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Archive for the ‘Information Technology’ Category

Scheduling Appointments Fast is Key to Good Customer Service

Thursday, October 14th, 2010

One of the first impressions a customer has of a business comes from their experience with the front desk reception area, regardless of whether that impression is actually made in person or over the phone. Good customer service is key to a successful business and should be consistent from the first moment a customer walks through the door to the very last second of the appointment. For service-based businesses, professional and fast appointment scheduling is an easy way to give good customer service. It really frustrates customers to see an appointment scheduler wasting time flipping though a crumbled, messy paper appointment book or being confused when trying to find open times to schedule appointments. Your business could be scheduling appointments professionally and fast using business scheduling software.

Instead of wasting time flipping through a paper appointment book, you could quickly see your employees’ calendars on screen. When a customer wants to schedule an appointment, the first thing you do is find an open time on the calendar. Using business scheduling software, you can find an open time by simply clicking a button. You’ll be able to search for a specific duration of appointment, a specific time of day, a particular employee, and a specific day of the week.

If a customer needs to schedule more than one appointment, such as a recurring appointment, an appointment scheduler can do so fast and all at one time. While the appointment scheduling window is still open, you can simply click on the repeat appointment button to set a repeating pattern, such as daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly. You could also select the dates separately for each of the recurring appointments.

Sometimes a customer wants to schedule an appointment sooner rather than later, but you can’t accommodate them because your schedule is already full for the next couple of weeks. If you’re using business scheduling software instead of a paper appointment book, it’s easy to add them to a waiting list. That way if an appointment is canceled in the meantime, you could call customers on the waiting list to help get them in early.

A new feature in business scheduling software is the ability for your customers to request appointments online. This can give them an opportunity to contact your business about an appointment after hours by filling out an online appointment form on your website. When your appointment scheduler sees the list of appointment requests, they can quickly find and open time and schedule the appointment as they normally would do and then confirm the appointment with the customer via phone and/or email. This appointment scheduling feature is a professional way of providing an alternative communication method for your customers while still being able to schedule appointments fast.

Being able to schedule appointments fast is key to good customer service. Business scheduling software will allow you to find open times and schedule appointments quickly in person or by phone. You’ll be able to schedule repeat appointments all at one time. You could help customers get an appointment sooner than their regular scheduled appointment by using a waiting list. And, by allowing online appointment requests, customers can schedule appointments without even having to call or stop in. 

Increase Job Satisfaction with Employee Schedule Software

Wednesday, October 13th, 2010

You need to keep both your business and your employees in mind when you create employee schedules. Managers need to make sure each shift is properly staffed, but they also need to take into account the needs of their employees. By using employee schedule software, a manager can do both. This will result in proper staffing levels and increased employee satisfaction, which results in improved customer service, higher productivity, and lower turnover.

A couple of ways to increase job satisfaction with employee scheduling software is to create flexible schedules that consider time-off requests as well as the desired number of hours employees wish to work. Employee schedule software is great for making “employee friendly” shift schedules, but also for achieving business goals.

How does employee schedule software handle time-off? You can assign time-off the same way you would assign any other shift. The time-off option can be used for vacations, sick time, leaves of absence, holiday hours, jury duty, or any other time off an employee may need. If you copy shift patterns into the future, you’ll inevitably end up with employees who are pre-scheduled for days they wish to take off. You can easily remove them from that shift first before assigning time-off. Managers can run a time-off report to view the days an employee has planned time-off and the days they are not listed to work.

How does employee schedule software help employees get the number of hours they need? You can enter the number of hours they wish to work in this software. Some employees may only want to work a few hours each week, while other employees will want to work 40 hours a week. A scheduling assistant in the employee schedule program can be used to show you how many hours each employee wants to work, how many hours they are scheduled to work, and the percent complete, i.e. the actual hours scheduled compared to the number of hours the employee wants to work. You can sort the scheduling assistant by each of these columns, which makes it easier to pick an employee who needs more hours and helps prevent an employee from being given overtime unnecessarily.

It’s easy to give employees the schedules they want using employee scheduling software. Employees will like it when they are not scheduled when they’ve requested time-off. They also like being scheduled for the amount of hours they want to work.  Help increase job satisfaction by using employee schedule software.