Let Booking Software Be Your Virtual Assistant

Small businesses are always operating within the most narrow of margins. Every sale counts, and every team member needs to not only wear multiple hats but perform at the top of their game, as resources remain slim.

Key to small business longevity is visibility. Small business owners must know what their staff is working on and maintain open lines of communication in case priorities need to be shifted on a dime. These efforts are far more straightforward when processes haven’t yet been formalized, but scale in difficulty as new pieces of technology get added to a company’s back office operations.

A reliable piece of scheduling software, embedded in a small business’s tech stack early on, can ensure that the early days of a company’s life are productive ones. Managers can maintain visibility, employees can stay on task, and the beginnings of workflows can be laid. In fact, the key to maximizing scheduling software is to treat it as if it were hired as a slew of administrative assistants:

Issues With Traditional Scheduling Methods

It’s worth starting with a look at the early days of a company’s scheduling efforts and how these manual methods cause more inefficiencies than they solve.

Here’s a classic example: A salesperson has a productive chat with a new prospect, who expresses interest in moving forward with a deal—after they receive answers to a few questions. Normally, this wouldn’t require much more than a quick conversation between the salesperson and someone within the company who can provide the information they need, or step in and talk to the customer directly.

If a small business is going after one customer at a time, the above process sounds great: direct, no room for misinterpretation or for any information to be lost in the shuffle. Of course, the goal for any small business is to scale, and before long, sales folks may become overwhelmed with clients, and it would be understandable if a message or two were to fall off their radar. Any small business will tell you that it’s imperative that they nurture new leads right away, meaning that any delay in communication could cost the company a significant amount of capital or customer good will—not to mention the fact that salespeople would be adding a fair amount of stress to their already-stressful jobs of keeping a new business afloat.

Then there’s the amount of repetitive work such a haphazard system would require. Salespeople would be doing all the scheduling themselves, which, without a central hub for communications, would require emails, phone calls, direct messages, and whatever else fits a customer’s preference. That’s time they could be spending sourcing new leads or laying groundwork for sustainable growth.

Moreover, perhaps worst of all, manual methods are often accompanied by data siloes between departments and individuals within an organization.This rings especially true for companies whose employees operate in different time zones, as manual processes limit the amount of time there can be overlap, relegating some conversations for the following day when they’re likely to be forgotten.

Benefits of Scheduling Software

Organizations of any size stand to benefit from scheduling software, small companies most of all because their time is at a premium.

The automation capabilities of modern scheduling software can support a small business as an administrative assistant might do. For starters, it takes employees out of the middle of this process. Once they enter their availability into their own calendars, the software is ready to accept customer meetings, providing a screen where these customers can view open appointment times and slot themselves within whatever’s convenient. The system would then add the meeting to everyone’s calendars and send reminders automatically, including sending any attachments or forms to peruse beforehand.

Behind the scenes, booking software can provide a boon to employees by keeping them on target and enhancing their capacity for taking on work. Tasks can be assigned to internal employees based on the needs customers have expressed, giving these team members time to prepare responses or offering an opportunity for follow-up and additional touchpoints. Each employee can work within custom-built modules based on role, location, workload, or however else companies want to slice it, further unlocking their ability to find information quickly and provide better customer service.

Scheduling software can also play the role of an IT specialist, extending its usability. For example, a company may not want every one of its employees to be granted access to every piece of information stored on a company’s server, which is where booking software’s customizable permission settings come into play. Each employee can receive an individual login that displays only what they need to know and keeps them from inadvertently messing up someone else’s work. The software can also monitor logins and locations, providing even more visibility into how and when operations are taking place.

The above is of particular importance within the healthcare industry, where privacy is paramount and HIPAA compliance requirements hang over every company’s head. But all companies can benefit from a higher level of security, as cyber threats have become increasingly common and complicated while customers are beginning to demand higher standards for data privacy. With the right piece of booking software, small business owners won’t need to enlist an IT specialist to monitor the bigger picture and keep everything safe.

Involving Customers

Small businesses can also benefit from involving their customers in the booking process—within reason, of course. Potential customers want to feel like they are a priority and that the company is willing to cater to their needs.

Consider how scheduling software can extend a white glove experience—personalization that makes customers feel welcomed and supported from day one. The booking process can be customized for look and feel, as well as the URL used and what’s contained in emails and text messages, including how often these reminders are sent. Plus, because so much information is getting transferred and shared behind-the-scenes, customers will receive prompt and comprehensive responses to inquiries they’ve made, reducing the amount of back-and-forth required. In fact, when small businesses take advantage of automated scheduling software, they shouldn’t require as many meetings to close a deal. Demonstrating respect for customers’ time is a sure-fire way for a company to ingratiate itself.

Another meaningful way for small businesses to pull in customers is to run the company on a unified suite of apps. It doesn’t immediately sound like this decision would have much of an impact on CX, but the implications, while less obvious, are significant. Potential customers are often in the process of shopping around for the perfect tech vendor, and a company whose systems talk to each other is a big selling point for their bolstered security and communication capabilities. It can help a small business operate with the efficiency of a much larger one carrying more resources because efforts aren’t wasted trying to reconcile data across different applications. Not even a team of admins can accomplish this feat so flawlessly.

Schedule for Success

If the people at a small business are the heart of the company, scheduling software acts as the backbone, supporting all efforts almost invisibly—that is, until it’s gone. The faster a small business adopts this level of infrastructure, the sooner it can start focusing on growth, both in company size and the capabilities of its employees, as if they had employed a small army of administrative assistants.

When everyone is operating at maximum efficiency, there’s no telling what’s next.

This article, "Let Booking Software Be Your Virtual Assistant" was first published on Small Business Trends