Let us be honest: Who would not love to have a simpler life? However, as our day-to-day life gets more and more full of tasks and appointments, finding ways to balance our time has become a monumental task. We have to keep up with so many things that we hardly find time for ourselves.
Within the last few years, many tools have emerged that make it almost effortless to keep track of upcoming meetings, birthdays, and deadlines. What once required you to take a daily, thorough look at the calendar has been replaced by alerts, reminders, and pop-ups.
You can set an alert on your phone that reminds you that you have a flight booked in 72 hours. You can set a reminder in your smartphone’s calendar so you do not forget to text your aunt on her birthday (although a call would be a lot more personal). And you can synchronize these tools between devices to make sure you are always on top of any time-critical event that is coming up.
These tools are certainly a blessing for people who have problems keeping track of time and dates. And they shrink the number of excuses you can come up with in case you do miss someone’s birthday.
As you can see, technology has found numerous ways to make your life easier and less stressful. But how is the outlook for you and your business?
Like people, many businesses and industries rely on schedules and appointments to run their operations. It is a matter of organization and is paramount in making sure that the company can serve every customer and dedicate the appropriate amount of time to them.
In the past, making an appointment was a relatively simple task: You would walk into the store and talk to the person at the reception desk. Then, after noting down your name, the store clerk would give you the date and time of your appointment. However, there was one downside to it: This process required you to go to the actual, physical location of the business.
As time progressed, more and more businesses offered the option to schedule a visit over the phone. This form of booking an appointment still has the personal touch while providing the convenience of doing it over the phone. But, as more people started to realize the advantages of booking an appointment by phone, lines started getting clogged by customers. Long waiting times and awful music playing in the holding queue became the harsh reality of customer service.
With the advancement of technology, traditional brick-and-mortar services slowly become available over the internet. One of these services is booking an appointment. Nowadays, many companies offer the option to schedule an appointment or callback right on their website. Some even offer it on their Social Media pages if the platform allows for it. Gone are the days of holding the phone line for hours, just to be greeted by a customer support agent that sounds like he could not care less about booking an appointment for you.
And every form of business that deals with appointments should take note of these technical improvements. Otherwise, they risk being left behind by those who adapt quickly to new technology. You certainly do not want to look like a company that offers tube televisions while your competition sells 4K TVs.
So, no matter whether you are a fitness instructor, offer consulting services or own a hair salon: You need to have a top-notch online scheduling tool in place. Besides making life much easier for you (or whoever is in charge of organizing the company schedule), it also makes the process a whole lot simpler for your customers.
If people can go on your website and book an appointment, guess what? You just saved them a lot of time. And since time is becoming a precious resource once again, people will genuinely appreciate it.
People are slowly gravitating towards doing everything online: From reading the news to shopping, all the way to chatting with customer support: More and more services are being offered on the internet.
And while the myth about our attention spans decreasing might not be true, after all, one thing is for sure: Making any process your customer has to through short and smooth brings them value. A value that converts to user experience, which, in turn, converts to rapport. And this rapport can convert to money.
Yes, we know: Not everyone is internet-ready. But the amount of people that do their daily tasks online is constantly growing. And let us not forget one thing: Whenever there is an advancement in technology, many people will be initially skeptical towards it. However, as time passes, more people will adapt to making an appointment online.
No matter what form of business you run, an online scheduling tool can lighten your workload if it involves making appointments or scheduling calls.
