Unorganised scheduling means unintentionally missing out on income opportunities. As a business owner, you can avoid all that with a readily available tool.
One problem that plagues businesses of all industries these days is inefficient scheduling. And this is a problem that causes them to lose not just money but even opportunities.
For most industries, this problem could mean losing sales and profit. While for others, it goes beyond finances.
In the healthcare sector, in particular, having unorganised schedules could also mean losing lives. Because if doctors started missing their scheduled appointments, people would suffer. Worse, many lives would be lost.
The reality is that this issue extends beyond just the healthcare industry.
Businesses in all industries today are generally struggling with the effects of low attendance at meetings. In fact, studies have shown that the average meeting has a 30% no-show rate. This means plenty of valuable time and resources are wasted.
More importantly, income-generating opportunities are missed.
To combat this problem, business owners would do well to make use of an efficient appointment scheduling solution. One such solution is TimeTrade.
In a nutshell, this is a platform that offers a variety of features that automate and optimise your scheduling process.
Since TimeTrade removes any risk of human error involved in scheduling appointments, you ensure that meetings happen seamlessly and harmoniously. This way, you avoid wasting resources and missing opportunities.
With TimeTrade, you can finally say goodbye to missed appointments and low meeting attendance…
And hello to a more efficient and profitable future.
Keep reading to learn more about TimeTrade and how it can benefit your business.
About TimeTrade and IBM
TimeTrade is an online scheduling platform for businesses of all sizes. It allows users to easily schedule business appointments – from a meeting with a financial advisor to a hair appointment.
The platform is designed to be easy to use. It can also be integrated into your business’s website, social media, and email marketing efforts. This way, you provide your customers with a seamless scheduling experience.
One of the critical features of TimeTrade’s platform is its ability to handle large volumes of appointments. This makes TimeTrade an ideal solution for businesses in a wide range of industries, such as healthcare, retail, and financial services.
TimeTrade’s platform also includes a host of features designed to help you improve your operations.
Automatic reminders, for example, help ensure that your customers will remember their appointments. This reduces no-shows and improves the overall efficiency of your business.
Also, the platform allows the scheduling of recurring appointments. This is a time-saver for both you and your customer if you own a business that regularly deals with repeat customers.
Because of such nifty features, TimeTrade rapidly became a successful platform. Thousands of individuals, businesses, and even government agencies are choosing to integrate it into their operations.
But it wasn’t always that way.
As the company started to grow, scalability issues began to arise. These issues included conflict with data privacy laws in other countries, difficulties in handling thousands of appointments, and increasing digital infrastructure.
Fortunately, IBM swooped in and saved the day.
IBM provided TimeTrade with a combination of IBM Cloud Bare Metal Servers, IBM Cloud Virtual Servers, and IBM Cloud Object Storage. All this storage guaranteed that TimeTrade’s servers could handle anything.
The IBM cloud solution also ensured that the platform knew the exact location of each server. This ensures that local data privacy laws are followed.
With IBM also came automation. It eliminated manual workflow, which resulted in increased efficiency and reliability.
Furthermore, IBM began aiding TimeTrade in terms of security, audit, and compliance information and adherence. All these make certain that you won’t face any regulatory roadblocks when using the platform.
In short, TimeTrade’s partnership with IBM has made their company scalable, allowed it to gain global compliance, and improved the overall customer experience.
How to Use TimeTrade to Stop Missing Appointments
Every business owner knows the pain of a missed appointment. To put it simply, it can mess up your entire day, week, month, or even year.
But with TimeTrade, eliminating missed appointments is made possible. This is done by automating and optimising the scheduling process for your business. For instance, it has a myriad of features to remind you of your meetings, calls, and other important events.
While there so many great features, some shine above the rest. So, here are TimeTrade’s most valuable offerings that you should leverage as a business owner:
Feature #1: Appointment Routing
This is where you link your customer to the appropriate employee in your business. And TimeTrade provides two different methods for automatically routing appointments:
- Round-Robin style
- Smart Routing
With the round-robin style routing, you add your team members to a group. Then, scheduled appointments will be evenly distributed to the members of that group in a cycle.
This is what most users opt for, as it’s easier to for all parties to understand and meets most customers’ needs.
On the other hand, smart routing gives you more control over appointment routing. It helps you create a ranked list of rules for each task. These rules let you give scheduled activities to specific members, allowing you to assign specialised tasks to certain team members.
While the smart routing method is more difficult, it can be incredibly rewarding. It’s because you get to direct customers to the most suitable team member. And it can also help you efficiently manage appointments and resources in your business.
Feature #2: Appointment Setting
Of course, TimeTrade excels in appointment setting. It wouldn’t be an appointment software if it couldn’t do this.
As mentioned, TimeTrade allows customers to easily schedule appointments with you or your team through different channels. This means they can book an appointment via your business’s website, social media, and email marketing efforts.
What’s more, you’re allowed to set different rules for appointments. You can tailor-fit aspects like booking timeframes and appointment limits according to your business’s particular needs.
All that is possible because TimeTrade is designed to be user-friendly. It has a simple and intuitive interface so your team and customers won’t have trouble understanding how to operate the platform. More importantly, it makes it easy to schedule appointments – even recurring ones.
You also have the option of pre-configured dashboards. This way, you can avoid the hassle of arranging things yourself.
Feature #3: Syncs to CRM and External Calendar
As you can expect, TimeTrade syncs with the most popular calendar software, like Google Calendar, iCal, and Outlook. But that’s not all.
TimeTrade also allows you to easily sync data to other systems. In doing so, you eliminate the need to manually enter data into multiple systems. This also results in improved the overall efficiency of your business.
Also, you can choose busy times on your external calendars and they’ll appear as unavailable times on your TimeTrade accounts. This way, you can avoid overbooking, and you and your customer won’t waste time and resources waiting for a meeting that won’t happen.
Feature #4: Omnichannel Scheduling
Since TimeTrade is available on multiple channels, like emails, social media, and websites, it makes it more likely for client bookings and interactions to occur.
For example, your customers can book appointments through embedded appointment scheduling calendars on your website. You can also use chatbots on your social media account to assist them in booking appointments.
Also, TimeTrade works seamlessly with all devices. Whether you’re using a computer, a phone, or a tablet, all of the platform’s features will be available to you.
With TimeTrade being available and compatible with so many different channels and mediums, getting a customer to book an appointment has never been easier.
Feature #5: Automated Notifications
Everyone is guilty of missing an event. Whether it be a small thing, such as going to the grocery or missing an interview, we’ve all done it at least once in our lives.
That’s why reminders are always important. Instead of manually remembering dates and times, you’ll simply get alerted of an upcoming event in a fuss-free way.
TimeTrade knows the importance of reminders. So, it ensures that you and your team, as well as your customers, don’t forget about important meetings, calls, and other vital communications.
For example, automated email notifications are sent out prior to a scheduled appointment. With this feature, you won’t have to worry about personally reminding everyone about the upcoming meeting – the platform will do it for you.
Feature #6: Salesforce Integration
One thing that’s vital for any business to succeed is understanding and tracking customer behaviour.
This allows you to develop products and services that you know your customers will actually purchase. And you can even develop marketing campaigns that can attract more of your ideal customers and help you build brand loyalty.
That’s why TimeTrade having Salesforce integration is such a big deal.
This seamless integration allows you to track your clients and gather information about their buying behaviour, for example. Analysing customer scheduling behaviour, on the other hand, can let you understand their peak dates and times so you can adjust your business accordingly.
On enterprise and retail plans, you can also get automatic customer feedback and advanced custom reports.
Stop Missing Appointments That Cost You Opportunities
Missed appointments are costing your business more than you think. Not only does it mean lost time and money but also missed opportunities.
That’s why using TimeTrade to automate and improve the scheduling process in your business is vital.
This is a platform that will ensure that appointment setting and attendance happen in an uncomplicated way for all parties involved. Not only that, TimeTrade comes with other benefits, such as CRM integration and the usability of the platform inside and outside your business.
With it, you can say goodbye to endless email chains and phone tags… And say hello to streamlined, efficient scheduling.
All that and more becomes possible when you integrate TimeTrade into your business.
If you want to make setting up TimeTrade a smooth and easy process, the Automation Agency Heroes can do it for you. Allow us to set things up for you on the platform so you won’t miss any meetings – and ultimately opportunities – ever again.
