Are you allowing your customer to book online? If not, you may be missing out on building your customer base. More and more companies are starting to take advantage of being able to book online and if you are not taking them, then your competitors are. There are several advantages to allow customers to book online. Some of the most important ones are the following.
- Book More Appointments
- It’s What Patients Want
- Younger Demographic Prefers It
- It can reduce no shows
- Can save your staff time.
- Drives traffic to your website
Book Online Can Lead to More Appointments
By allowing customers to book online, you can increase your number of appointments. Customers are able to book appointments at their convenience even if that is when you are closed. By offering an online appointment system, customers can check your schedule and book appointments when they want to. Research has shown that 40% of customers do book appointments after-hours so if you are not offering this, you are missing this segment of your customer base.
Also, customers, today don’t like talking on the phone so this gives them a way of booking without talking with your staff. This number goes up with Millenials where this percentage goes to 71% and 25% will not book with a company if they don’t have an online appointment system.
It’s What Customers Want
In the medical field, studies have shown that 17% of patients surveyed had scheduled an appointment online and an additional 42% said that they would have scheduled online if they were able to.
Younger Demographic Prefers It
Like mentioned earlier, Millennials prefer this method over calling and talking to someone on your staff. By adding this feature, you can target this generate and leverage this interest to address their needs. You become their company in your field. Online appointments can be viewed as a major component of your companies plan to increase your customer base.
This demographic also uses their mobile phones more for online activities over phone calls already, this just gives them the opportunity to use that technology in the way they prefer.
It can reduce no shows
No-show rates can drop by 50% when offering an online system followed up by an email or text message confirmation and reminders. You set the system up to text or email customers of their appointment the day before. Keep in mind that text messaging will probably be an added charge so plan for that in your online appointment budget.
Can save your staff time
How much time? Some studies have shown as much as 63% of appointments are scheduled online. This is time that your staff can spend on the current customers in your business and not spending time on the phone taking the information that customers will gladly give you online. Staff can now focus on what is going on currently in the business.
Drives traffic to your website
This can also help lead to new customers who haven’t found you yet. By getting customers to interact with your website, Google will see your site as being active and up to date which leads to higher rankings and higher rankings leads to new customers finding your site.
Online systems like Amelia and Bookly, allow you to book online with relative ease and setting up your online appointment system is just a few clicks away. These systems allow your customers to select no only dates and times but locations and staff members as well. You can also add different services and set the system up to only allow certain staff members to take certain service appointments online.
For example, if you are a doctor’s office that has several doctors, maybe some of them are the only ones allowed to see new patients or female patients. You can configure the system this way so there won’t be any mixup or changes that need to be made later.
These systems can be very beneficial to your company moving forward and will help you increase your customer base. If you would like to book an online appointment with us to discuss setting up an online system for you, we would be more than happy to sit down with you and go over your options.
