Why use online scheduling software to take online appointments?

A friend recently asked me about my company’s product for online scheduling of appointments.

Photo by Simon Blackley on Flickr

He was wondering why companies would want to utilize a service like this.  He currently has staff that takes appointments from his clients for his business and didn’t see the point of appointment scheduling software.  It’s really not that expensive to spend a minute or two taking an appointment for them.

True, I said.  But do you send your clients an appointment confirmation?  What about appointment reminders the day or two before the appointment?  Do your clients ever call to change or cancel an appointment?  And so I asked him, “How much time would all this take for your staff to book and maintain your client appointments?”

When he thought about it, he realized what a time savings online appointment scheduling software could be.  Then I asked him, what if he had to book the appointments himself.  If his business was not big enough to have staff to answer the phone, what would online scheduling software mean to him as a sole proprietor?  Wouldn’t that take away from his billable time or the time he could devote to servicing his customers.

Photo by Darren Hester on Flickr

Finally, I asked him what kind of appointment scheduling system he used.  Was it a manual appointment book or some appointment scheduling software on a PC?  When he told me they had 3 appointment books, one for each professional in his office.  I asked him how difficult it was to figure who had the next available appointment when a client called, a feature that can be setup with our online appointment scheduling software.

And what about the ability to see his schedule, his partner’s schedule or staff schedule, online from any browser anywhere in the world, 24/7?  Again, he conceded that might be a nice thing to have.

So, to make a long story short I summarized for him the benefits of an online appointment scheduling software package.

• Clients can schedule from any browser, anytime, day or night
• Huge time savings for you or staff in taking and maintaining appointments
• Added benefit of automatic confirmations, reminders, etc.
• Ease of access for staff or resources that are being scheduled.  Anyone can check their schedule from anywhere online, even from your iPhone!
• Client viewable appointment calendar for easy appointment selection.
• Recurring appointment option
• Multiple staff and multiple locations can be scheduled for one low monthly fee.
• And much, much more…..

He seemed to be convinced that the Netwave Online Scheduling System was right for him.  Could it be right for you?  Watch this short video and then visit us at www.NetwaveOnlineScheduling.com. Sign up to receive free, our latest special report, “12 Killer Email Marketing Tips“ which will absolutely help you add and retain customers like never before.

When You Let Customers Book Their Appointments Online Use That Opportunity to Find Out How They Found Your Chiropractic Office

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Adding an application to your website that lets clients book appointments at your chiropractic clinic online is a very smart business decision. Customers really respond well to businesses that give them the choice to make their appointments online or to call and make an appointment.  If you let your customers book appointments at your chiropractic office online you also can use that as an opportunity to find out they found your chiropractic office and what type of chiropractic care they are looking for. Knowing what customers are looking for and how they found your website is very valuable information to have from a marketing standpoint and once you have that information you can overhaul your existing advertising plans to incorporate that data.

It’s easy to add a feature to your existing system that allows customers to book appointments online that adds a simple question asking new customers how they discovered your chiropractic office to the registration form that all customers who book their appointments online need to fill out.  Using that information will give you a great overview of how your advertising is working and where you should be spending more advertising dollars as well as where you should stop spending advertising money.  No one wants to waste their advertising budget on ads that don’t work, so use your website as a way to find out how people found your chiropractic office when they sign up to book an appointment online.

With that information that you get from the customers that are booking their chiropractic appointments online you can build a more effective advertising plan that might even include more Internet advertising.  If you see that people respond very well to being able to book appointments online through the website you should add some text to your current ads reminding customers that they can book appointments online. You might be able to get new customers who really want to find a chiropractic office that will give them the chance to book their appointments online.  You might even be able to use those ads to remind existing customers to go online and book their regular appointments which will free up some of your office staff to do other things.

Keep Your Health Club Members Coming Back By Allowing Them to Book Appointments Online

photo by Ed Yourdon on Flickr

If your health club operates like most health clubs you have certain classes, personal training sessions, and specialized equipment that all need to be booked in advance. Scheduling appointments for these classes, meetings with trainers or to use specialty equipment can be time consuming and irritating for members that might not always be able to call in and make an appointment during regular business hours.  If clients don’t get the appointment times they want they are likely to get frustrated and go somewhere else. If you want to keep your customers happy and keep them coming back to your gym you should give them the opportunity to book their appointments online.

Most people are quite familiar with the process of using the Internet to book appointments and love the freedom of being able to go online when it’s convenient for them to book appointments for the classes they want or to get an appointment with the personal trainer that they prefer.  Building an online scheduler into your website that will allow customers to schedule their appointments online will make customers much more likely to come back to your health club instead of going somewhere else.

Using an automated appointment scheduling system that allows customers to book online is also preferred by customers because it gives them a written record of the appointment day and time which can help your clients create their own schedules.  Some appointment scheduling software will even send clients a reminder through email the day before the appointment. With a written record of the appointment your clients will know that the appointment was made and can be certain of the day and time of their next appointment.

Installing a system to book appointments online will also make things much easier for your staff. An automated scheduling system can manage the appointments and plan out the schedule more effectively than a person can and the automated system won’t make the same kind of mistakes that a customer service rep might make. If changes need to be made to the automated schedule it’s easy for an employee to log into the system and make the appropriate changes without having to worry about appointments being lost or other scheduling mistakes being made.