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5 Booking Features to Start Growing Your Business

5 Booking Features to Start Growing Your Business

Starr Campbell

One of the biggest challenges new businesses face is gaining new clients and turning them into loyal customers. There are countless ways to make your new venture thrive, but one aspect is commonly overlooked – the appointment booking process. Often, the first official interaction a prospective client has with a company is scheduling an appointment online. Yet, many businesses only offer a manual booking process that involves calling a business to schedule an appointment.

Many customers prefer a quicker and more convenient way to schedule an appointment. Improving the appointment scheduling process for your business with an online software will not only improve your customer experience and onboarding, it will also better streamline the process and save administrative time and cost. A better customer experience and streamlined operations are a great way to help your business grow.

To ensure that your appointment scheduling software has your business set up for success, there are several features your solution should have. Here are 5 booking features that foster your business’s growth significantly.

Self scheduling options

The days of calling a business to get on their schedule for a consultation or stopping by to check the next available appointment are long gone. In fact, a 2019 study revealed 54% of appointments are booked on the go. Your future clients have busy lives, so it would be in your business’s best interest to make booking an appointment as easy as possible. An online appointment scheduling software not only automates the scheduling process – it also allows customers to book an appointment at their convenience, providing greater flexibility than only being able to schedule an appointment during office hours.

Using TimeTap, you can offer clients the option to self-schedule appointments and give them the chance to see your business’s complete availability, which lets them choose a time that’s most conducive to their schedule. Plus, if something important comes up and your client can’t make it, they can easily reschedule or cancel the appointment themselves. Providing convenience for your clients is a step in the right direction for building a long-lasting relationship.

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Client management tools

As your business grows, you need to build a client database. This is helpful for nurturing relationships with customers in order to increase retention. If your appointment booking software is not capturing information from leads, clients and customers, then it’s not providing you with enough information to help you build reports and manage your business.

Unlike a number of online booking software, we offer client management tools that allow you to store customer information that has been collected when people book an appointment with your business. The tool operates as a lightweight CRM. You can add customer labels to better group and manage your clients, save notes and view appointment and communication history with your customers. Have your own third-party CRM? Use our API tools to communicate with your own CRM software.

Customer information is obtained by creating custom booking forms. These forms capture client information when they schedule an appointment and this information is then saved in your client management area. These forms can serve as intake forms or simply provide helpful information to best serve a customer.

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Automated appointment waitlists

If your business offers classes, seminars or lessons, it’s important to offer a waitlist option. This way, if you have a full class and receive a cancellation, you can easily offer the spot to those on the waitlist. Your business won’t miss out on sales opportunities and it’s a helpful way to gauge the overflow popularity for your class or event. After all, if you have a large number of people on the waitlist, you might need to offer a second class.

TimeTap makes managing the waitlist even smarter. Our software will automatically notify people on your waitlist anytime there is a cancellation. People can reserve their spot and our system will even collect payments. Instead of spending time continuously reaching out to fill your cancelled slot, our appointment waiting list feature will alert them of newly available openings in your schedule.

Our tool simplifies filling empty appointment spots and saves you the hassle and time of managing the process manually. Growing businesses, more than anything else, need a flowing stream of clients to sign up for their services. When you have an appointment waitlist set up, you are preventing lost sales due to cancellations.

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2-way calendar syncing to prevent double bookings

Double booking is a frustrating inconvenience for business owners and clients. Yet, if you're booking appointments with one software and scheduling other meetings with your email calendar, scheduling conflicts can easily arise. The last thing you want to do is update your appointment availability in a booking software every time someone books a meeting in your email calendar. Overbooking your schedule can result in lost money, time, and a negative impact on relationships with clients. You need a tool that can sync with multiple calendars and automatically update your appointment availability on every calendar.

With our 2-way calendar sync feature, you can automate the process for updating all of your calendars so you don’t have to worry about double-booking ever again. Balancing personal obligations with work is easier than ever when using TimeTap. You can sync our software with just about any third-party calendar program.

We make it simple to prepare for clients’ appointments. With our dashboard, you can see all your scheduled appointments on all your calendars. You can even use filters to see appointments scheduled with your staff. Additionally, you can see the details clients entered when booking an appointment in your calendar. Additionally, you can capture appointment information like this by creating custom booking forms so that you have the information you need to be prepared for the appointment.

With our 2-way calendar sync functionality, you’ll never have to worry about updating your availability or being double booked for appointments again.

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Automated messaging and recall campaigns

Managing your own time is a key factor in having a business that meets its goals. Though it is easier said than done, you can implement tools in your processes that cut out time spent on various tasks. Emails that confirm appointments or send reminders to clients about upcoming appointments don’t have to be manually sent out. Your booking solution should have automation features so you can focus on more on growing your business while worrying less about administrative tasks related to appointment booking.

Businesses that use TimeTap as their booking software are able to take advantage of features like automated messaging triggers and recall campaigns that save a great deal of time daily. There is no need to make a time-consuming phone call when you need to notify or remind your client when it’s time to book a follow-up appointment. With our automated emails, set a time and our system will send out an email for you. You can customize the email templates with your own messaging. Additionally, send automated thank you emails to follow up with a client to show your appreciation for their business or to nurture a relationship with customers.

Recall campaigns are a great tool to use for keeping your customer retention rate steady. After clients decide to book an appointment, session, class, or whatever service you offer, the most important thing is getting them to return. Our software’s recall campaigns are used to both remind clients of when they should be booking their next appointment and what type of appointment they should book next. Supporting your customers in the scheduling process is one of many ways TimeTap can help your business grow.

Choosing the right booking solution is vital to your business’ growth and success. The right features will set you and your clients up for productive appointments, good relationships, and maximum benefit from the service you provide. TimeTap offers all of the features you read in this article plus many more that will streamline appointment scheduling for your business.

Learn how TimeTap can streamline your appointment booking tasks.

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