders as part of customer care improvement.
The recent recession has hit the beauty industry hard, although recent signs indicate that the industry as a whole is improving: the Professional Beauty Association said in August that its new Salon/Spa Performance Index rose in the latest quarter. While things may be looking up, customers are more scrutinizing than ever and stretched thinner for time as they try to juggle all the demands in their lives.
Appointment reminders help customers be prompt, which contributes to their satisfaction with services as well as providing a calmer and more organized environment for everyone. In addition, it can help reduce the amount of cancellations and no-shows. A business that reaches out to help customers where they are shows them that you care about more than profits.
David Hill
TimeTrade Blogging Team
Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jakecaptive/ / CC BY 2.0
2009
Five Ways Health Care Wastes Time and Money
I can think of few more maddening ways to spend my time than waiting for medical attention. I, for one, have switched doctors due to inept appointment scheduling in the past, and the scrutiny the health care system has taken of late in the media further illustrates the problem – we are wasting time and money in doctor’s offices and emergency rooms.
According to CNNMoney.com, more than $1.2 trillion spent on health care each year is wasted. Let’s take a look at some causes and present some possible solutions. Continue reading after video >>
2009
Better Customer Care – an Imperative for Every Business
Delivering better customer care – or, frankly, even adequate customer care – is no longer a soft aspect of running a business. Better customer care can propel your business – increasing profits through customer retention – or it can make you the latest goat on YouTube.
Do customers really demand better customer care? They certainly react to companies who take Seinfeld’s “Soup Nazi” approach. Continue reading after video >>
2009
Five Ways to Improve Wait-Related Customer Satisfaction
As providers of exceptional products and/or services, we’d all like to think that our customers will willingly and happily wait in long lines just for the honor of patronizing our businesses. You and I both know that’s not the reality. Customers are busy and have many options, and nothing kills their interest faster than needless waiting. Continue reading below video >>
2009
Customer Service in healthcare: Patience Stretched in Waiting Rooms
Thanks to Twitter friend @SeerGenius, a passionate advocate for the patient perspective, for this piece, which showed up in Dear Abby of all places.
A physician writes about Abby’s ongoing discussion with patients about their frustration with endless waiting. He explains what life is like in a doctor’s office and concludes:
It does help to focus on good manners and empathy, and to alert patients at the time of check-in if there’s a problem, which allows them to return or reschedule. Of course, the physician conveying personally to his patients that their time is as important as his also goes a long way. — MARC SCHNEIDERMAN, M.D., PENNSYLVANIA
This resonates with my recent post about an x-ray appointment. To my great pleasure, that clinic contacted me and let me know about some changes they’d already made in response to my post.
How great is it that people are waking up to customer service – and the customer’s experience – in healthcare?
More on the clinic’s response later this week. It was exemplary.
2009
“This self service device is available from 2:00 to 2:05 AM”
Nice idea. Maybe if the limited-time trial works out, they’ll expand it just a liiiiittle bit. Heck, it might catch on…
Filed under: appointment scheduling
Tagged: customer experience, customer satisfaction, customer service
2009
Airlines and X-Rays: Customer Service in Capacity-Based Businesses
I had a shower-stall epiphany yesterday, a collision between thoughts rattling around in my head. I saw a pattern that spans many unrelated industries: customer service in capacity-based businesses.
It hit me because of events in two vastly different industries a week earlier:
- That Sunday I was on the phone with Southwest Airlines, and their system said “Our hold time is unusually long. If you want our system to call you when it’s your turn, press 1.”
- Two days later I had my adventure with the x-ray appointment (not) at a local clinic.
What do airlines and x-rays have in common? Both are capacity-based, which means customers need to be matched up with availability. And there’s a world of difference in how these two managed the customer experience.
- Southwest had their robot do the waiting, so I didn’t have to.
The clinic has lots of friendly, courteous people, but responsibility for my waiting time apparently hasn’t dawned on them. “Come on in, and we’ll get to you when we can.”
Think about this. Waiting stinks (and is a costly waste of time), so what ways can you think of to improve the customer experience?
Later this week I’ll return to this, but give it some thought. Maybe in the shower.
For a refresher on the cost (and value) of people’s waiting time, see our very first post: It’s RUDE to make people wait. And costly. That’s where this photo first appeared. It’s a real-life case study.
Filed under: online scheduling, scheduling software
Tagged: customer experience, customer service, healthcare, impatience, waiting
2009
Customer Service in Healthcare (not): An All-Too-True Story
What is wrong with these people???
I’ve been having a pain lately, in an arm that shouldn’t be having pain due to a past condition. The orthopedist who took care of my bones said to get an x-ray at some local shop and send her the CD. (She’s happy to save me the time of driving into Boston, and she knows local clinics can make a good x-ray.)
So I called the radiology department of a well-known, highly rated clinic in nearby Burlington – let’s call it Elsie – to make an appointment.
(You know about appointments. They help customers get served quickly and conveniently, and help managers plan their resource utilization. The win-win thing.)
Me: “Hi. My doctor says I should get an x-ray and send her the CD. Can I do that? — Good, I’d like to make an appointment.”
Elsie staff: “Oh, you don’t need an appointment. Just come right in. I mean, you can have one if you want, but you don’t need one.”
Me: “Cool!”
Me to my manager: “I’m going over to Elsie to get an x-ray. They said I can walk right in – should be quick.”
I get there, find my way through their campus (the directions were perfect), and find radiology.
The line to check in goes out into the hall. And at the front of the line, the sign on the desk says the current wait time is 30 minutes.
I look at my watch, conclude I don’t want to wait 45 minutes (or even 30) for a “no appointment needed” x-ray, and leave.
The parking machine wants money for my ticket. I talk to the cashier and the information counter; saying I wasn’t able to get my appointment so I don’t want to pay. (I’ve been there less than 10 minutes.) Both people look at me like I’m crazy and say there’s nothing they can do. A third person says maybe security will validate it. They gladly do.
On the way out I call again.
Me: “I want to make an appointment for tonight.”
Elsie staff: “Oh, you don’t need an appointment. If you want to make one for sometime tomorrow you can.”
Me: “I can’t make one for this evening so I don’t have to wait?”
Elsie: “No…” (sounding rather uncertain about why I’d be asking)
It’s clear to me that my time is not of the least concern to this clinic. I’ve been hearing this about healthcare in general, but I know of places where they do care. (My own hospital is one of them, and I know there are others.)
I just wonder, what on earth is so complicated? I happen to know first-hand that an appointment system for a few workstations is not at all expensive. Instead, they have a line of people out into the hall – sick and injured people, typically – and they cheerfully (genuinely cheerful) say “Oh, you don’t need an appointment.”
Methinks the world of healthcare is (mostly) so wrapped up in its own importance that it doesn’t even occur to them to respect their customers’ time. And that’s gotta change.
Filed under: appointment scheduling
Tagged: appointment scheduling, customer experience, customer service, healthcare
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