To Buy or Build Appointment Management Software: A Guide
Build or Buy? Helpful questions to ask when trying to decide whether your organization should build a solution internally or buy a pre-existing solution.
3 Benefits of Appointment Scheduling Software for Credit Unions
Learn how appointment scheduling software can improve customer engagement, internal workflows and generate additional revenue.
How Investing in Analytics Provides Big Returns for Financial Institutions
Advanced analytics allow banks and credit unions to gain deeper insights into big data, providing a huge ROI both now, and in the future of finance.
Tracking Appointment Analytics to Improve Customer Experience
Learn to use appointment and customer data to give your organization an edge over the competition. Track appointment analytics with Coconut Software.
4 Fintech Innovations for Creating Deeper Connections
The top 4 tech innovations in fintech emerging are turning casual bankers into devoted customers. How can banks and credit unions benefit from this trend?
How to Increase Revenue with Appointment Scheduling Software
Credit unions and banks rely on generating revenue through their appointments, making it crucial to maximize ROI on interactions. Learning to increase revenue with appointment scheduling software is a key way to maximizes these interactions to get the most value out of this customer touchpoint. Interested in learning more about appointment management software? Download Coconut Software’s Appointment Management Data Sheet today. An appointment is an appointment, right? Actually, there is a big difference between a walk-in and a scheduled appointment in terms of revenue generation. First of all, walk-in appointments are unpredictable, with unexpected influxes leaving your customers waiting, and your staff overwhelmed. Additionally, they leave little time for your customer-facing staff to adequately prepare in order to make the most out of the interaction. For appointments your organization schedules ahead of time, you might be missing out on valuable information during the scheduling process that you could use to optimize your customer interactions. With integrated appointment scheduling, you will be able to get the most out of the appointment scheduling process. This will enable you to increase revenue generation and reduce operational costs within your organization by enhancing your contact center processes, gaining additional insight into customer needs as well as optimizing staff time. Below, we discuss three ways to use appointment management solutions to increase revenue: 1. Decrease Operational Costs Integrated appointment scheduling is a great implementation to consider when your organization is looking to reduce operational costs and increase revenue generation while enhancing one of the most critical touchpoints of the customer experience. Enterprise appointment scheduling will help you reduce headcount in your organization, optimize staff time and gain additional insight into customer needs, in order to stay ahead of the competition. 2. Optimize Staff Time The Problem Scheduling appointments is a time-consuming process for your customers, as well as your staff. Typically, customers are left waiting over the phone or in person for one of your staff to sort through multiple applications, requiring them to go back and forth with the customer while coordinating staff-client availability. Needless to say, this is an aggravating process for both parties. This process consumes a lot of staff time that could be used to accomplish other revenue generating tasks. Alternatively, walk-in appointments are also a nightmare when it comes to optimizing staff time, as your employees fluctuate between being overwhelmed and having too much idle time. When your business provides walk-in appointment services, you need staff who are readily available to last-minute customers. This means staff are either taken away from an alternate task when a customer walks in, or they are sitting idle, waiting for the possibility of a walk-in appointment. Both scenarios are a poor use of employee time and cost your business money. The Solution By transitioning your organization to function primarily off of scheduled appointments, you will be able to optimize your staff time in order to increase revenue generation. With reduced walk-in appointments, your staff can use their time preparing for upcoming appointments instead of idly waiting for walk-ins. Along with eliminating the tedious task of coordinating staff-client availability, it frees up your customer-facing staff to accomplish revenue generating tasks. With more time to prepare for scheduled meetings, it’s easier for your staff to up-sell clients based on their history with your organization. 3. Gain Insight Into Customer Experience to Increase Revenue The Problem When customers schedule an appointment through a contact center, they provide basic information, including their name, status with your company and the appointment services they require. From there, the contact center rep will schedule an appointment that works for the customer and an available rep at the desired location. Your customer-facing advisor has almost no information about the customer. They can’t prepare for the interaction, missing out on opportunities to up-sell and generate revenue for your organization. Collecting limited information at the time of appointment scheduling is problematic for two reasons. For returning customers, it shows that your organization does not know much, if anything, about their history with your organization, making them feel undervalued. It leaves your organization missing out on key revenue generating information. The Solution When additional customer information is captured at the appointment scheduling, you gain additional insight into the customer’s history with your organization so your reps can provide a more personalized appointment experience. If you want to gain insight into their banking history, you can ask: How long have you been banking with us? When was the last time you scheduled an appointment with us? Do you do most of your banking online? These pre-appointment questions provide advisors with additional insight into customer banking behavior, allowing them to make more informed decisions about what other services they can offer during their upcoming customer interaction. Additionally, when a customer comes in for their appointment and is recognized by their financial institution, it makes them feel valued and reduces the chance of them seeking out a competitor who offers a better experience. Increase Revenue With Appointment Scheduling Software – What’s Next? Gain deeper insight into the benefits of appointment management software. Download Coconut Software’s Appointment Management Data Sheet today. 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.
The Importance of Providing Real-Time Service
Did you know 80% of customers drop off the line when placed on hold for over 1 minute to schedule an appointment? Reduce churn, and optimize the customer experience by providing real-time service. As an appointment driven business, it is crucial you provide a seamless scheduling experience for your customers to drive business to your organization’s branches. A study run by Accenture found 49% of customers switched service providers in the past year due to poor customer service. With the increase in customer service expectations, if customers feel they are receiving a poor experience, they are finding it easier than ever to change service providers. It’s crucial you provide your customers with the experience they crave in order to reduce churn. Risk of not providing real-time service to your customers When your appointment driven business does not provide real-time service, it can create a frustrating customer journey, leading to increased churn. For example, when a customer calls your contact center to schedule an appointment, and are immediately placed on hold for a long time, it could make them feel undervalued and prompt them to take their business elsewhere. Here’s a breakdown of how things might be playing out in your call center without the benefits of a real-time service First hold: Customer calls into the branch and is placed on hold for the next available representative. Basic details: Once the customer gets through to the representative, they are asked for their basic personal information, and what service they require. Second hold: Customer is on hold for the second time while the call center representative searches through multiple platforms to find the necessary information to book the appointment. Finally, booking the appointment! The customer is taken off hold for the second time, and can now coordinate an appointment time that works for them and the qualified advisor. Additionally, this is a problematic process as it leaves room for error, such as double booked appointments because the data is not recorded in the system in real-time. This leaves a window where appointment slots appear available even after they have been promised to a customer. Benefits of providing real-time service With an integrated appointment scheduling solution, your organization will be able to schedule appointments in real-time with a streamlined process. Your customers will feel their time is valued, and you’ll improve operational processes in your organization. Show your customers that you care When your organization puts in the extra effort to show your customers you value their time, it can go a long way. Once you’ve implemented integrated appointment scheduling in your organization’s contact center, you can offer 24/7 online portals, catering to the enhanced customer service experience your customers expect. You will also be able to streamline the appointment booking process when you implement integrated appointment scheduling into your organization’s contact center. This will subsequently reduce the length of the initial hold when the customer calls to schedule an appointment with your organization, as well as call handle time. And, if you choose to implement an online scheduling portal, your customers will have the ability to schedule appointments with your organization wherever and whenever they want, in real-time. Here’s a breakdown of how things might be playing out in your call center with the benefits of a real-time service Customer calls into the branch: Customer calls into the branch and connects to a call center representative. Representative accesses the integrated booking platform: The representative is taken through a streamlined booking sequence. Books the appointment! The call center representative can go forward and schedule the appointment with the customer, having all qualified advisor calendars open on one platform. Enhance Operational Processes When you implement integrated appointment scheduling, not only do you provide your customers with a better experience, you are also improving your organization’s operational processes. Manual, outdated appointment scheduling does not update staff data and availability in real-time, leaving lots of room for confusion. This can result in double booking appointments, or matching customers staff that aren’t qualified to carry out the service that they require. Rather, with an integrated platform, all appointment data is hosted in one place and customers can schedule their appointments through whichever channel best suits them. But the addition of 24/7 channels won’t affect your operational processes, as all the data from each channel will be updated in real-time in one virtual location. Providing customers with real-time service is becoming less of a luxury and more of a necessity with the digital transformation taking n over the financial services industry, bringing with it increased customer service expectations. Coconut Software’s integrated appointment scheduling tool is the perfect solution to provide your customers with real-time premium appointment scheduling while streamlining your organization’s operational processes. For more information on the benefits that come with integrated appointment scheduling, book a consultation today!
The Importance of Customer Journey Mapping
Failing to understand and map out how a new solution will fit into an existing customer journey risks making the experience worse, rather than better. After implementing new technology, there is an increased risk of a low adoption rate from customers. More often than not, this lack of adoption stems from the fact that the overall customer journey played a minimal role in implementation, which ultimately creates friction as opposed to solving existing challenges. If the process is too clunky or long, you could lose new customers before they even book an appointment with your organization. Additionally, current customers could get annoyed with a poorly implemented tool which could negatively impact retention. Back-end processes could get even more confusing for employees and it could lead to inefficiencies, if not properly integrated into the existing systems and processes that power the customer journey. Different organizations have different use cases and just because the technology was successfully implemented a certain way in one organization, does not mean it will work for you and your customers. Mapping out the customer journey prior to rolling out your new solution allows you to ensure it is functioning in the most beneficial way for your organization’s unique use case. Learn how an efficient, well-thought-out experience can be a great differentiator in Coconut Software’s Optimize the Customer Experience with Enterprise Appointment Scheduling white paper. The Benefits of Customer Journey Mapping As an appointment-driven business, you want to ensure the appointment scheduling process is seamless for your customers. If you have chosen to implement an enterprise appointment scheduling solution, it is in your best interests to practice customer journey mapping before offering the tool to your customers. 1. Ensure the solution addresses the identified problem By mapping out the customer journey of your new implementation, you will ensure the tool addresses the problem you identified in your operational processes that prompted you to initiate the implementation of this new solution. For example, with enterprise appointment scheduling, if your customers are demanding 24-hour access to your organization, you want to ensure you are not only implementing the scheduling solution to speed up appointment scheduling processes in your contact center, but you are also providing an online channel customers can use to schedule appointments with your organization whenever and wherever works for them. 2. Ensure the solution provides a seamless customer-journey When implementing a customer-facing solution, you want to ensure it provides a seamless experience for your customers. For example, enterprise appointment scheduling is a customer-facing solution that helps drive revenue to your organization. It is in your best interest to map out the customer journey of your scheduling solution to ensure it meets the needs of your customers and provides a premium experience. 3. Improve the quality of your appointments Ultimately, when implementing integrated appointment scheduling, you want to ensure the solution enables you to improve the appointment experience for your customers. By mapping out the journey of your new scheduling solution, you can ensure you are rolling it out in a way that gives your customer-facing advisors the information they need to provide the best appointment experience to your customers. With enterprise appointment scheduling, you are able to capture additional information during the scheduling process so you can ensure your customers are getting the most out of their scheduled appointment. And your customers will get confirmation and reminder notifications so they’ll show up to the right location at the correct time, increasing your appointment completion rate while decreasing no-shows. Coconut Software Helps Map Your Unique Customer Journey At Coconut Software, our onboarding team is dedicated to providing our customers with a personalized implementation process to ensure you receive the most out of your scheduling solution. During the implementation process, our onboarding staff will discuss current challenges and overall goals with the stakeholders involved in the roll-out of your new solution to understand and help create your unique workflow. With the information about your unique use case and challenges you are hoping to address, we will help you map the customer journey for your new solution. And, moving forward, our customer success team is available to help you manage and alter your workflow once you go live. By mapping out the customer journey of your new solution, you will give yourself peace of mind knowing you chose the best solution for your organization and that it is delivering business results against your KPIs. What’s Next Learn how an efficient, well-thought-out experience can be a great differentiator in a market flooded with options for consumers in Coconut Software’s Optimize the Customer Experience with Enterprise Appointment Scheduling white paper. 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. Product Info Lobby Management Data Sheet
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
Losing Customers Due to a Manual Appointment Scheduling Process?
Are friction points in your manual appointment scheduling process turning away potential customers? As an appointment-driven business, in order to drive revenue into your branch locations, you rely on customers to reach out and schedule appointments with you. When this process includes too many steps, customers can be discouraged from completing their scheduling, and you may end up with the appointment equivalent of abandoned cart syndrome. When calling in to schedule an appointment, long hold times or inefficient call handling processes in your contact center could be creating friction for customers. Or, they could be frustrated from receiving no response after filling out a generic contact us form that goes to an internal mailbox that no one ever checks. Customers have come to expect it to be easy to get in touch with their bank or credit union, and scheduling an appointment is no exception. Here are some of the reasons why customers may be turning away from completing your manual appointment scheduling process and how you can remedy them. Ready to discover what areas of your customer journey are damaging your customer effort score? Schedule a customer effort assessment. Lengthy Hold Time Did you know that 80% of the calls that are left on hold for over one minute drop off the line? Many appointment-driven businesses field the majority of their appointment scheduling through their contact center. If you are dealing with high call volumes at your contact center and your appointment scheduling process is not streamlined, your reps will be accumulating a lengthy call queue. Leaving customers waiting on hold for long periods of time risks losing those customers, and especially if they are new. Poor customer service is the main reason why customers switch to a competitor, and as an appointment-driven business, you do not want your organization’s poor contact center customer experience to be the reason why your customers are retreating to your competitors. Are you aware of how many potential appointments drop off the line in your organization’s contact center due to the frustration of being left on hold? Implementing a solution such as enterprise appointment scheduling can change your manual appointment scheduling process to an efficient, more automated process. Inefficient Call Handling Process According to the International Financial Corporation, the global average talk time in financial services contact centers is 4 minutes. Are the current processes in your organization allowing you to competitively offer an efficient contact center customer experience that compares to the global standard? When a customer calls into your contact center and finally gets through to the representative after waiting in the lengthy call queue, they are typically asked for their basic personal information, and what service they require. The customer is then placed on hold for the second time while the contact center representative searches through multiple platforms to find the necessary information to schedule the appointment. The advisor has to Check branch locations: The first application is typically a geolocator to find the nearest branch to the customer. Search available, qualified staff: Then the representative has to search through an extensive list of employees who work at that desired branch location, to try and find an advisor who is qualified to conduct the service that the customer requires. Check staff availability: The contact center representative reviews the calendars for the available and qualified advisors at the desired branch. During this time the customer may be growing impatient, as they have already been left on hold for a lengthy amount of time at the beginning of the process, and have now been placed on hold again! Unsure as to how long this hold will take, some customers will impatiently abandon the call at this point, instead of waiting for the advisor. The appointment scheduling process should not be so difficult. And if this simple process is so time-consuming, what does that mean for the experience they will have when they show up for their appointment? Your scheduling process should provide a positive experience to customers and start their journey with your organization off on the right foot. If this is the situation your contact center reps find themselves in, we bet your customers would greatly benefit from our integrated back-end appointment management system. Our solution will take your representatives on a more efficient appointment scheduling journey, eliminating the second hold time previously spent toggling between multiple applications. With all applications integrated into one platform, both your contact center reps and your customers will enjoy a more streamlined appointment scheduling process. Limited Communication Channels According to Parature’s 2015 Global State of Multichannel Customer Service Report, 90% of consumers expect their service providers to offer self-service portals. As more industries begin their transformation into the digital age, customer expectations will continue to rise. One thing that customers are starting to expect is convenient, 24/7 accessibility to your organization. If your organization cannot keep up with new self-service trends, then you are running the risk of your customers going elsewhere in search of the customer experience that they desire. A study run by Accenture found that 49% of customers switched a service provider in the past year due to poor customer service. As the scheduling process is the first touchpoint for your customers with your organization, you want to ensure that you are providing them with the channels that they desire, and that provide them with a positive experience. More organizations are beginning to adopt new self-service trends, which provide their customers with a faster and more convenient experience. Implementing a solution such as enterprise appointment scheduling allows your customers the option to interact independently with your company on a convenient and easy to navigate platform. Enterprise appointment scheduling can be integrated into your organization’s online, customer-facing channels, providing customers with a 24/7 appointment scheduling tool, that caters to their ever-increasing expectations around customer experience. Increase Scheduled Appointment to Increase Revenue How many different steps must customers go through in order to scheduling an appointment with you? Where are the biggest
5 Benefits of Digitizing Your Back-End Process
Organizations are scrambling to stay ahead of their competitors in the finance industry, with digitizing the back-end process being at the forefront of innovation. However, 87% of financial organizations don’t believe their current core systems can keep pace with customer-facing initiatives. And with 60% of customer dissatisfaction originating from the back-end of financial organizations, it’s clear that inefficient back-end processes can have a negative impact on customer experience. Complex legacy IT systems, manual paper-based processes and orphaned data sources often result in high costs, poor agility, plus the customer issues of delayed response-time and lack of a seamless experience. 64% of consumers saying that they expect companies to respond to them in real-time, however, how are they able to correspond with your organization in real-time if your back-end isn’t digitally enabled and ready to respond? Digitizing the back-end process within your financial organization is crucial for the success of customer-facing channels and can have a significant impact on your organization’s potential growth. Ready to learn more about upgrading your institution’s digital presence and capabilities? Download our Ultimate Guide to Digitally Transforming the Appointment Experience today. Improve Customer Experience, Increase Efficiency, Cut Costs One of the key reasons to digitize the back-end is that it enables you to differentiate your customer journey, and offer customers unique benefits such as 24/7 access, real-time responses, and personalized experiences. Other than improving the customer experience, digitizing your back-end process also allows for an increase in efficiency and cut down on costs. Lloyds Banking Group invested in a digital back-end technology that reduced the time it took to do certain processes by 90%. By reducing processes within your organization you will increase efficiency and subsequently boost revenue. According to Capgemini, automating back-end processes can help banks save 30% of their annual costs. From the process to error remediation, to training costs, overall savings can be significant. Digital Optimization Implementations Digitizing your back-end process in order to support your customer-facing channels, improve customer experience and enhance the productivity of your business may sound like an overwhelming undertaking. Where should your organization start? Ideally, you should start by automating one section of the customer journey. You can start by asking yourself a few questions: Which elements of the customer journey require significant manual effort to deploy on the back-end Which elements of the customer journey are resulting in significant customer dissatisfaction? Are there tactical solutions available to automate these manual processes? Which solutions can be implemented quickly to start delivering benefits immediately? One great place to start is your first customer touchpoint: scheduling an appointment. Having appointment scheduling as the first touchpoint means that it is your customers’ first impression of your organization, meaning that you have the opportunity to form a positive relationship with your customers based on the quality of the experience that you provide. Identifying an area in the customer journey in need of change is a great place to start, and implementing a tool that is user-friendly and able to integrate into both customer-facing and back-end processes is an effective first step. The digital transformation occurring in the financial services industry at the moment is relatively new and your organization, as well as your customers, need something that will allow a smooth transition into the future of banking technology. Enterprise appointment scheduling is a tool that enhances customer-facing channels while also streamlining the back-end processes in your organization. It can be implemented organization-wide, into your contact center’s appointment scheduling process, in branch as well as online, providing a new appointment scheduling channel to your customers. This is beneficial to the back-end processes of your organization for multiple reasons such as … Consolidated Customer Behaviour Data Because the channel is integrated organization-wide, every appointment scheduling channel–contact center, branch locations, head office– will have access to the same appointment data. This allows for your organization to speed up the scheduling process because there will be no need to correspond with other employees in other areas of your organization to ensure that no appointments are double booked or missed by advisors because they were not informed of the scheduled appointment. All scheduled appointments and staff availability would be sync across all platforms to ensure appointment scheduling accuracy and that no appointment slots or advisors get double booked due to miscommunication between the two channels. Track Appointment Analytics Integrated appointment scheduling syncs data across all appointment channels in your organization, but also offers your contact center staff the ability to capture additional customer information prior to the appointment, like past financial needs, what brought them to your organization, and who will be attending the appointment. This can help improve the quality of the in-person interaction. Post-appointment, having the ability to track appointment success rate as well as no-show rate allows your organization some insight into valuable sales information around product and services, as well as operational inefficiencies that you can address with a more targeted plan in the future. Coconut Software offers clients a host for appointment analytics which helps highlight friction points in the customer-facing appointment scheduling journey such as: Where in the scheduling process customers are dropping off before submitting the appointment request What branch locations book the most appointments which staff are providing the highest customer satisfaction according to customers. Using the back-end process of enterprise scheduling to track analytics allows your organization the ability to assess the processes it has in place in order to provide the best service possible to its customers. Optimize Staff Times in One Program In large organizations, it can get chaotic to keep track of all of the information on customer-facing staff in order to schedule appointments. You need to track staff availability as well as updated qualifications, and hosting all of your customer-facing employee data on one platform allows your organization to run as smoothly as possible. With enterprise scheduling, you can host advisor data on a platform that is organization-wide and able to be updated in real-time. This enhances the organization within your
Digital Transformation to Improve Operations
Learn how digital transformation and initiatives can digitize customer-facing channels to keep up with increasing customer experience expectations.
The Top 3 Reasons to Implement Digital Customer Service Channels (2019 Update)
Take digital transformation to the next level by streamlining your self-service channels to meet customer need with Coconut Software.
Partnering With Fintech for Your Digital Transformation
Last year over 70% of financial institutions globally placed “improving the customer experience” as one of their top 3 strategic priorities. With the financial services industry evolving at a rapid rate, many banks and credit unions are feeling the pressure to evolve, partnering with fintech might just be the answer. Partnering with FinTech to Keep up with Digital Transformation Banks and credit unions are presented with a few options for innovating the customer experience. If your financial organization opts to develop its own homegrown technology, you risk losing time-to-market and end up being left in the dust. On the other hand, if your organization chooses to collaborate with third-party vendors, you have the advantage of enhancing the customer experience with existing, proven technology before your competitors catch up. According to Capgemini, 41% of financial institutions are implementing digital enhancements to improve their organization’s customer experience. As customers are migrating to online channels, this is becoming critical to the success of financial institutions. Digital behavior such as mobile banking and online appointment scheduling has grown from 27% to 46%, as human interaction channels such as contact centers and in-person appointment scheduling have shrunk from 15% to 10%. Which part of the customer journey should we digitize first? As technology improves and enables customers to interact with companies more easily, service expectations will only continue to rise. And evidence of these expectations is already apparent: Consider that 91% of banks already want to collaborate with FinTechs to provide their customers with an enhanced experience. In particular, appointment-driven businesses rely on customer retention to stay afloat, so keeping up with digital trends related to customer experience is imperative. Customers like innovation, however, they do not like change. The technology that you choose to implement has to ease the transition into the future of banking customer experience. Enterprise appointment scheduling allows your appointment-driven businesses to meet customers’ expectations when it comes to interacting with your financial organization through its appointment scheduling channels. For new customers, scheduling an appointment is one of the first touch points they have with your brand and it is in your best interest to make a good first impression. And for existing customers, implementing enhanced and efficient scheduling channels will be a welcomed improvement to their service experience. Partnering with FinTech to Implement Appointment Scheduling Solutions On average, in-house IT projects run 45% over budget and 7% over their initial time-frame, while offering 56% less value than predicted. Additionally, 19% of IT projects are scrapped completely after a significant amount of time, resources, and money have already been invested. Why not opt out of the sleepless nights you anticipate and instead consider the benefits of implementing an enterprise appointment scheduling solution. Quick Implementation Transitioning the customer journey to digital channels can be a valuable differentiator, but only if you get the integration to market on a reasonable timeline and before your competitors. Working with a third-party FinTech provider means that you are working with a product that has already been developed, and available to begin implementation as soon you are. When working with a third-party provider you have access to a support team who is experienced with the product and will be available to help you every step of the way to ensure that your implementation runs smoothly and quickly, allowing you to keep up with your competitors. Established Solution When implementing a customer-facing solution, you want something that will provide your customers with an enhanced experience. Working with an established solution allows you to rest easy knowing that the solution you are implementing is able to provide your customer with the service that they desire. Your appointment driven enterprise business requires a solution that can accommodate enterprise complexities. Working with a FinTech provides you with an established solution that you can depend on to help centralize appointment scheduling within your organization. Experienced Team Enterprise software implementations can be complex. However, partnering with a pre-developed solution provides your organization with a support team who knows the product, and is committed to ensuring that the implementation is a success. Working with a FinTech provider comes with the benefits of devoted Project Managers and a Customer Success team that will support you every step of the way. Rely on the experts to guide you through the implementation process, as well as provide follow-ups to ensure that your new integration is delivering the premium customer experience that your organization and its customers will benefit from. How Coconut Software Solutions Enhances Financial Services Digital Transformation Coconut Software integrates into your business’ contact center to help streamline the existing scheduling process and improve the back-end operations behind the customer-facing appointment scheduling experience. When customers call in to book an appointment, their experience will be more efficient, as your contact center reps will have access in one view to staff schedules, specialties and other variables that they’re currently checking via a number of applications and systems, including printed-out paper schedules. The solution can also be integrated with your website to allow you to provide customers with a self-serve experience that offers 24/7 access to book appointments. Implementing a solution that will streamline the current channels you offer to your clients, while also introducing new self-serve channels will enhance the customer experience and position your business as an innovator. As your business transitions into the future of banking, this will help you target new customer segments while reducing current customer churn. 86% of financial institutions believe that digital will fundamentally change the economics and competitive landscape of corporate banking. To build or to buy is the million dollar question, however, when it comes to customer-facing channels, partnering with an experienced third-party FinTech is the most strategic move for your organization as they bring efficiency, peace of mind and experience in the race to keep up with competitors as we move into the future of the banking industry. Schedule a consultation for more information about how implementing an enterprise scheduling solution can allow you to keep up
Personalized Service for Appointment-Driven Businesses
Think back to the last time you interacted with your bank, or credit union; was there personalized service involved. Was it easy to get in touch? Did the organization recognize who you were–online or over the phone–and make you feel like a valued customer? How fast and easy was it to do business? These are all potential points of friction that can (and frequently do) create frustration for customers when trying to connect with their financial services organization. 87% of people think brands need to work harder to create a seamless experience for customers and for many forward-thinking organizations, this has become a corporate priority for 2018. While the motivation to change often arises from a combination of empathy for a poor customer experience, and a mandate to digitally transform customer-facing touchpoints, the business case arises when you begin to lose customers to competitors who make it easier to do business, online or in-person. Financial services organizations who are seeking to differentiate themselves can do so through the power of personalization. Why is this important? As a customer, you can probably empathize with the desire to be recognized, valued and respected as an individual, by the organization from which you’ve decided to buy a product or service. This can help inspire loyalty, reduce churn, and increase customer retention. While striving to deliver an exceptional customer experience is not a new concept, creating an ‘omnichannel experience’ is a relatively new buzzword circulating in the industry to describe how organizations go about providing a personalized service, at scale. For appointment-driven businesses, enterprise scheduling can play an integral role in the customer’s omnichannel experience. What is an Omni-Channel Experience? An omnichannel is an experience that is created by integrating multiple channels to provide customers with a seamless, personalized service. For example, whether a customer calls in with a support inquiry, is looking to book an appointment with you online, or visits a physical location, they will be recognized as the same person. Why is a Non-Omni-Channel Experience Frustrating to Customers? It’s terribly annoying to be treated as a different person on every channel that you use and every interaction you have with an organization. For example: Contacting an organization through their contact center for customer support means you’ll have to to recap all details with every new representative. Logging into the website, you’ll have to provide the same information again because it is treated as a separate channel. Walking into a retail location for an appointment, you’ll have to provide the same information you’ve already entered online and over the phone. Without integrations and information sharing between channels, it’s very challenging to offer a streamlined customer experience. Reducing Customer Churn with an Omni-Channel Experience How do you start to shift your appointment-driven organization towards offering an omnichannel experience? Base your strategy around customer experience trends that are sweeping your industry. Below, we’ve identified some of the key customer experience trends we’ve noted for 2018, and how implementing an integrated scheduling solution can help deliver a competitive edge. Customer Experience Trend #1: Build experiences that tie together online, contact center, physical locations 64% of customers expect to receive real-time assistance regardless of the customer service channel they use. Offering the same experience across channels, gives people the luxury of choosing the scheduling method that best suits them, which results in feeling valued and respected as an individual. How an integrated scheduling solution helps Implementing a scheduling solution can help your organization offer a differentiated customer experience, by providing easy access for customers to book appointments regardless of the channel that they prefer to use. Customers will be able to book appointments online, through your organization’s contact center, as well as in branch, and the integrated platform offers the same data and appointment availability, all in real time. Customer Experience Trend #2: Revamp the underperforming areas of the customer experience using collected customer data. Offering a personalized service is becoming a requirement to ensure the success of your business and 69% of people believe customer service expectations are increasing year-on-year. The financial services industry is competitive and customers have many options to choose from, making it imperative that your business offers a premium customer experience. The challenge that organizations face is that it is difficult to create a personalized service without accurate customer data. How an integrated scheduling solution helps Coconut Software enables organizations to capture appointment analytics which track the customer journey across channels, from the time the appointment is booked, through to the appointments completion. By tracking metrics across the appointment lifecycle, you can begin see which areas in the scheduling process have room for improvement, while gaining additional insights into your customers’ appointment needs. Here are just some of the analytics that we enable you to start tracking … Appointment cancellations, no-shows and completion rates Drop-off rates in online appointment scheduling process Weekly, monthly and yearly trends in appointment scheduling Customer appointment satisfaction Top performing locations and staff Customer Experience Trend #3: Evaluate your brand vision and redefine your customer service promise 78% of people say a company’s reputation for customer service is important to them when choosing a particular brand. Creating an omnichannel experience that makes your customers feel valued will make a lasting impression, which, over time, will reduce churn. Revamping parts of the customer experience to deliver a premium service doesn’t always require a huge time and resources investment. Making a simple change like implementing online appointment scheduling can have a remarkable impact on increasing customer satisfaction. How an Integrated Appointment Management Solutions Helps Making it as easy as possible to book an appointment with your organization will build your brand and help attract new business, as well as improve accessibility for existing customers. Coconut Software can help you streamline your organization’s scheduling applications and increase the efficiency and consistency of the appointment scheduling process through every channel. Parting Thoughts Offering an omnichannel journey to your customers is becoming less of a luxury and more of a necessity.