How Online Appointment Booking Is Set To Transform Entire Industries In 2022
October 29, 2021
How Online Appointment Booking Is Set To Transform Entire Industries In 2022
Look out! Blink and you’ll miss it – 2022 is fast on the horizon. As we approach the latter stages of what has been another extraordinary year, online booking software is becoming increasingly powerful in a reshaped landscape that has transformed many business models and consumer habits.
With traditional telephone methods for booking appointments continuing to decline, industries ranging from healthcare and hospitality to live events and beauty salons need to swiftly join the digital age to not just succeed, but also to remain competitive.
A potent online booking system doesn’t just create value for companies by providing a platform to schedule a meeting and promote their services online. It also offers merit in areas such as customer loyalty, queue management and mapping out resources more effectively.
The estimated worth of the global appointment scheduling software market is expected to soar to 360 million dollars in 2024. Here are BookingLive’s predictions surrounding the metamorphic impact that automated online booking solutions are expected to have on popular services and industries over the next 12 months.
We will be covering:
- Competitive edge
- Managing visitor traffic
- Global marketing
- Get to know your customers
- Increased use of automation
- Online booking – looking ahead
Competitive edge
Every industry throws up its own unique set of challenges as companies vie to be ‘top dog’ within their field. Whether its filling tables at a restaurant or attracting holidaymakers on your sightseeing tour, an online booking system helps bridge the gap between online and offline customer experiences.
From a business perspective, it instantly put you a step ahead by converting more traffic as it opens your ‘doors’ to a global digital world that demands a streamlined booking process. When it is implemented properly, appointment and booking scheduling software can be plugged as a unique selling point.
Managing visitor traffic
Even though the sight of sporting arenas and supermarkets at full capacity is slowly becoming more familiar, all high footfall environments still need to be closely monitored to keep visitors and employees safe.
Locations that require impeccable levels of hygiene such as spas, hotels and medical practices would benefit from an online booking system to manage customer flow and free up their staff to keep on top of cleaning protocol. You can also plan for any walk-ins to fill gaps and reduce downtime in between clients.
Global marketing
Imagine your business is accessible to the entire population 24/7/365. Around every aspect of an automated booking process is a marketing opportunity to increase your brand awareness and the chance to secure a customer.
In the UK alone, 66% of the population are social media users and this figure is showing no sign of slowing down in 2022. Even though it is a noisy and crowded space, it offers businesses the chance to boost their visibility to potential clients that habitually log on to it daily. You can even link customers directly to your online booking system for a quickfire way to drive appointments and bookings.
Away from the social scene, BookingLive are able to offer other marketing integrations including automating emails and text messages through Twilio to help ensure appointments and important updates aren’t missed.
When you think about marketing through an online booking system, it is vital to remember the importance of communicating effectively to your customer base through different mediums and how that impacts their booking experience.
Get to know your customers
Online booking software provides employees with a vast range of trackable and analytical information about their clients. For example, with the correct data you can tailor your upsell recommendations specific to each customer.
Many industries are already benefitting from access to real-time data and analytics which supply a valuable insight into key information such as popular periods, booking patterns and impulse buying behaviours.
This brings genuine value to the booking process as you can identify exactly when the most valuable engagement with customers occurs. The data accumulated is also advantageous for creating promotions and effective marketing strategies.
A study in 2017 found that businesses that are using customer insights to their advantage are, on average, outperforming their competition by 85% in sales growth.
Increased use of automation
Let’s immediately quash the myth that automating different areas of your business will take away the ‘human’ element of your operation and de-personalise the customer experience. Automation isn’t about replacing your employees or leaving your customers to their own devices – it’s about delivering a slicker and more positive booking journey.
It allows you to free up time for staff so that they can be productive on other tasks that can’t be handled or completed to the same standard if automated. As well as the initial booking, services can benefit from bidding farewell to repetitive (but crucial) tasks such as sales reports, market trends, monitoring employee performance and keeping track of stock levels.
Automation has enabled us to communicate at every touchpoint of the booking journey so that clients go all the way through with a transaction. Clients want to be kept in the loop regarding the successful placement of any booking(s) and then informed on any changes or protocol that they need to adhere to.
We’ve come a long way from trying to find a spare five minutes on our lunch break to ring up to request a booking slot. This is why automated processes are enabling industries to adapt to an always-on and ever-connected world, as well as applying innovative measures to meet their customers’ needs.
Online booking – looking ahead
The World Wide Web continues to weave itself into the daily pattern of our lives, influencing how we prioritise our time. No matter what industry you’re in, the environment is going to be cut-throat and heavily immersed into the digitalisation of products and services.
Your bookings are essentially your sales, which is why you need a stable yet dynamic booking system that can be accessed through your website or a mobile app to capture potential clients and keep existing ones engrossed.
Interested to find out how our award-winning system at BookingLive has directly impacted businesses across a wide range of industries?
BookingLive: Get started with a FREE online scheduling & booking automation system today
Claim a risk-free mobile-first online booking and scheduling system below, this booking app is free to use, simple to set up and if you want to take and automate your payments through the system it’s pay as you go. If you want to take paid bookings through the system there is a 2.4% charge covering your Stripe and payment fees as and when you take a payment. We are supporting businesses across 75+ countries with PAYG online booking automation systems.
This flexible risk-free solution provides small business owners with an industry-leading customer experience, automation of administration tasks, automated payment handling and it doesn’t cost anything until you make a sale.