How an Appointment Scheduling Service Can Make Your Life Easier

In order to be the most successful business owner possible, you’ve got to start finding ways to make your life easier. Entrepreneurship isn’t as glamorous as most people think; especially when you’re just starting out and don’t have a support team.

As a business owner, you can be tied to your desk 12 or more hours a day and handcuffed to your cellphone 24 hours a day. You can’t build a lasting business with this insane work schedule. It’s time to start considering how others can share some of your business responsibilities.    

Let’s talk about the main benefits that go along with hiring a live answering service to help you run and grow your business.   

What a Live Answering Service can do for your business and scheduling needs

Phone Coverage 24 Hours a Day

If a potential or existing customer were to call your business at 8:00 pm on a Saturday night, who’s going to answer that call and help them out? There are only so many answers to this very important question.

• • An Answering Machine

You’re a firm believer in what “was” referred to as normal business hours. You know, the old schedule for conducting business from Monday through Friday, 9 am to 5 pm. We believe that in this Digital Age, allowing an answering machine or voicemail message to greet your customers is antiquated and outdated. 

Your customers are looking for service on their timetable and will no longer leave a message and wait all weekend for a callback. In fact, “67% of customers hang up on a phone connection out of frustration they could not talk to a real person and 75% of customers believe it takes too long to reach a live agent.” 

So if you’re a business owner that is in the habit of sending customers to an automated answering machine, it’s time you start considering alternatives.

• • It’s a One-Person Show

Savvy business owners looking to grow their business recognize the immediate attention they need to bring to their calling customers. If you’re running your business solo and have little to no help, you’ll take the wheel and assist your callers personally. You realize that a missed call is a missed sales transaction.

You’re on the right track, but continuing at this speed, you’ll either burn yourself out or your personal life outside of the office will be damaged from the constant disruptions of a ringing cellphone. It’s important for your health and the health of your business to allow yourself to take a break from answering your own lines.

Unless you opened a business answering service, there’s no reason why you should be responsible for the menial task of answering your own phone calls. Outsourcing your answering and scheduling needs frees up your time so you can focus on running and growing your business.  

• • Your On-Call Employee

Business owners that want to capitalize on the fact that customers want assistance 24 hours a day will invest in paying an employee to be on-call to help. Some employers compensate that on-call employee overtime pay and others will pick up the cellphone bill for the employee to always be on-call.

Again, you’re on the right track because you realize the importance of making yourself available to your calling customers. The only problem is that this route is going to have certain side effects that may be more trouble than its worth. 

A business answering service supplies a whole team of virtual receptionists and virtual schedulers to assist your callers whether it’s at 6 am or 6 pm. If you assign one employee to handle after-hour business calls, you can’t be certain that employee will hear the cellphone ring in the middle of the night. And if you have someone that comes into the office after normal business hours to solely answer your phone, you’re going to break your budget quickly if your call volume doesn’t warrant one-on-one attention.

Being available to your customers 24 hours a day and having the freedom to conduct business without a ringing cellphone is priceless.

We Prequalify Your Callers

Sometimes when a customer calls in, they don’t need an appointment; they just want more information. Other times the caller may not be your ideal customer and scheduling an appointment would just be a waste of time for all parties. 

Our team of virtual schedulers are experts when it comes to prequalifying your customers. We make your life easier by making sure that any customer that makes an appointment on your calendar is the customer you’re looking for.

You teach us to be your virtual gatekeeper when it comes to who can secure a spot on your busy schedule. You can customize specific prequalifying questions that our team can ask to determine:

• • If the caller is your ideal customer;
• • If the customer is agreeable to your standard rates and fees;
• • If the caller is located in the area you perform your service or ship your product.

When the caller passes our prequalifying questions, then and only then will we schedule their appointment on your schedule. 

How a Virtual Scheduler Schedules Appointments

Our live answering service is often asked how a virtual scheduler is able to set appointments efficiently and accurately from an off-site location. It’s as easy as 1, 2, 3.

Step 1 | Training and Forwarding                 

You teach us how you’d prefer your calls to be answered and your calendar handled. If there are specific appointment time blocks that you’d like your meetings scheduled, let us know. If you’d like a series of questions asked before scheduling an appointment, provide us the qualifying questions. You can even fully customize your account so that we’re trained to recognize your VIP calls and get ahold of you, no matter where you are in the world.

After each agent is trained to answer your business calls according to your specifications, you forward your calls to us for immediate handling.

Step 2 | Scheduling in Real-Time                 

When a call comes in on your business line, your new virtual team will assist your customer through the scheduling process. After answering your callers’ frequently asked questions to determine if they’d like to schedule an appointment, we can then move forward with scheduling a time to speak with you and/or the appropriate employee.

We synch up to your calendar so that we have accurate and up-to-date times showing your availability. Your virtual scheduler will schedule the caller in an available timeslot that is viewable in real-time. We will take down your customer’s contact information and any other details that you’ll need to be prepared for the meeting. If you have an intake sheet, we can even fill it out and place the document in the corresponding appointment on your calendar for easy retrieval.     

Step 3 | Appointment Confirmation             

Although all appointments are scheduled in real-time and automatically appear on your calendar, we’ll also send an appointment confirmation to you. Immediately after the appointment is scheduled, your virtual scheduler will send you the new appointment information via email, sms text, fax or we can even call you for a personal advisement of the changes to your schedule.

You can even customize your account so that we confirm your appointments the day before the meeting. This is an excellent customization if you’re in a field that customers often cancel or no-show their initial consultations. Allow us to focus on confirming, canceling and rescheduling your daily schedule so you don’t have to.   

Custom Experience for Setting Appointments

Our award winning business answering service has a 30-year history of providing exceptional customer service. Your modern customers expect a unique and personal experience when communicating with your business. An expert virtual scheduler will provide that personal touch your brand needs to stand out from your competition.

So while you’re running your business without the constant interruption of a ringing telephone, we’ll be hard at work giving your customers a great impression of your company.

Let our Live Answering Service help your business with its scheduling needs!

These are just some of the ways our live answering servicecan make your life easier and more efficient. When you’re not busy with administrative work, you can focus on running and growing your business. Since we only charge for the calls we take on your behalf, we’re the best business solution for offering 24-hour phone assistance.

Our team doesn’t require a long-term commitment. Hire us to answer your lines and schedule your appointments on a month-to-month basis. Give us a call now at 1-800-785-6161 to discuss our affordable rates and how we can provide you and your customers 24/7 support.