Are you struggling to schedule more appointments for your business? Looking for advice on how to get more clients to book an appointment with you?

In this guide, you’ll discover why you must work on improving appointment scheduling. You’ll also learn what might be preventing customers from booking appointments with you. Finally, we’ll go through the seven tips that will help you schedule more appointments. 

It’s a lot to cover, so let’s get right to it. 

Why improving the appointment scheduling process is so important?

At the risk of sounding obvious - It’s practically impossible to run a business without scheduling at least some meetings. Of course, certain business types would require more bookings than others. For example, a wellness and health spa or a nail salon would be filling many appointment slots every day. On the other hand, a small legal practice might not need to schedule more than a handful of meetings a week. 

Nonetheless, we have to book and schedule appointments for our businesses. It’s part of our operations and what drives a lot of our business. 

This brings us to an important aspect of the problem - We have to get clients to book those appointments.

Of course, you might be booking some meetings yourself. But, according to the data, nearly half of all bookings are made by customers, not the company.

It means that those people who choose to book with you and go through the entire process independently, most likely are using an online scheduling system.

What’s more, research tells us that as many as 46% of bookings would be lost if companies didn’t offer customers a way to book themselves. 

We know that approximately 28% of bookings happen in the evening when the company’s closed. Another 18% of meetings get booked in the morning before the business opens. 

Perhaps these customers cannot call a business during the day to schedule a time. They might not be able to visit the company either. 

But they can and are happy to do so outside of normal business hours. 

Unfortunately, as it turns out, even if you offer that option, the whole process often leaves a lot to be desired.

Why scheduling appointments is so difficult?

Before we discuss the different ways to improve appointment scheduling, we need to discuss why the process can be so problematic in the first place. 

As it turns out, there are several issues with it. 

#1. The never-ending back and forth 

Phone or email are the two most common channels many companies offer customers wanting to book appointments. Their customers can either call or email the business and inquire about available appointment times. 

Now, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with this system, of course. It allows you and the client to work out when to meet, after all. 

But the process rarely goes smoothly, doesn’t it? It’s hard to find a time that works for both of you on the first try. Usually, you need to exchange several messages before agreeing on the time. 

In short, it can be a long and tedious process, particularly if done by email. 

The situation gets even more complicated when you’re trying to schedule sessions with multiple people. The back and forth goes practically out of control then.

It all changes, however, when customers book online through a dedicated portal. In that case, they can check your availability, select times or dates that work, and complete the booking. 

#2. Manual booking processes

Imagine - A new client calls and requests an appointment. You work out the best time that works for both of you, put their details into your notebook, and happily move on to other things. 

But some time later, another client calls. Your colleague picks up the phone this time and takes their booking for the same time. She marks it in their calendar without consulting with you or even knowing that this particular block of time is no longer available. 

You’re overbooked now. And that’s not the worst part. You now have to try to move those appointments around. You have to work out new times to meet with those people and face their discontentment about being pushed back.

That’s the unfortunate, but also, quite common problem with using manual booking processes. Notebooks, planners, and calendars work great if only one person books appointments. And even then, you might get calls on your cell phone and forget to put that booking into the calendar, resulting in a further mess. 

This is another problem that disappears when you start using online scheduling tools. All your bookings are in one place, easily accessible from anywhere. 

#3. Having information scattered in too many places

Another common problem with manual systems is that your data ends up scattered in many places, leading to a mess with bookings. 

For example, you may not even know that a particular booking got canceled. Why? Because someone else took the cancellation and marked it on their calendar. It’s just that they never told you about it.

Online scheduling software puts all your appointment data in one place, meaning that everyone in the company is always in the loop about every booking, including appointment requests, cancellations, and rebookings.

#4. Inability to collect relevant information while bookings

Here’s another common scenario - You talk to a new client on the phone. They’re eager to book a session. So you jump right into finding the best time for them and complete the booking. But after they’ve hung up, you realize you forgot to ask them about some important information. 

You could call them back, of course. However, that would take more time, again. 

This is another problem that disappears when you use dedicated scheduling software. The software lets you customize the intake form and ensures that customers always provide all the information you need.

#5. Lack of multiple channels to book a meeting

Different customers may prefer different channels to book appointments. Some might visit your website to access the booking page. Others might look for a link to it in your email signature or social media profile. 

And so, without a proper system, you might be putting unnecessary roadblocks for customers to find the option to book. 

Dedicated scheduling software will allow you to include links and buttons to the booking page in multiple places:

A simple, user-friendly floating button on your website, like the one we use on our website: 

A link in the email signature. Here’s how I do it in an email signature.

As you can see, these challenges are easy to overcome. But doing so is only the first step to scheduling more bookings. 

Let’s look at the process to follow if you want to get more appointments for your small business.

7 tips for book more appointments: the appointment scheduling flow

As you’ve seen above, scheduling appointments only seems so simple. And yet, so many things can go wrong. Even if they don’t go spectacularly wrong, you might still face issues and headaches with the process. 

And I admit, that can make you feel like there’s no other way. Like that’s how appointment scheduling is supposed to be. 

Luckily, it’s not true. 

In fact, there is a simple process ensuring that customers book more appointments, and they love the experience too. 

We call it the appointment scheduling flow. It looks like this:

And here are seven tips to help you put it into practice.

#1. Make it easy for customers to schedule appointments

This particular advice relates to a common challenge we discussed above. You know that different customers will try to book appointments using different channels. 

Some might go directly to your website. Others will look you up elsewhere online. It could be social media because these are the platforms they frequent the most. Or they’ll look up your emails in their inbox to find out how to book there. 

So, the first step to ensuring more bookings is to give customers access to the booking page from pretty much anywhere.

Create a floating booking button on your website. This way, customers visiting you online will immediately see that option. 

Include the booking page in the website’s navigation too.

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Include the direct link to your booking page in the email signature, social media profiles, and other places where you’ve listed your business. 

#2. Use a dedicated scheduling software

You might have noticed by now that I’ve been hinting at the benefits of using appointment scheduling tools in this guide already. But I believe it deserves its section. 

Why? Because it’s practically impossible to book appointments today without using the software. 

We’ve discussed some of the arguments for that already. You know that nearly half of customers cannot make the booking during business hours. You also know that they prefer to book and manage appointments online. 

Not to mention that software overcomes practically all challenges you face when booking in clients. 

With a dedicated software like CozyCal:

• Customers can schedule appointments whenever they want. 
• They can also manage the booking, reschedule or cancel, all without any fuss. 
• With software like CozyCal, booking group meetings is a breeze. The same goes for getting customers to sign up for webinars, conferences, workshops, etc. 
• You, on the other hand, have complete control over each booking. For example, you can set the appointment duration, set booking windows to prevent overlapping appointments, use event padding, and even block off specific time slots. 
• Team scheduling allows you to delegate meetings in a round-robin manner automatically or let customers select the team member who they prefer to meet with.
• With package booking, you can sell packages and collect payments for sessions upfront. This not only means that you’re getting paid for your services in advance upfront, but you’re also reducing cancellations and no-shows.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

#3. Use data to learn more about your customers’ preferences

You know - Something in your booking process might be tripping customers off. It could be a question on the intake form they struggle to answer. Or, perhaps, they can’t access the booking page through their preferred channel. Or they find that there are too many steps in the process. 

It’s hard to tell unless you ask. 

So, get into the habit of asking first-time customers about the experience. They might provide you with insights that will help you simplify the process even further and increase the number of bookings. 

#4. Use booking reminders

I’m sure you’ve experienced it over and over again. Customers make the booking. They’re eager about it too. 

But then, they forget about it and never show up. 

It may not seem like a huge problem, but in reality, it might mean lost time and even revenue for your business. 

The solution - Set up automated reminders to tell customers about the appointment. CozyCal, for example, sends reminders via email and SMS. 

What’s more, you can customize each message to ensure that the content matches your brand and how you communicate with clients. 

#5. Develop a no-show policy

It’s inevitable that sometimes clients simply forget about the appointment. But some people schedule meetings carelessly. They disregard the effect of them not showing up, so they cancel the appointment without giving you any notice. 

It could have a serious impact on the company. Let’s take medical practices, for example. According to data published by Forbes, patient no-shows cost the US healthcare system $150 billion per year!

The figure is unimaginable, isn’t it?

Then again, if you make bookings for services you provide, for example, then any no-show is lost revenue. And it’s more than what you’d make from that one booking. You could have booked someone else in that slot instead, after all.

A no-show policy is a set of guidelines and rules that you follow when managing missed appointments. The goal for having the policy is to discourage customers from missing appointments, at least not without notice. 

There are different approaches to developing a no-show policy. The rules you include will largely depend on your business and the type of appointments you set. 

However, at minimum, you should include a cancellation window and establish cancellation fees, if possible. 

Here’s an example of how you can add a cancellation policy notice on the intake form within CozyCal to discourage no-shows.

#6. Explain your services clearly on the booking page

This advice is critical when you’re allowing customers to book more than a single type of appointment. 

If it’s just one type of service, then there’s little chance for any confusion about which options to select. 

However, if customers can book different types of services or meeting types, then you need to explain each of them clearly. This way, you’ll minimize their potential confusion and reduce the number of erroneous bookings.

#7. Use the intake form to collect as much information 

Some bookings require just the person’s name and contact details. But you might also need to collect other information - background info for a consultation session or the person’s level of fitness for yoga sessions, and so on. 

Having this information before the appointment helps you ramp up the actual service delivery. You don’t have to collect it at the start but can go straight into the booking. 

This may seem insignificant at first. But think about how much time you spend at the start of each session just discussing the basics. How different would your session work if you had that information already? 

CozyCal, for example, lets you fully customize the intake form. You can add more questions beyond the name and email. You can also provide specific fields for different types of information. 

All this means that when the time for the appointment comes, you are ready to get started right away. 

Closing Thoughts

It’s practically impossible to run a business without scheduling at least some meetings. Scheduling is particularly important if your business relies mainly on offering services to customers through appointments. And the scheduling process can easily get messy and complicated, particularly if you’re using manual systems. 

In that case, your business’s success  depends on having a reliable, streamlined system in place to run the scheduling process. 

The good news - There is a way and a system to schedule more appointments, and you’ve just learned it in this guide. 

What’s left to do is to start implementing those tips and strategies in your business. 

Good luck!