Introduction

Your customers and prospects expect that their digital interactions with your brand will be seamless and convenient: whenever and wherever they’d like. Delivering digital customer experiences requires companies to minimize friction, maximize convenience and ensure that every encounter is tailored and personalized to meet individual needs in real-time.

With such growing customer expectations in our digital world, companies are re-focusing their efforts on improving customer experience. Of the 50 largest banks, 75% are pledging a customer experience transformation, according to a McKinsey report. Customer experience and customer service go hand-in-hand, and anything less than optimal service is costing companies billions of dollars. In fact, a study revealed that banks could lose more than $30 billion in revenue due to poor customer service, this doesn’t include other financial institutions like credit unions, wealth management firms, etc. This data reinforces the notion that every online interaction counts now more than ever before.

Designed to meet the needs and expectations of today’s digital consumer, online appointment scheduling is particularly important for enterprise organizations. This white paper will discuss how technology makes it easier than ever to engage seamlessly with your customers at any time and why real-time, personalized appointments are critical for enterprise success.

The New Digital Customer Experience 

Omnichannel is Mandatory

It’s hard to capture the attention of customers for more than a few seconds in today’s multichannel world, but it’s also more critical than ever for optimizing customer experience. According to a report from Gartner, nearly 66% of companies compete primarily on the basis of customer experience. We recently commissioned several studies to understand the importance of customer experience in financial institutions. We found that 53% of bank executives claim improving synergies between digital and in-branch customer experience is a formal strategy for growth. But what are the other 47% doing?

Studies show that improving customer experience requires enterprise organizations to eliminate customer pain and anticipate their needs while giving them more control. For example, more than 70% of millennials prefer scheduling meetings online and receiving digital reminders than booking an appointment by phone. This new generation of customers is defining what a brand is based on their experience with a financial institution across all touch points—online and brick and mortar locations. Firms that invest in improving the digital customer experience will reduce costs and improve efficiency while growing the bottom line.

One way to optimize customer service is by offering both prospects and customers personalized, real-time appointment scheduling. A survey of Coconut Software customers found that enterprise appointment scheduling results in 41% more appointments after hours (from 5pm to 9am) and reduces no-shows by nearly 25%.

Appointment Scheduling: The Enterprise Financial Institution Advantage 

Why Enterprise for FIs

When it comes to delivering a seamless customer experience, financial institutions must deliver convenience, control and personalized attention to every customer at all times and on any device. Traditional methods of scheduling and managing appointments are neither effective nor efficient, especially for enterprise organizations. For an average sized credit union with eight advisors, we estimate 19 hours wasted per month just coordinating meetings between advisors and their clients. An efficient method of managing this process is critical for optimizing the customer experience and improving employee productivity and effectively controlling operational costs.

How do you know if enterprise appointment scheduling software is right for you? While both enterprise and small to mid-size business (SMB) appointment scheduling software is designed to streamline processes, they offer very different levels of functionality, security and support. 

Enterprise appointment scheduling software is designed to accommodate large numbers of appointments/reservations and staff/customers across multiple locations. An enterprise appointment scheduling solution also offers integrations with existing software and scheduling processes already in use (i.e. Microsoft Exchange, Google, Salesforce, etc.). Enterprise appointment scheduling software often features single sign on and role-based access control that allows administrators to assign roles with job functionality-based access.  

Organizational Impact  

Enterprise appointments impact many layers of an organization, from executives and managers to frontline staff and contact centers.  

Designed to deliver more high quality appointments in less time, enterprise appointment scheduling benefits both frontline staff and contact centers by centralizing and optimizing workflows, cutting booking time by more than half with less back and forth, and providing workforce optimization through proactive scheduling. Managers and executives gain access to valuable reporting insights to more effectively manage complex staff schedules, coach performance, KPI attainment and make strategic business decisions.  

According to the research firm Gartner, isolated and disconnected silos can frustrate customers, forcing them to take their businesses elsewhere. Enterprise appointment scheduling helps large companies deliver multichannel customer engagement for a more unified customer experience across the enterprise. 

In addition to saving time and money, enterprise appointment scheduling provides customers with greater flexibility and convenience as they’re able to schedule highly personalized appointments in real-time—not just during normal business hours. This convenience improves customer engagement and experience while  dramatically reducing common errors like over-booking, incorrect appointments and inaccurate customer information. 

Optimize Staff Time & Productivity  

Enterprise appointment scheduling also empowers individual employees and managers by providing a seamless way to schedule, measure and manage customer appointments and the complexities of multiple staff schedules, locations and service offerings.  

Your customer-facing employees will be better prepared for every face-to-face meeting with access to important customer data that’s captured before the appointment. This ranges from questions asked during the appointment booking process, to connecting to your CRM system to track past behaviour and records. Helping your staff better prepare for appointments will result in a more enjoyable and personalized customer experience. Managers and executives will have access to valuable decision making insights via custom reporting and analytics that can be used to uncover trends while tracking staff and location performance.