Automating Appointment Scheduling

Copyright (c) 2008 Don R. Crawley

One of the great promises of the digital age is to free people from mundane and routine tasks so they can work on more interesting projects. The human brain allows us to reason and think creatively in ways that machines can't (at least not yet). Unfortunately, many people are still performing tasks that are repetitive and, frankly, better done by machines or, in this case, a computer.

In this article, I'm going to talk about automating the appointment scheduling process. This applies to you if you're a hair stylist, a dentist, a massage therapist, an oil change shop, a psychologist, a plumber, or anyone who sets appointments with clients. By automating the appointment scheduling process, you can free your receptionist to work on more interesting, revenue-producing tasks while providing exceptional service to your clients or customers.

An online appointment scheduling service allows you to set available appointments and allows your clients to schedule appointments whenever they choose within the times you set. You can be notified of new appointments via email.

One service allows you offer coupon codes to customers as an excellent form of customer retention.

In a larger operation with multiple providers, you can setup accounts for each provider allowing your clients to choose their provider or take the first available appointment regardless of provider.

The scheduling service will automatically send your customer reminders and, if they need to change or cancel their appointment, they can do it all online.

Other features available include a way for you to rate your customers as to their punctuality or missed appointments.

Pricing ranges from free (GenBook) to $10/month and higher, depending on the features you want. At a price of free, it's definitely worth checking out to see if it will even work for you. You could try setting it up in a test with a few select clients to see how they like it and whether you like it or not. You could run it side-by-side with your paper and ink appointment scheduling system for a month or two to see if it works for you and then make the decision about whether or not to make the switch. The really cool thing about it is that you can still take appointments over the phone; you just enter them in the appointment scheduling website instead of in your old-fashioned paper planner. For your clients who are web-savvy, however, they can make and manage their appointments with you 24 hours a day, seven days a week. All you have to do is provide your service and collect your fee! (Some of the services will even collect your fee for you by accepting credit cards online. I LOVE it when money just shows up magically in my business account!)

Here are some links to appointment scheduling sites:

www.appointmentquest.com
www.zappointments.com
www.genbook.com
www.web-appointments.com

There are actually many more services like these. Just Google on "appointment scheduling service" if you want to check out more of them.