A shot over a woman shoulder showing her making a booking on her phone using the Book Your Pet scheduling app.

The Benefits Of Implementing A Scheduling App

As a petprenuer it's important to find an efficient way to approach appointment booking and calendar management if you want to be successful. 

The scheduling process for appointments is an important task but unfortunately, it's not always easy. Often, business owners find themselves weighed down with appointment requests that need to be scheduled manually, trying to find a time slot that works for a client and themselves. Plus, trying to find ways to make booking appointments easier can lead you down a rabbit hole of exploring different scheduling software, especially when you don't know where to start.

If you've been looking for some kind of scheduling software for your appointment booking, we highly recommend it! Scheduling software can make a huge difference when it comes to booking appointments for your business, leading to increased efficiency, and even increased profits. (And the Book Your Pet software is the perfect option for petpreneurs who need this kind of help.)

In this guide, we're going to unpack the many benefits a scheduling app or software can bring to your business. Let's dive in! 

Benefits of Using a Scheduling App for Appointment Booking

Why should you use a scheduling tool (like Book Your Pet) for your business? Just look at the many benefits:

No More Manual Scheduling  

The biggest benefit of using a scheduling app is the way it can work to eliminate manual scheduling on your end. 

Let's explore this scenario: You run a dog-walking business, where people book their time with you over the phone. A client has called and wants to know if you can walk their dog on weekdays at noon. You don't have any recurring weekly clients, so you agree. Later, when you go to put the appointment into your schedule, you see a one-off walk booked during that time you forgot about. Now you have a double booking and need to decide how to somehow make both appointments. Yikes!

Mistakes like this can happen easily, especially when trying to manage calendars yourself. It's hard to keep information organized across different communication points, taking info from the phone and entering it somewhere else. It's hard to have a clear paper trail of appointment requests and scheduled times to see where mistakes might have been made. 

A scheduling tool completely transforms this process, with instant scheduling online taking a ton of the weight off your shoulders.

How Book Your Pet Helps Instant Scheduling

To explore an example of the ways an instant scheduling tool can help in this scenario, we're going to walk you through the way our Book Your Pet platform works. 

When your business has a booking profile with Book Your Pet, your clients will be able to book appointments with you virtually. This means no more taking calls and answering emails from customers at requested times. Instead, they can visit your profile, browse your services, and purchase and book a time through a live calendar that automatically updates your availability based on your existing bookings and work hours. 

When a client books an appointment through the Book Your Pet scheduling software, they’ll be able to pick a set time from the open slots you have. This means no more double bookings! And, best of all, appointment times and meeting details are automatically communicated to your business calendar once selected.

With less time spent facilitating the booking process yourself, you'll find you have a much more efficient and organized procedure. You can now be free to focus on what matters most: efficiently running your business. 

Easier Appointment Canceling 

Not only can these tools work to make instant scheduling a feature for your business, they can also make the appointment cancellation process much easier. 

Many pet business owners know the pain of a last-minute cancellation. A missed appointment is more than just a missed booking. It can also represent an hour of lost time and lost profit. Providing your customers with an easier way to cancel or reschedule a meeting, can lead to more saved time and saved money in the end.

A client might not want to take the time to call for a missed appointment. But many clients may feel more comfortable being able to virtually make a schedule change and pick a new slot on their own time. In many ways, it can encourage fewer missed appointments. 

Plus, for you as the business owner, you get the ease of knowing changes to your schedule will be automatically processed and reflected in your calendars as everything is done virtually. A cancelled appointment from one client means another opportunity for another. The live calendar feature means you have a chance to fill in late openings and minimise loss. A win for all parties!

An over the shoulder shot of a business owner using their laptop to set up a business profile with the Book Your Pet scheduling app.

Better Understanding of Your Clients 

Another reason a scheduling app can make a difference is the way it can work to collect customer data, giving you insights you wouldn't have otherwise into your business. 

Tools, like Book Your Pet, will work to gather customer information and analytics at the time of scheduling. This will depend on your exact setup, but most of the time, this can include information like names and addresses, dates booked, time availability, geographic locations, the kinds of pets clients have, and even the frequency of visits. 

When this information is digitally stored through a scheduling tool, it can be much easier to review it for insights, and then make changes to your business with that information. This can lead to some amazing, and hopefully profitable, customer success outcomes when done right! 

For example, let's say you run a pet boarding business, watching people's pets while they're away. When going through your customer scheduling app data, you notice that you're seeing an increasing number of pet parents using your business located a city over. You might use this insight to think about setting up a second business in that city, to meet an unmet demand there. 

Improved Customer Experience 

We also love instant scheduling tools because of the ways they work to improve your appearance to your customer and provide better customer service. 

The world is increasingly becoming a virtual place, with more pet parents than ever looking to find pet businesses online. By leveraging online tools like a scheduling app, you're making the appointment booking process significantly easier for your potential clients. This ease, and modernity, can do wonders to improve your appeal, and most importantly, the customer experience. 

Leverage Reminder Tools 

Another reason many small businesses like to leverage scheduling tools is the way they can be used to easily communicate with clients. 

As we touched on above, clients missing appointments isn't an uncommon experience. One of the reasons it can happen so frequently, though, is clients forgetting about their scheduled meeting, and unintentionally missing it. 

If you want to help your customers miss fewer of their scheduled meetings, communication is key! One of the many benefits of instant scheduling software like Book Your Pet is how it can be used as a communication tool. 

For example, with Book Your Pet, you can set automated messaging to be paired with a scheduled meeting to send to your client. These can include things like booking confirmations, day-before, and day-of reminders for appointments. Communications like this are often appreciated by customers, helping them to maintain their calendars. And it's a win for you too, helping more clients make their scheduled appointments.

Try Instant Scheduling and More with Book Your Pet 

As you can see, using instant scheduling software can make a big change to any pet business! 

If you’ve been looking for a platform that has instant scheduling features, Book Your Pet is what you’ve been looking for. Click here register today and learn more about this amazing software.