Using an Answering Service to Make Appointments

Many who provide services for a living, such as doctors, lawyers, consultants, and accountants, rely on constantly making new appointments to continue to have work. Many who work out of an office alongside other professionals hire a receptionist to manage their incoming phone calls and set appointments. Others, especially those who work independently or out of their homes take on this responsibility. Quite frequently, however, many of these individuals run into trouble when a client calls to schedule an appointment and they are unable to answer the call. Other times a caller may wish to schedule or reschedule an appointment after business hours, but they are unable to because they cannot get a hold of anyone.

Whether it's an existing customer who is frustrated by repeatedly reaching your voicemail or a potential new customer who instead chooses a competitor they are able to get a hold of immediately, you may be regularly missing opportunities because of missed calls. One way many businesses avoid this situation is by hiring an answering service to function as a receptionist and appointment setter. For example, a doctor in Oakland, California well known for the time and personal attention he gives to his patients would silence his office phone whenever he was giving a health consultation. When he was free, he would check his phone to find that there were several missed calls and few, if any, voicemails left. As a result he found a reliable answering service to take messages and set appointments 24 hours a day.

Many people find an answering service can offer high-quality service at a much lower cost than hiring their own receptionist. Beyond serving solo practitioners, businesses with numerous staff frequently use a provider such as California Answering Service as well. One such example is a medium-sized corporate law firm located in Los Angeles that has the service's operators greet clients, ask who they wish to speak to, and then transfer the call to the appropriate contact or department. When a potential client of the law firm needs to schedule an appointment with someone, the operator has instant access to the firm's appointment book and can schedule a time that both works for the caller and is available.

A common misconception about this sort of service is that the operators simply email the office with the time and the date the caller wishes to schedule an appointment, requiring the office to call back and confirm or reschedule if the time slot is unavailable. A good answering service supports web-based appointment books that are updated in real time, eliminating the need for the office to check availability before an appointment is made. In addition, the same call center staff that makes the appointments can be instructed to call and remind of appointments at a later date, reducing the number of missed or late appointments. Also, you can choose to have notifications sent by email every time a new appointment is made or an existing one cancelled.

A good appointment setting answering service will work to accommodate your existing appointment system. Modern call center technology can access your web-based appointment service or proprietary software you host in-house. Usually you only need to create a user in your system for the operators give the call center the login information in order for them to access your appointment book from their terminals. Of course, if you do not currently have a digitized appointment book, your answering service can likely provide you with some recommendations. Although customized software can run into the thousands of dollars, a good web-based appointment book service is usually within any company's budget.