3 Myths about Switching Appointment Schedulers

By Katherine Regnier - May 3, 2024

For a lot of financial institutions, switching their appointment scheduling software is perceived as a massive undertaking. The thing is, it doesn’t have to be.

Here are three common misconceptions about what it’s like to switch appointment schedulers, and how they can be addressed so that implementation isn’t such a disruption for your financial institution.

#1: It’s too hard to get staff to adopt a new appointment scheduler.

When financial institution leaders consider switching any software, one of the first things they consider is whether they have the internal resources to do so. Which makes sense—it’s no easy task getting staff to learn new software. 

And when an FI is tasked with training, it is a heavy lift if they need a dedicated team to do it. While a lot of appointment scheduling vendors don’t handle training, some do. Look for software vendors who:

• Conduct preliminary training for your implementation team
• Offer full functional training for your entire staff
• Help you update your LMS, FAQs, and other training materials

The bottom line is you shouldn’t have to spend time developing training sessions, writing guides, etc. Even after implementation, your vendor should work with you on an ongoing basis to make sure you’re getting the most out of your new tool.

It’s also commonly known that staff don’t like change, so it’s easier to maintain the status quo. But when your appointment scheduling vendor is crystal clear about what staff stand to gain from a new solution, it becomes easy to overlook any short-term awkwardness of the switch itself.

Staff just want their job to be easier, not harder. If your new appointment scheduler doesn’t facilitate that, you wouldn’t have chosen it in the first place—so then it’s just a matter of communicating how it will make staff’s lives easier. 

#2: Your IT team is going to be consumed by the switch. 

IT resources are among the first things to consider when implementing a software switch. A secure switch for many staff members, all of whom need to be assigned the right permissions, is often thought of as a massive undertaking that prevents IT teams from working on much else while it’s happening.   

While your IT team should always be in charge of keeping your FI secure, your vendor should make it easy for them by handling things like:

• Setting up integrations
• Configuring data
• Configuring client settings
• Performing the cutover to the new tool 

#3: Your members will notice the switch because of downtime.

It’s every FI’s worst nightmare: They switch appointment schedulers and their customer or members’ existing appointments disappear. Or they can’t book new appointments because the switch from old to new tool triggered downtime.

This is where continuity of service is everything. The best way to avoid downtime is through a soft cutover, which is when FIs cut over to their new appointment scheduling software while their old software is still running. A soft cutover usually involves an overlap for a period of one or two weeks.

A soft cutover depends on your new vendor’s flexibility in working around existing contracts. Many FIs think they need to wait until their existing software contract comes to an end before they start implementing a new tool, but this is a misconception in and of itself. 

In addition to training and technical implementation, your vendor is a partner who can help you launch your new appointment scheduler in a way your customers or members won’t even notice—and on the back end, that means working around the contract end date of an existing solution.

Switching is easier than you think

Coconut has more than a decade of experience working with financial institutions (including helping them migrate from previous systems), and we’ll hold your hand every step of the way.

When you switch to Coconut, we make it easy by:

• Training staff for you
• Holding ongoing coaching sessions after implementation
• Configuring data, integrations, and settings—so your IT team can focus on security
• Accommodating existing vendor contracts to perform a cutover without downtime

Read our guide for switching to learn more about the process. If you’re ready now, book a meeting with our team.