Why Integrate CRM With Your Appointment Management Solution

Why Integrate CRM With Your Appointment Management Solution

Appointment management software plays a critical role in any organizations digital transformation. To get the most out of your solution, integrating your CRM software is a necessity. Doing so avoids a disjointed operations and a silo’d workforce, not to mention setting your organization up for future success.

If you choose to implement and integrate a appointment management solution with your business CRM, you’ll want to ensure both applications provide an open API. This will allow your business to integrate both systems and experience the ultimate benefits of enhancing your operational processes.

The Risks of Not Integrating Your CRM

If your organization chooses a appointment management solution that does not provide integration options, you are placing yourself at an increased risk of slowing down operational processes, increasing informational gaps, and creating a disjointed customer experience.

Impact on Operational Processes

The information necessary for appointment management appointments, that also has to be stored in your CRM application, will require duplicate data entry if your appointment management solution is not integrated with your business CRM. This is going to be a nightmare for staff responsible for recording customer information, as they’ll have to re-input data that already exists in another application. And it will cost your organization money due to wasted staff time.

Duplicate data entry is also problematic since it leaves room for error when an individual is asked to manually transfer information from one application to another.

Disjointed Customer Experience

Not integrating your appointment management solution with your CRM application may mean you are inadvertently delivering a disjointed customer experience. At the time of the appointment scheduling, your customer can give additional insight into their needs, and what they hope to accomplish in their upcoming appointment. But, if up-to-date information is not available when your customer-facing staff check the scheduling system to gain insight into a customer’s needs, they’ll end up working with outdated or no information at all.

If you were the customer who scheduled an appointment with your financial services provider, imagine how frustrating it would be to answer several questions during the appointment scheduling, only to find out their advisor doesn’t have access to that information. Now, they have to answer the same questions again, since their advisor prepared for the appointment based on outdated information.

Process without a CRM, appointment scheduling integration in your contact center

  • Individual contacts your organization to book an appointment
  • Contact center representative asks the individual for their basic information
  • Contact center representative has no idea if the individual is a current or new customer
  • Contact center representative has to input all the customer’s information to schedule the appointment
  • Once the appointment is scheduled, the representative has to log into your business CRM to manually input this information for the second time, taking up time and leaving room for error

Process with a CRM, appointment scheduling integration

  • Individual contacts your organization to book an appointment
  • Contact center representative asks the individual for their basic information
  • Contact center representative can see if the individual is a current or new customer
  • If the individual is a new customer, the information put into the scheduling system will also be saved to your organization’s CRM
  • If they are a returning customer, the CRM will be able to populate the fields in the scheduling system, saving time for both the call center representative and the customer
  • The result is a more streamlined reporting and back-end process

The 3 Benefits of Integrating CRM

When you are an appointment driven business, you want to ensure you are providing a premium experience to your customers, so they want to continue working with you. Integrating your appointment management solution with your CRM will enable your institution to communicate more effectively with your clients, streamline operational processes and improve communication.

1. Streamline Operational Processes

Having a single, integrated platform, it will eliminate the task of duplicate data entry. Once both of your applications storing customer information are integrated, your staff will no longer have to input the same customer data into multiple applications. Not only does this streamline operational processes by removing a time-consuming task, but it increases the accuracy of customer information.

Coconut Software’s appointment management platform allows your appointment analytics to directly sync to your CRM application so you can track metrics such as attempted and completed customer interactions with your business, and the customer information collected when the appointment was scheduled. The customer and company data is updated in real time, ensuring your advisors have the most recent customer data, allowing your organization to provide a premium customer experience and enhance operational efficiencies.

2. Enhance the Customer Experience

Having your appointment management solution paired with your CRM application allows for all customer information to be stored in one place, enabling you to use multiple channels and streamline operational processes.

Coconut Software’s appointment management platform allows you to capture and track information about the products your specific customers are using, and their previous behavior with your organization. With this information, you can tailor future interactions to meet their needs. For example, one of your customer-facing advisors checks the history of a customer with an upcoming appointment to discuss insurance plan options. While looking into their history, the advisor can see the customer has invested in a TFSA with your organization in the past. With this insight, the advisor prepares a pitch for another type of investment account to share with the customer during their appointment. This allows your organization to potentially up-sell customers and shows you are in tune with their needs and past behaviors.

3. Enhance Company Communication

Another benefit of integrating your appointment management solution with your CRM application is that you can improve communication within your organization by having all of your employees working from the same platform. When a customer schedules an appointment through either your business’s online channel or contact center, the information collected at that time will also be visible in your CRM. This allows your customer-facing staff to have the necessary insight into customer needs, enabling them to provide a more personalized appointment.

Additionally, because duplicate data entry is no longer required, it eliminates room for error, ensuring all of the customer information your staff have access to is accurate and up-to-date.

By integrating your appointment management solution with your CRM application you will enhance your operational efficiencies, allowing your appointment-driven business to provide a premium customer experience.


What Next?

Looking to boost revenue and deliver a premium experience to your clients?

Schedule a consultation with Coconut Software to learn more about how our appointment scheduling solutions can get you there.


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