No Lines, No Waiting
Bringing service to the fore while conserving your cash
Tag Archives: efficiency
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.
Continue reading »
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
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
Personal Appointment Software May Just Save Your Job
In the face of close to 10% U.S. unemployment, employees may be wondering what they can do to increase their value. Online appointment software may just be the answer. It is a tool to manage two resources that often are poorly handled: time and relationships. With more companies watching what employees do, it may be time to seriously consider a change in how you go about your job.
Setting appointments with online appointment software allows you to be organized with your time and communicates to others (including your boss) that both your time and the time of others is something that you value. Aren’t supervisors looking for employees who are focused, organized, efficient, and place a value on the company’s best interest?
Continue reading »
2009
The Risks of A Paper-Based Appointment Scheduler
For all its nostalgia, a paper-based appointment scheduler can also give an unprofessional appearance, and it carries risks:
- It can jeopardize customer privacy
- It may cause confusion if penmanship is obscure
- There is a chance, as some unfortunate people have learned, that it will be
- lost
- stolen
- used to scope out the business for a crime.
For some businesses, an appointment scheduler is vital to properly serve their customers, but a paper-based appointment book may involve too much risk to continue being used.
David Hill
TimeTrade Blogging Team
Image Credit: InMagine PDEP006052
2009
Appointment Software Can Help Small Businesses Make It Through the Downturn
Continue reading »
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.
2009
Cool: Self-service appointment scheduling at a “virtual trade show”
We talk about Web self-service all the time. How about this: a Web self-service trade show?
FOSE, the Federal Office Systems Exposition, is a massive annual event. In keeping with the times, they’re expanding their outreach: for the first time they’re offering Virtual FOSE: a virtual reality trade show, this Wednesday, August 12. It’s free – beats the heck out of the usual request for travel budget, eh? Register here.
Here’s what TimeTrade’s booth looks like:
Our overhead marquee scrolls, touting our self-service appointment scheduling and customer service. The “flat screen” below the marquee is our traditional display of our blue-ribbon government customers and integrator partners.
Visitors to Virtual FOSE can “walk in” to booths, see a display of staff who are there (online) for live chat, browse the “literature” ((documents and links) from the literature stand, and put it in their “briefcase” for future reference as they travel from booth to booth.
This is the kind of thing we love: efficiency and convenience, especially in government related areas. Hope to see you there! Again, click here to register free.
Filed under: appointment scheduling
Tagged: appointment scheduling, customer service, efficiency, government
2009
Appointment scheduling issues keep children from getting vaccinated
We believe in the value of appointment scheduling, but we never thought it would turn into a public health issue. But apparently it has.
In a talk last week at the Pediatric Academic Societies’ annual meeting in Baltimore, Dr. Melissa Stockwell of Columbia University’s College of Physicians & Surgeons reported on findings about vaccination appointments. A key finding:
Difficulty with scheduling appointments was a BIGGER factor in no-shows than whether parents even think the vaccines are worthwhile.
Specifically, for parents who doubt the value of vaccines, no-shows were 3.3x more likely than normal, but parents who had difficulty scheduling were 3.8x more likely to no-show.
Irwin Grossman, an eagle-eyed member of our sales team, spotted this assessment on the American Academy of Nurse Practioners site SmartBrief:
Health care providers need to pay attention to communication and ease of scheduling, as children whose parents rescheduled appointments were 3.8 times more likely to miss a visit for a vaccination, according to New York City researchers.
The full article, from Reuters, is here.
Filed under: appointment scheduling
Tagged: appointment scheduling, efficiency, healthcare
2009
SaaS Success: Bringing enterprise lessons to personal appointments
An article by TimeTrade CEO Ed Mallen appeared today on GigaOm and was cross-posted to Salon.com. We’re only allowed to show you the lead paragraph…
One of the key sales criteria in the enterprise application space — and one of the greatest development challenges — is the ability to scale. At TimeTrade we have met that challenge, creating a successful business selling SaaS-based applications that enable very large organizations and businesses to schedule and manage millions of appointments. …
For the whole story including the six tips, please do visit GigaOm or Salon.
Filed under: online scheduling, scheduling software
Tagged: efficiency, ROI, saas
2009
Operational excellence: Simple solution for business improvement
Denis Pombriant is founder and principal of Beagle Research, an insightful analyst firm in the CRM world. He is a leading voice in CRM and on-demand technology such as SaaS (software as a service). In this guest post he shares his perspective on how businesses can improve by leveraging operational excellence.
Most companies take the customer experience very seriously and look for ways to improve it. But in a recession, improving the customer experience may not be enough. Customer purchase patterns slow down and it is harder for many vendors to remain relevant through an experience only approach.
There are two ways to analyze your business with the intent of improving it and in a recession it is important to examine all possibilities. In addition to customer intimacy strategies, which include customer experience, there is the issue of operational excellence.
Improving operations has been thought of as a back office expertise and often the first things we think of are production, shipping, invoicing and the like. But the advent of on-demand technology has brought operations into the front office as well. Smart companies know that their operations — and how well they meet customer expectations — are vital front office responsibilities now. Operations affect the customer experience, big time.
The great thing about an operational excellence strategy is that it lags behind customer intimacy approaches in the front office. There is a world of opportunity in the front office to apply operational excellence techniques to make your company easier to do business with but modifying operations does not have to mean a big expense. It might sound funny, but when your company is easier to do business with, customers remember and they are more likely to come back. Who wouldn’t want to go back to the place where it’s easy to get things done?
Very few application types can help organizations with both front office interpersonal relations and at the same time help to streamline operations. Appointment scheduling is one of them. When you offer customers the choice of being able to make an appointment rather than taking their chances with walking in, many good things happen. Customers are more relaxed because they know they will not wait in a long line for service. They also know that you are expecting them, thinking about their unique requirements and that your session will be focused on them.
There are benefits for vendors too. Making appointments helps you manage your business so that you will be optimally busy. There will be fewer slack times and fewer times when demand exceeds your capacity to deliver. Appointment scheduling is one of those improvements that any business can implement at a very low cost. It helps manage resources, set and exceed customer expectations and it works for a variety of businesses. Making appointments helps improve your customer experience by optimizing operations — a powerful return on a simple solution.
Related content: see our other posts on efficiency
Filed under: appointment scheduling
Tagged: efficiency
2009
WebWorkerDaily: 10 Apps You Can’t Do Without, including (of course) scheduling software
I’m loving this post, from Aliza Sherman at WebWorkerDaily today — 10 Apps You Can’t Do Without:
So you’ve been downsized. Or you’ve bailed before being booted because you saw the writing on the wall. Or maybe you skipped the steady paycheck for a go at being a freelancer. Whatever the reason you’re out there on your own now, we’ve compiled a list of apps you’ll need to run your web-working business.
The categories she covers are ALL SaaS, and a lot are Web 2.0, with heavy emphasis on efficiency and collaboration:
Invoice management, time tracking, CRM, RSS readers, email tools, phone (concall and VoiP services), calendars / scheduling, document collaboration, and file storage / backup.
Happily, in the scheduling software category she cites our TimeDriver, which she’s mentioned before.
I’ll be using some of the tools she mentions myself, because although she may write primarily for individuals, the goodies she cites are useful for bigger orgs than that, and for individuals within big orgs. (For instance,TimeDriver is used by people in massive healthcare companies, massive insurance companies, etc. Heck, Microsoft Word is an individual tool too, but it’s used by the thousands.)
I’m especially interested in her post Project Management, Collaboration and How Our Brains Work as we begin porting our web presence to a new platform.
Business takeaway: You don’t have to be solo to value these tools, because you don’t have to be solo to be a Web worker.
(And for anyone who takes appointments, large or small, appointment scheduling software like TimeDriver can save a boatload of time.)
Good post, Aliza. We’re subscribing.
Related content: case study TimeDriver eliminates tedious scheduling time for driven real estate coach (may require free registration)
Filed under: appointment scheduling
Tagged: appointment scheduling, collaboration, efficiency, saas, web 2.0
Recent Comments