3 reasons why appointment software is better than a book!

During the few months I have spent in my role in Timely, I have come across quite a few businesses who won’t look at an appointment scheduling option. They have friends suggest Timely to them, but they are adamant that an appointment book works well for them. I recently spoke to a hair salon owner who had multiple staff, but was still using a book. When I asked what they did in terms of reminders, the answer was “oh, we ring them all up the day before”. They did admit this was a practice they were pretty sick of – I’m not surprised. Even still, they were sure the book system worked well.

Another example was a friend of mine, whose husband attends all of their appointments, while she does admin from home with her two children. I asked her what they currently do for their bookings. “We use an appointment book. It’s alright if I’m at home, but I have to take it out whenever I leave the house, and it’s a big book. It doesn’t fit in my handbag.” I can just picture her in a shop somewhere trying to control her two little ones, the phone ringing with a new client, and having to get the book out! That sounds like a juggle and a half.

So I thought it ‘Timely’ that we put forward some common reasons why any business with bookings should use a software provider, rather than an appointment book. Here goes…

Security

If the book gets lost, everything is gone. There is no way to ‘recall’ what was on the pages in that book, and you will need to start from scratch. Imagine trying to recover that.

It is also very easy for your customers to glance at the book and see who else is booked in. If your business is of a confidential nature at all, then this is NOT good practice.

With cloud-based appointment software, even if you lose your device you can log on by another means. For example, if you usually use your tablet to make bookings but it gets stolen, you can get on your laptop or desktop computer and all of your information is there, safe and sound. All client information is only available to those who have the password to be able to log into the software, so no more peeping toms checking out if their friend up the road is coming in for an appointment. And on that note, the ability to keep decent client notes is actually a viable option with software.

Practicality

Like the example with my friend, lugging a big book around is just not practical. It may be tolerable in a salon or clinic environment, but if your business is mobile or you work from home, then it’s just not practical. Especially if that business has more than one staff member. Imagine if the staff member who had the book travelled out of town and took the book with them, and no one else in the business knew what the schedule was! There is only one copy of an appointment book, so with that there will be one appointment ‘gatekeeper’. It’s not hard to imagine the difficulties with that.

With cloud software, everyone can quickly log in from anywhere, and see what is planned for the day. And reminders – you don’t even need to worry about those as you know they are getting done automatically.

Time

This is a biggie. Making sure your business has good systems in place is usually so that you can spend your time wisely. While people may be put off by the small expense of appointment scheduling software, you have to think about how much time is spent on doing manual tasks, that could be automated. A good example is the hairdresser who is ringing up all clients the day before their appointment as a reminder. How many times do they have to ring a client before they get an answer? How many clients are they ringing each day? It’s not hard to see that this can become a time consuming exercise. If you are paying one of your staff to do this task, you may as well be paying for the software.

Can you think of any other reasons that software is better than an appointment book? Or vice versa? I’m keen to hear your thoughts about what systems have worked well for you in terms of keeping appointments.