How TIMIFY boosts productivity and aids digitalisation for SMBs facing the new normal

Inefficient internal processes and admin tasks may have been an irritation before COVID-19, but as businesses adapt to the virus aftermath, addressing those inefficiencies effectively will be crucial

The new normal has brought new pressures on service providers, from reduced footfall and capacity limits to new hygiene procedures and variable staff schedules. 

While TIMIFY’s online appointment system is built to meet the challenge of any booking schedule, its digitisation of a host of internal procedures also brings numerous efficiency gains.

These improvements will help relieve a range of the new pressures brought by COVID-19, as well as benefitting those who adapt now long into the future.

Below we outline seven simple ways TIMIFY is helping businesses work smarter and save time and hear from customers about the impact of adopting the system.

1. Appointment booking and synchronisation 

Appointment booking has become central to so many businesses following COVID-19, but if it is made simple and easy for customers, it will soon become their preference.

A comprehensive set of features and real-time synchronisation gives you complete control, keeps your entire team in sync and protects against costly booking errors.

• Synchronisation across calendars helps minimise, or even completely eradicate, double bookings and scheduling errors common to manual systems
• Appointments are synchronised with other calendars such as Google or Outlook. 
• Mobile and tablet apps let you access and manage schedules on the go, in real time

2. Customer communications

Booking confirmations, notifications and reminders are automatically sent to customers, regardless of whether they booked online, by telephone or in person. 

• Confirmations: once an appointment is booked, customers receive an email with all necessary information, including a link to cancel or reschedule online 
• Reminders: choose to send reminders via email or SMS up to 24 hours before an appointment. This simple approach is shown to reduce no-shows by up to 40%
• Feedback app: get customer views about your staff and services. Feedback requests are emailed immediately after appointments, while their experience is still fresh.

3. Team scheduling and availability 

Grappling with spreadsheets for staff shifts before COVID-19 may have been manageable, but with employees now working variable hours – on-site and from home – it’s certainly the time to digitise. 

• TIMIFY Shift Plan lets designated employees enter individual working times, sick days and more in just a few clicks 
• This is saved to a central schedule, allowing internal teams to easily check on shifts and rotas, whilst syncing customer schedules with the latest booking availability. 

4. Resources scheduling and management 

Every one of your services requires certain resources to carry it out – from staff and rooms, to equipment and devices. 

New hygiene and social distancing rules may even have increased the range of resources now required for each appointment.

• TIMIFY lets you add ‘dependencies’ between services and the resources they use
• Once set up, the system will always auto-reserve those resources whenever that service is booked
• This helps avoid essential resources being forgotten or double-booked

5. A customer database you can tailor to your needs 

Moving customer data to a secure and centralised system should now be an essential for any business, even more so after COVID-19.

The ability to access customer records instantly, wherever you are, and see visit histories, preferences and potential vulnerabilities could be crucial in the event of a virus outbreak.

Furthermore, being able to filter and group customers by certain characteristics or preferences gives a wealth of marketing and communications opportunities.

• When a new customer books an appointment online, a profile is automatically created and the database begins storing personal data and booking history
• Add custom fields to customer forms, ensuring you collect whatever essential customer data your business needs at the point of registration
• Customer visit histories can be cross-referenced with staff schedules to allow accurate contact tracing in the case of a COVID-19 incident

6.  Respond instantly to any customer booking request 

One of the most time-consuming tasks in many businesses is manually searching for booking availability for your various services or staff members.

This may have been exacerbated by COVID-19, with higher customer demand, but reduced staff numbers or more irregular working hours.

Our new Fast Booking app is proving a game-changer for customers booking online as well as booking staff helping customers find appointments.

• Extremely flexible search filtering, seeking out whatever combination of appointment type, time, duration or staff member a customer desires
• Highly valuable for booking staff and busy call centres
• Search individual appointments or a variety of options for recurring bookings

7. Online payment and invoicing

TIMIFY partnered with online payment platform Stripe to allow businesses to receive online payments from customers as they book their appointments online, as well as with SumUp for those taking payment in-store with a chip reader.

• Make online payment mandatory or optional for different services
• Avoid queues to pay at reception desks
• Integrate the native TIMIFY Invoice App, which generates invoices - modified to your brand - and emails them to customers in seconds.

Digitals tools are here to help businesses work more efficiently and offer a better service to customers. 

With TIMIFY’s online booking system you can achieve so much more than just being online bookable - it benefits your entire business by helping you reduce administrative tasks, maximise your team's time, manage resources more effectively and optimise how you communicate with customers. 

If you'd like to see for yourself how TIMIFY can help your business, and join our happy customers, open an account today for free. You can then use our free Classic plan or try our Premium or Enterprise paid plans 14 days for free.