Social distancing is a term that gained momentum during the COVID-19 crises, but the benefits of social distancing extend past the pandemic. Fewer people within your organization can translate into more direct care. Your customers or patients gain more attention and you improve their experience with shorter wait times.
However, social distancing and implementing its policies can drive away business if your infrastructure isn’t set up to accommodate a different way of managing customers or patients. Appointment scheduling solutions help you bridge that gap while bringing a personalized experience to virtual care.
How to Promote Social Distancing with Appointment Scheduling Solutions
1. Add Flexibility to Booking Appointments
Traditionally, booking an appointment at your facility or practice requires calling your staff and talking back and forth until a date and time are agreed on. These conversations can take anywhere from 2 to 10 minutes — depending on availability and the customer or patient calling. Not only is the traditional process inefficient, but it takes your staff away from caring for patients or customers in-house.
An appointment scheduling solution eliminates the need for scheduling appointments over the phone or in-person by allowing customers and patients to book their own appointment from anywhere. By using their mobile device, they can easily check their calendar and see the dates and times available — allowing them to book their next appointment easily while streaming Netflix or cooking dinner.
2. Create a Virtual Waiting Room
While unintentional, long wait times can occur. This is frustrating for customers or patients and often reflects poorly on your staff or causes high tension. Even when waiting times aren’t long, a crowded waiting room can detour customers or patients from visiting your organization — especially if it’s flu season and the strangers sitting next to them look unwell.
The right appointment scheduling solution can minimize the number of people sitting in your waiting rooms or lobby by creating a virtual waiting room. These types of virtual queues allow people to hold their place in line while they wait at a nearby coffee shop, park, or their vehicles. And, if the meeting isn’t taking place in your facility, customers or patients can join this queue from the comfort of their living room.
3. Eliminate the Need for Physical Contact
From rubbing shoulders and shaking hands to passing information back and forth, physical contact can happen during any interaction. But this contact can pass along viruses and other bacteria — whether it’s germs from cash, hands, or other personal belongings. By reducing physical contact, you can lower the risk to your staff and other customers or patients.
Appointment scheduling solutions allow you to see customers or patients without the need for physical contact. If a patient is feeling sick, you can provide alternatives for seeing them without risking them passing their germs to everyone in your office. If you travel often, you can still have important meetings without the need for attending them in-person.
4. Meet Securely from Anywhere
One of the biggest pains for meeting in-person is that your customers or patients can’t always take the time to visit your facilities. This results in sudden no-shows and canceled appointments — with some putting off scheduling an appointment altogether. By adding alternatives to in-person meetings, you can fit your services into the busy lives of your customers or patients — while creating revenue opportunities for your business.
Because appointment scheduling solutions provide contactless features, you can meet with your customers or patients using a secure, live video chat. This chat is pin protected to meet HIPAA and SOX compliance. You can also present your screen and share documents as if you would in-person.
5. Engage Anytime
Your customers or patients live busy lives. They have kids, jobs, loved ones, and errands all pulling for their attention. It can be difficult for them to slow down and remember their next appointment, the suggestion you made when you last saw them, or a change in your operating hours. You need a way to connect with them anywhere and anytime — not just the couple of times you see them during the year.
A robust appointment scheduling solution allows you to connect and engage with your customers and patients in between appointments. Whether you need to remind them that a financial document still needs a signature, or your practice has integrated a new system for keeping medical records, you can text your customers or patients to keep them informed and provide pertinent information.
Q-Anywhere: The Go-To Appointment Scheduling Solution for Social Distancing
Q-Anywhere is a robust appointment scheduling solution that delivers a convenient way to connect with customers and patients from anywhere. This solution helps you implement social distancing processes without worrying about losing business.
Q-Anywhere features three value-rich solutions: Assistant Anywhere, Check-In Anywhere, and Wait Anywhere. These solutions assist your customers and patients with booking appointments, checking into virtual queues, and waiting where it’s convenient. And, because everything is done virtually, you can free up your staff to focus on other things without worrying about damaging the customer/patient experience. For more information about Q-Anywhere, contact our team today.
