Ways to Maximize Benefits of Online Scheduling for Small Businesses

It is a digitally evolving world. Businesses, particularly retailers and service providers that do not adapt to the ever changing technological trends will only continue to do so at the expense of a progressing business. Small business owners face a big challenge in the coming future. Especially when it comes to surviving in the market where everyone is trying to stay one step ahead of competition. In today’s era, new and improved digital tools are being adapted in order to outperform the market and satisfy customers’ needs. With this in mind it is crucial to maximize benefits of online scheduling tools that your company use.

Online scheduling or booking of appointments is one such tool that small business owners can make use of. Online scheduling helps to gain a competitive edge in the industry.  More than 50% of small business owners today are making use of online scheduling tools and calendars to offer the convenience of booking appointments online to their customers.

Apart from straightforward uses, such as offering customers the facility to self-schedule their appointments. It also allows for reminders that are automatically sent out to customers. This is done a set period before their appointments. Online scheduling platforms have numerous marketing features. Which small business owners can make use of to maximize their benefits. Many of these features go untouched and unnoticed. This is because many merchants are often unaware that these features exist. Here are a few ways how small business owners can maximize their benefits from using online scheduling platforms:

Offering Promotions –

So you have launched an online scheduling platform but how do you get customers to start using it? This is where promotion plays its part. Promotions as small as placing a button to “book online” on your webpage. Or to placing physical banners and branding collateral on store counters. Will enable customers to gain knowledge about the online scheduling service that you have newly launched. Small business owners may not have immense budget to spend on large scale promotions. Even if you start small you can go a long way through reaping benefits gradually. Alerting your voicemails to inform customers about the new online scheduling platform, promoting on social media, using search engine optimization on browsers are all low cost methods of promoting the new service.

Review and Feedback –

For small business owners, the best way to improve their services is by obtaining valuable customer review and feedback. By offering the option of reviewing and providing feedback post-appointment to your customers, you can obtain this information and use it for strengthening your brand image. Positive reviews can also be shared on your external website or social media to authenticate endorsements and increase customer base.

Booking Widgets –

Have you ever noticed the small Facebook, Twitter or other social media buttons on business websites? These are called widgets and they offer your customers the facility to explore your business even more once they land on your page. Using widgets on the appointment scheduling page will increase customer footfall on your external pages. Your service will be marketed more effectively, in a low cost manner this way.

Visual Experience –

Booking appointments online becomes even more appealing when your customers have an interactive and visually attractive platform to communicate with. The overall color combinations, logo, graphics will enable working with the scheduling software appealing not just to your customers but for your staff as well. This way you will be building a positive brand image. Customers enjoy working with such platforms. It gives them the confidence that they are making the right decision by opting for your business rather than your competitor’s.

Email Marketing –

There are many integral components of offering any online platform to your customers. This is because it allows the business owners to use valuable information about their customer’s. This information is stored within their system. It can segment their customers based on that information for instance services history, birthdays, old timings of bookings etc. Business owners can then send out smart, personalized offers based on these parameters to their customers and in turn build a strong, long-term business relationship with them as well.

Booking App –

The ever evolving technological industry has made customers so app-driven that they have become used to conducting every activity from their smartphones with the use of apps rather than logging on to websites. Booking appointments can also be made far more convenient. This can be by providing your customers with an app designed specifically for the appointment scheduling service itself.

Conclusion –

These are just some of the ways to maximize benefits of online scheduling. We will follow up with more ways to improve your usage of online scheduling tools as well as many other ways for your business to grow. Many small businesses use appointment scheduling and yours should too.