WHY ENTERPRISE APPOINTMENT MANAGEMENT MATTERS FOR THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

Today’s society is increasingly connected 24 hours a day. From smartphones and tablets to computers, it is how a growing number of people want to view information, communicate, purchase and conduct routine daily tasks that previously were done manually.

Scheduling appointments is routine among many businesses and organizations today. We have traditionally seen it in sectors like Healthcare, Public institutions and Retail Banking for quite some time, often focusing on operational efficiency. What we now experience is that more and more organisations, including retailers, are using appointments to realize business benefits.

The lunch crunch – you know it well. Imagine being able to spread out the service workload evenly throughout the day instead. With an appointment solution, you can optimise your workforce requirement by steering customers to less busy hours, which helps eliminate the problem of over staffing or understaffing.

This is basically a way of “moving” customers in time to meet them when it not only fits you as a service provider, but also is the choice of the customer. The cost of overstaffing at low traffic can be kept at minimum as well as the under staffing effects on customer experience.

Using appointment management will allow you to match service requests to your best available resources. Not only will the quality of service improve but also as the efficiency as staff has the right competency to deal with the specific customer request. When a customer has pre-booked an appointment it is also possible to prepare the case in advance which brings further benefits to both the customer and to the service provider.

Appointment management reduces the time spent waiting by the customer and hence has a positive impact on the customer’s service experience. For the service provider it can also be a powerful tool that delivers the pre-visit data required for the service provider to staff more appropriately and deliver better customer service.

Summing up, the key benefits of an online appointment management system are:

• Anytime - Anywhere: In an online appointment system a customer an make an appointment any time, just like as if you are providing 24x7 services.
• Improved customer experience: Ease of access means that customers easily can find you and book a meeting with you – through a laptop, tablet or smartphone. Improved customer experience relates to increased customer retention.
• Improved efficiency: With an appointment management system it is possible to even out customer flow, to match service request with the right resource and utilize staff in a more efficient way.
• Saves time: A customer can make an appointment with you just within a few minutes from the comfort of their home or workplace.