How To Get The Most Out of Your Appointment Scheduling Solution
In a nutshell 🥥 Modern appointment solutions do more than manage calendars. They improve operational efficiency, increase conversion rates for accounts and loans, enhance customer satisfaction, and create seamless experiences across digital and in-branch channels. When deployed thoughtfully with multiple access points and integrated into hybrid and omnichannel strategies, appointment tools become catalysts for deposit growth, mortgage loan growth, and deeper customer engagement. Why Appointment Scheduling Deserves More Attention Before you even select an appointment solution, it’s important to define success. Many banks miss opportunities because they only make the scheduling tool available on one page of their website — often buried and hard to find. As a benchmark, financial institutions should aim for at least 20% of appointments to originate from the online booking tool itself. Appointment scheduling isn’t just about convenience. It’s about matching customers with the right service, at the right time, through the right channel — all with minimal friction. Multiple Entry Points = More Engagement One of the easiest ways to boost adoption is by increasing entry points — places where customers can discover and access your scheduling tool. Think beyond a single web page: Website navigation menus and banners Branch kiosks and QR codes Mobile banking apps and in-app prompts Email signatures and marketing campaigns Online search results through tools like Reserve with Google Credit unions with as few as 15 branches have achieved the same digital appointment volume as much larger institutions simply by expanding where and how customers can book. This starter strategy should be part of a broader omni‑channel experience where customers connect with the bank on their own terms. The Hybrid Banking Advantage Hybrid banking — the blending of digital tools with in‑branch experience — is rapidly becoming the norm. It allows customers to book appointments online or via mobile, then choose whether they want to meet in person, by phone, or using secure video banking tools. This flexibility reduces lobby wait times and gives staff the ability to serve customers more efficiently. Secure video platforms integrated with appointment solutions let customers get face‑to‑face help from the comfort of home, which is particularly valuable for complex services like mortgage consultations or financial planning. Using Data & Analytics to Improve Service Delivery Branch data and analytics provide the insights institutions need to fine‑tune staffing models, optimize service offerings, and allocate resources where they’re most effective. Integrated systems can track: Appointment volume and conversion rates No‑show rates and attendance trends Customer wait times and satisfaction scores Advisor utilization and performance These analytics help leaders make informed decisions that improve both the customer experience and the bottom line. Operational Efficiency: Doing More With Less Appointment scheduling solutions reduce administrative work, shorten appointment durations, and help advisors stay focused on meaningful conversations instead of scheduling logistics. By automating reminders, digital form collection, and calendar syncs, institutions save time for both staff and customers. Scheduled meetings also reduce no‑shows and give advisors better insight into customer needs before the appointment begins—allowing for more productive, personalized interactions. Driving Revenue: Account Opening Growth, Deposit Growth, & Loan Growth When customers can easily schedule meetings—especially for high‑value services like mortgage or deposit consultations—banks see measurable growth. Improved accessibility translates into more new account openings, higher deposit rates, and increased mortgage loan conversions. Appointment tools integrated across digital and physical touchpoints help guide customers toward the right products at the right time. Are you getting the most out of your entry points? Take the quiz now to find out where you stand, and uncover any missed opportunities in your current strategy. We have an entry point on our: Mobile Banking Channel We have an entry point on our: Online Banking Channel We have an entry point on our: Online Origination Forms We have an entry point on our: Contact Us Page We have an entry point on our: Locations Page We have an entry point on our: Product Page(s) We have an entry point on our: Staff Introduction Page(s) We have an entry point on our: Service Information Page(s) We have an entry point on our: Blog Content We have an entry point in our: Online Chat or Chatbot We have an entry point on our: Social Media Marketing We have an entry point on our: Paid Digital Ads We have an entry point on our: Print / Experiential Ads We have an entry point on our: Email Marketing We have an entry point in our: Lead Generation Materials We have an entry point on our: Email Signatures We have an entry point in our: Contact Center We have an entry point in our: Google Listings We have an entry point on our: Smart ATMs / ITMs We have an entry point on our: In Branch Kiosk We have an entry point in our: Group Appointment RSVPs Looks like you need an upgrade Usually, if you find yourself in this scenario you are in the early stages of implementing your appointment scheduling solution. Oftentimes only certain teams are using the solution, or you are still trying appointments out. If this is not the case, you may have miss-enlisted the services of an appointment scheduling tool designed around the needs of SMBs or other non-enterprise level companies. For simple use cases, this may fit the bill, and comes with a lower price tag, but it will typically come at the cost of limited functionality and flexibility. Issues in scalability that come up later on could end up costing more than you save. In either case, these limited entry points could be holding your business back from getting the most out of your appointment scheduling solution. To uncover more about where your company stands and how to get the most out of your appointment scheduling solutions, download our Appointment Scheduling Buyer’s Guide today. Nice work! You’re almost there! Most companies in this range have made good use of including entry points on their website. If this is the case, ensure that they link directly to
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Simplified Scheduling: Future Proof Branch Strategies
Innovative technologies and new digital tools are bringing massive changes to the retail banking landscape, and nowhere is this more visible than in the brick and mortar channel. But these changes don’t mean that the branch is becoming irrelevant. Even with the reduction in branch traffic and increase in mobile and self service solutions, customers still want to be able to sit down with a financial professional when making big decisions. And with millennials and Gen X ranking convenient branches as their primary consideration when selecting their financial institution, that’s not likely to change any time soon. What does need to change is the idea that they will continue sitting on hold, standing in a queue or waiting in an outdated lobby to meet with a teller or advisor at that branch. As a follow up to Part 4 in our series, today we will be examining the final of 5 different strategies that banks and credit unions can implement in order to set their branches up for success in this rapidly changing landscape. Simplify Appointment Booking If branches are going to remain relevant in the years ahead, it is vital for them to make it as easy as possible for customers to schedule a visit. Over 80% of a retail banking customer’s interactions take place through self service channels, and 67% of consumers prefer self-service over speaking with a live representative. This means that people are visiting branches less frequently, but when they do it’s for high-value face-to-face consultations. No amount of in-branch technology or improvements is going to eliminate the friction caused when they visit a location to discover that nobody can see them at that time. With a unified, self-service scheduling platform for all channels, financial institutions can streamline the appointment booking process across every customer touchpoint. Whether an appointment comes through via your website, mobile app, or even your social platform, customers should be able to book that meeting as quickly as easily as possible. With this in place, financial institutions can effectively remove the guesswork from the task of improving efficiencies in the booking process. This can not only provide the benefit of increasing the number of high-value appointments driven to your branch locations, but also enable better optimization of employee schedules to improve their overall efficiency. This is especially important considering that the branch is all about the people in it and their ability to serve customers. Tellers need to be available throughout the day, but in greater numbers for peak transaction times like lunch hours and Friday mornings. Universal bankers should be able to shift from service activities to sales activities like outbound calling when there is less branch traffic to deal with. Training and branch meetings can be scheduled to minimize impact on branch operations. With better management around staff schedules, customers can be better serviced, leading to further increases in the value of their appointments. What Comes After a Booked Appointment? Important to keep in mind is that self-service can’t stop after the meeting has been scheduled. As with any appointment, life happens and schedules change. Without a simple self-service method for making adjustments to their appointment, customers who have taken advantage of your self-service channel to create their booking are at higher risk for becoming no-shows. Likewise, providing more self-service channels through reminder messages and instant check-in can help to further improve the effectiveness of your self-service solution. 1. Rescheduling Most scheduling solutions provide a method for rescheduling via email, but with 9 in 10 consumers saying that they would like businesses to provide SMS text messaging options for communicating with them, and 52% saying that they would prefer texting customer support over their current method of communication, it’s becoming vital to include this channel as well. 2. Reminders Along with the initial message providing instructions on how to reschedule, text messages also allow for faster and more effective communication when it comes to reminder messages. In fact, SMS open rates are as high as 98%, compared to just 20% of all emails. And, on average, it takes 90 seconds for someone to respond to a text, opposed to 90 minutes for an email. Many companies have already begun providing appointment reminders via text message, with 51% of millennials saying that they are already receiving them. When asked why they enjoy text messages over other reminders, these millennial customers say it is because they’re “an effective way to be reminded on their own time” (60%), “one less thing to have to remember” (57%) and “the most convenient way to be reminded” (55%). Of course, with 51% saying that they are receiving them, that means that 49% of companies are still missing out on this opportunity to increase convenience and decrease no-shows. If these are things your organization is interested in (and they should be), it’s time to get started. 3. Check-in Beyond all the scheduling and rescheduling issues, text messages can take things even further by allowing for a simple method for customers to let staff know that they have arrived for their meeting. Rather than having customers wait to speak with someone to let them know they’ve arrived, providing them with the option to check in via text can help to streamline the process and allow for a more personal approach. A simple message sent out 10 minutes prior to the meeting that instructs them to reply ‘1’ to check-in when they have arrived opens a channel of direct communication between them and the staff member they are there to speak with. This allows staff to come out and greet them personally, setting the meeting up for greater success. Check out the other articles in the Future Proof Branch Strategies Series: PART ONE – Self Service Kiosks Examining the benefits and capabilities that self service kiosks can bring to your branch by eliminating many of the pain points that customers associate with their visit. PART TWO – Café Style Branches We discuss design changes in the lobby that
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Customizable Software Solutions v.s. Generic Integrations
When searching for a new technology solution, it can be difficult to decide whether your business needs a cookie-cutter integration or the additional benefits that come with customizable software solutions. The first step is to evaluate the issues your organization is experiencing to better understand what kind of solution you need. After isolating and identifying the issues affecting your organization, you will be better able to assess the technology options available. Interested in learning more about how Coconut Software can help your organizations digital transformation? Download The Ultimate Guide to Digitally Transforming the Appointment Experience. With integrated appointment scheduling, there are a variety of solutions, at many different price points, which directly reflect the capabilities of the technology. While sometimes you only require a cookie-cutter integration, there are many benefits that come with a customizable, enterprise-grade scheduling software solutions. There are three things that you should look for when assessing a potential new technology implementation which includes the ability to custom brand, an open and flexible API, as well as avoiding partnering with a solution that has acquired tech debt. These features are worth considering as they will help the functionality of both your front-end customer experience as well as your back-end processes. Full Support for Custom Branding Being able to fully brand the user interface and customer experience of your technology solution allows your organization to offer your customers a familiar style and functionality through a third-party solution. Implementing customizable software solutions, such as online appointment scheduling can drastically improve customer experience, in line with your company’s branding and messaging. With a third-party solution that provides a customizable CSS, your organization will be able to keep a consistent customer-facing view to increase brand awareness and streamline the customer journey. Going with a solution that doesn’t enable custom branding leaves you open to the risk of inconsistent brand messaging and theming. This can be problematic as customers could disregard emails that are distributed through your third-party solution that do not fall in line with your brand look and feel. The inconsistency in branding can also cause customer journey abandonment with your organization if customers are taken to an application that does not follow the same branding themes as the rest of your organization’s customer-facing portals. Coconut Software’s customizable scheduling solution enables your organization to brand both the front and back-end of the scheduling solution. This ensures that both your customers and your staff will have a consistent experience with your brand. With custom branding, you can ensure the style and message of your communication is consistent throughout your customer’s journey with your organization. Flexible API The key advantage of choosing a solution that uses a powerful and open API is that is will greatly enhance your organization’s productivity. An open API allows businesses to integrate a new solution with any system, including a CRM and calendar applications. And, an open API eliminates duplicate data entry, allowing information to be stored in one place, resulting in more streamlined reporting and back-end processes. Providing an open, customizable API requires more support and configuration by the technology provider, which is why it is not offered by every vendor. The drawback to choosing an implementation without an open API is that you will not be able to configure your new solution to your other applications. This will prevent you from streamlining operational processes in your organization, such as integrating your CRM with your appointment scheduling application to ensure that all customer-facing staff are equipped with the right information to provide your customers with a premium experience. Additionally, working with an application that has a closed API prevents you from sharing data between different applications used in your organization, leading to inefficient back-end processes. The Coconut API is used to build custom client views and allows for integration with other solutions, including proprietary systems. Our open API allows for two-way calendar sync with Outlook, Google and Office 365. Our flexible integration also enables appointment data to flow into Leads, Contacts, Activities, and Campaigns in Salesforce, and full support for mapping custom questions from forms to custom fields in the SFDC application. Here are some of the other applications we currently integrate with No Tech Debt Selecting a third-party solution that has accumulated tech debt will directly impact how the application functions once it has been integrated into your organization. What is tech debt? Technology takes on tech debt when a business writes new code on top of the outdated code, instead of eliminating it entirely. This leaves room for bugs and other errors to emerge down the road. It takes a lot of time and resources to manage the accumulation of tech debt within an organization. Choosing a premium, customizable solution puts you at less of a risk of partnering with a provider that has acquired a significant amount of tech debt, allowing your implementation to function as seamlessly as possible. If you implement a solution that comes with accumulated tech debt, you’ll end up with a buggy implementation. Your new technology could end up being more of an issue than a solution! At Coconut, we understand the pain that comes with implementing a solution, only to find out it’s not able to provide full functionality due to tech debt. We have a team dedicated to addressing tech debt, and ensure our customers enjoy all the benefits of a premium appointment scheduling solution. How Coconut’s Premium Solution Allows You to Control the Full Appointment Lifecycle Many calendaring applications allow your customers to schedule appointments, however, not many allow for full control and view over the appointment lifecycle. With Coconut Software, you can collect additional information at the start of the appointment journey. This enables your customer-facing staff to better meet the needs of your clients when they come in for their appointment thanks to additional insight into the customer’s history with your organization and their current needs. We offer the ability to add touch-points to your customer’s journey with appointment confirmation, reminders, and follow-up
3 Reasons to Digitally Transform Your Contact Centers
In todays digital era, consumer needs have evolved. It’s no longer a matter of “if” banks will become fully digital, but “when.” The prospect of a digital transformation in the financial services industry does not necessarily mean the end of all traditional customer experience channels, like contact centers. In fact, using technology to improve the communications channels that are already in use and familiar to your customers is a great way to ease both your client base and your staff into the future of banking technology. As the first touchpoint for many appointment-driven businesses, 75% of organizations view the customer service provided in contact centers to be a key differentiator between competitors. Is your organization’s contact center providing your customer with a positive experience? Ready to learn more about upgrading your institution’s digital presence and capabilities? Download Coconut Software’s Ultimate Guide to Digitally Transforming the Appointment Experience. According to a study done by Cornell University, the financial services market tends to leverage larger contact center operations compared to other industries and is lagging behind in implementing contact center management software. While many banks and credit unions depend on contact centers as a channel for scheduling appointments with customers, many have little to no visibility into contact handling process efficiency. Unfortunately, this sluggishness to modernize the back-end is resulting in customers waiting, and waiting on the line as contact center agents try to assist them while navigating archaic processes on the other end of the line. As you look for ways to transform your contact center, it is important to highlight areas that could be made more efficient by implementing digital tools. For example, lengthy contact handle time, poor customer experience and high operational costs are all issues that likely plague your contact center and affect your organization as a whole. Enterprise appointment scheduling is one type of contact center technology that can help improve contact efficiencies, reduce operational costs and improve the customer experience. Here’s how. Digitally Transform Your Contact Centers With Appointment Scheduling Decrease Call Handle Time The number of calls that contact center representatives can accommodate in a day is a key success metric that impacts many other areas of the business. For appointment-driven financial services organizations, more completed phone calls equal more appointments and more revenue for your branch locations. And yet, 23% of companies still do not measure call handle time in their contact center. Long call handle times lead to long hold times for customers waiting in the queue, and 80% of customers drop off the line after being placed on hold for over 1 minute. One of the ways you can make significant inroads in increasing call handling efficiency is by implementing an enterprise appointment scheduling solution. Implementing a scheduling solution creates a more streamlined appointment scheduling process that allows your contact center representatives to accommodate more calls in a day. This can also contribute to improving the customer experience by reducing the amount of time customers have to spend on the line with your organization, just to schedule an in-person appointment. Additionally, by speeding up the appointment scheduling process you can schedule more appointments, driving more revenue to your organization’s branch locations. Improve Customer Experience 57% of companies can relate improving customer experience levels to revenue growth. For appointment-driven businesses, the contact center is the first point of contact between your organization and its customers, and so it absolutely must deliver a positive first impression. If you are an appointment-driven business and your contact center schedules the majority of your appointments, it is crucial that the customer information collected at the time that the appointment is scheduled is passed on to the advisor meeting with that customer. There is nothing more frustrating for a customer, that already had to go through the tumultuous process of scheduling an appointment, to show up to an advisor that has no insight into their needs. However, 54% of customer information collected at the time the appointment was scheduled is not relayed to the customer-facing advisor. An enterprise appointment scheduling solution can be integrated across all channels in your organization and allows for information that is collected from one customer-facing channel, to be stored on one platform that can be accessed by another customer-facing channel. This means that your organization can capture additional information at the time of the appointment scheduling by adding custom questions integrated into the scheduling process. The answers to these custom questions can then be accessed by the customer-facing advisor, enabling them to better prepare for their upcoming appointment with the particular customer and tailor the appointment to their needs. An additional benefit to implementing a scheduling solution into your organization’s contact center is that it allows you to add new touch-points to the customer journey that will reduce the appointment no-show rate, as well as make your customers feel valued. Your customers will be sent a confirmation email reminding them of the service, date and time of the appointment they just scheduled as well as any additional information they need in order to be prepared for their upcoming appointment. Additionally, SMS and email reminders can be sent out to customers reminding them of their upcoming appointment, reducing the chances of a no-show. Customers will appreciate these additional touch-points as we live in a busy world and it is easy to forget the commitments that they have made, and it makes them feel looked after and that their scheduled appointment is valued. By integrating your contact center channel into other customer-facing platforms in your company you can drive more revenue into the organization and provide customers with a premium experience. Decrease Workforce Costs Forrester recently reported that call volume is expected to increase over the next 12 months and 46% of global contact center decision makers project their contact centers to grow by 5% to 10% to accommodate the increase. Many organizations are pouring more of their resources into increasing rep headcount in their contact centers to manage the call volume, but this is
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Benefits of Appointment Management Software
The benefits of appointment management software, when implemented into your digital transformation are countless. PriceWaterhouseCooper recently reported that 81% of banking CEOs are concerned about the speed of technological change, more than any other industry sector. Many financial organizations are scrambling to implement digital processes to innovate customer experience, and disrupt their competitors. Starting to seriously consider implementing enterprise appointment management? Take advantage of the latest trends, and what Coconut can do to help in our Appointment Management Data Sheet. The Unexpected Benefits of Appointment Management Software With a variety of new SaaS solutions available, each promising to help improve some aspect of your financial organization, how can you determine which solution will have the most impact? To start, you have to consider which of your business goals are most important to you and carefully consider how the solution is going to help you accomplish them. Technology implementations that modernize existing processes is a far more efficient use of time and resources with the added benefit of limited disruption to your organization. As a competitive differentiator, appointment-driven businesses need to focus on creating a streamlined, high caliber customer experience. However, many financial institutions still book appointments through a manual, outdated process which forces their customers to phone a contact center and wait on hold while an agent reviews and compares staff availability between both a calendar and a separate staffing list. This process often takes several minutes to complete and resulting in poor customer experience, disrupting the customer journey. When considering new implementations, start with technologies/software that will improve your organization’s existing operational systems, such as your appointment scheduling process. This will afford you the opportunity to reduce operational costs in your contact center as well as become more accessible to customers by offering an online channel. The benefits of implementing appointment management software are important for the success of your organization, and enterprise scheduling can help you accomplish these objectives. You might be considering implementing enterprise appointment management, but you may not have the budget readily accessible at present. Or it doesn’t seem like the most important priority at the moment. If this sounds familiar, hear us out. “Implementing appointment scheduling is not one of our priorities at this point.” Although you may not think that implementing online scheduling is a top IT priority, the impact of this type of solution can span from your contact center to your branch locations, and it can help achieve other initiatives you have set for your business. The benefits of scheduling software are that it allows you to be a competitive player in your industry while also helping you accomplish the objectives your organization has set for the year. Benefit #1 “Well, enterprise scheduling can help your organization accomplish its yearly objectives.” Although implementing this type of solution may not be the top priority on your organization’s to-do list, the benefits of scheduling software can help accomplish some of its annual objectives. Here are some examples of business objectives that online scheduling can help accomplish: Provide customers with enhanced digital accessibility. Streamline the internal contact center processes. Reduce the cost of operations. Tandia Financial Credit Union, implemented Coconut Software’s enterprise appointment management solution, with the goal of improving member experience by simplifying the process of scheduling appointments through their contact center. This initiative was detailed in their annual report where they stated “We completed the first phase of introducing an integrated calendar system called “Coconut Calendar” to simplify the process of scheduling appointments with all our people throughout Tandia.” “As well as provide a competitive edge.” 31% of customers said that they would leave a current service provider if a competitor offered online scheduling. Enhancing the customer experience reduces churn and prevents your clients from switching to a competitor that offers a more efficient and accessible experience. Digital tools like online scheduling provide your business with access to operational efficiencies which are necessary for its growth, as well as provide increased access to customers, improving their scheduling experience. And these differentiators help to position your organization as an innovator. “We don’t have the budget for a new technology implementation right now.” Although enterprise scheduling may not have been taken into consideration when creating your operations budget, the money that it will save your organization can easily pay for itself. Here’s how. Benefit #2 “The benefits of appointment management software include drastically increasing the productivity of your business.” Time is money and optimizing staff time directly enhances the productivity of your business. Here are some ways in which appointment scheduling allows your staff to optimize their time: Frees branch staff up from answering the phone to book appointments More timely services due to reduced walk-ins Reduces idle time due to no-shows “As well as increase the number of booked appointments, boosting your businesses revenue.” Whether your organization is implementing online scheduling in its contact center and/or creating an online appointment scheduling channel, both tactics will allow your business to drive more appointments to its branches. On average, our customers noted a 12.5% increase in booked appointments after implementing an online appointment management solution. Your call center will be set up with an efficient scheduling process that will result in your reps being able to accommodate more customers in a day, leading to more appointments being driven to your organization’s branches. Offering an online channel also allows your customer to have the luxury of scheduling appointments at their own convenience. Some of our clients in financial and business services organizations have found that after implementing an online scheduling solution they were able to start capturing more appointments after the hours of operations, scheduling 41% of their appointments between the hours of 5 pm and 9 am. “I don’t have the staff resources at the moment for an additional implementation.” Technology implementations are notorious for eating up your staff resources, as well as much of your own time, and this may be a barrier in your mind to considering the solution. What you may
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