Top 7 reasons for using an appointment scheduling software

Published on 25 March 2022 • Reading time: 6 min read

The daily life of professionals in the logistics and home service industries is not easy with soaring fuel prices, recurring recruitment difficulties and increasingly tense customers.
Fortunately, many software companies have developed solutions to help you smartly schedule your appointments, and therefore your trips.
Are you still hesitating to digitalise this part of your customer relations? These 7 reasons should convince you to switch to appointment scheduling software for your service, maintenance or delivery business.

Table of contents

1. The right planning software adapts to your working methods, not the opposite
2. You can set appointments according to the specific skills of your employees
3. You save time on customer relationship management
4. You reduce the number of missed appointments
5. Your customers can make appointments 24/7
6. Appointment scheduling software improves the customer experience
7. More and more people are avoiding phone calls

Using appointment scheduling software is the key to overcoming today’s logistics challenges. The tool simplifies field service or work order scheduling and optimises routes. This improves team productivity and customer satisfaction.

1. The right planning software adapts to your working methods, not the opposite

There must be about as many appointment making methods as there are companies. Let’s assume that there are 3 main types of methods:

• The appointment scheduling on incoming calls. In some industries, such as in maintenance, professionals can only agree on a date of appointment after a customized exchange with the customer to qualify the need and the solution to provide. In this case, the software suggests several slots according to the other field operations already scheduled, in order to limit as much as possible the detours and the miles to travel.
• For some companies, the customer is given the day or time slot without the exact time of the appointment. If you operate in this way, you can import your appointments in bulk into our software, via an Excel file or a third-party application. The solution is then very useful for optimizing the routes and schedules of each field worker, while respecting the time slots agreed upon.
• Some companies define with their customers the frequency or cycle of visits, every Tuesday or every month, for example. If this is your case, the software schedules your appointments day by day and hour by hour, in accordance with your business constraints and your contractual commitments.

In any case, a good appointment scheduling software will find the best possible planning solution by adapting to your constraints, not the contrary.

2. You can set appointments according to the specific skills of your employees

Another key advantage of good scheduling software is that you can optimise the schedules of drivers or field technicians according to settings such as:

• Their skills. For example, one of our customers, FBP Medical, only entrusts the repair of sophisticated medical devices to qualified field workers.
• Their authorisations. For example, technicians in the electrical industry, who may be qualified for high or low voltage, photovoltaic installations, etc.
• Type of driving licence held by the driver: C, CE, C1, C1E, etc.

With AntsRoute, you only have to determine at the beginning of the collaboration the types of skills or authorisations that are relevant to your business. Then, you fill in the file of each field worker. Here again, a single setting is sufficient.
Thereafter, the software automatically assigns appointments as smartly as possible, with the algorithms taking into account both the actual availability of field workers and their skills.

The optimisation of a work order route on AntsRoute.

3. You save time on customer relationship management

Thanks to these powerful algorithms, the appointment scheduling software is able to organise your schedule in a few minutes, taking into account multiple constraints, where you would sometimes be pulling your hair out for hours. As one of our Belgian customers, Eloy Water, sums it up very clearly, “The teams no longer waste their time on the phone and gain in productivity. Since the implementation of the solution, the administrative gain is very important. […] In one month, we have saved almost one working week.
Thanks to this time saved on unproductive and often boring tasks, you can concentrate on your core business – where your real added value is found!

Weekly work order schedule generated with AntsRoute.

4. You reduce the number of missed appointments

The no-shows cost businesses a lot of time, energy and money. The absence of customers is a nightmare: unnecessary kilometres travelled, stressed field workers, not to mention the parcels or equipment that have to be stored until the next appointment.
In order to reduce the number of customers who do not show up without notifying you in advance, online booking systems offer several solutions:

• Once the appointment has been booked, the customer receives a confirmation by e-mail or text message. If the deadlines in your business are quite long, you can always set up a second automated reminder 24 or 48 hours before the actual appointment. This measure is very simple to implement and is very effective in avoiding oversights and misunderstandings!
• In addition, you can also send the customer a link to let him reschedule the appointment himself. If something goes wrong, the customer can simply click on this link to book a new appointment, without having to give reasons or explanations.

Link enabling customers to reschedule an appointment.

5. Your customers can make appointments 24/7

The use of appointment scheduling software is also very interesting for your customers, since the tool is by default always available. It does not know evenings, weekends or even holidays.
The Solocal group (formerly known as Pages Jaunes) indicates that 40% of appointments are made out of regular business hours. Consumers, who are increasingly looking for an immediate response to their requests, are no longer willing to wait, whether it is to receive a parcel or to have a broken-down device repaired.
The icing on the cake: unlike you, the software never crosses white zones…

Platform enabling customers to schedule appointments directly.

6. Appointment scheduling software improves the customer experience

In addition to their initial function as an online shared calendar, these systems often include other useful features to satisfy and retain your customers:

• Geolocation of the delivery driver or technician in real time.
• Cancellation or rescheduling of the appointment online, in complete autonomy.
• Link to a feedback questionnaire in the confirmation email or text message, etc.

The appointment scheduling software improves the customer experience.

7. More and more people are avoiding phone calls

For many consumers, the smartphone has become their digital cuddly toy. Many of them activate their mobile phone more than 200 times a day. However, the phone is less and less used for making phone calls, especially by young people! In fact, phone calls are now only a marginal reason for using smartphones, far behind internet browsing and instant messaging.

The figures provided by the French National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) on this subject speak for themselves. While 95% of the population has a mobile phone, 30% of them systematically filter calls from unidentified numbers. And 2% never answer. To book an appointment with your reluctant customers without making multiple attempts, the use of an online appointment scheduling software becomes essential!

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