Introduction: Customer Acquisition in 2022
As the world enters an era of uncertainty, it's more important than ever for businesses to focus on providing a great customer experience. In today's environment, characterized by low consumer confidence and high inflation, customers are cutting back on spending and are more likely to churn. Compounding these challenges is the fact that we're in a recessionary environment. Businesses need to be extra careful about how they allocate their resources or customer acquisition will suffer.
To make up for lost revenue, businesses need to focus on providing a great customer experience. The CMO of Redpoint Global, John Nash, explains that “with a personal understanding of an individual customer, retailers can better weather the storm.” Fortunately, most marketers recognize the importance of digital customer experience in an uncertain environment, with Gartner research showing that 7 out of 10 marketers indicated that their budgets had increased in 2022 over 2021.
One area that is essential to a business's success is optimizing appointment setting and customer acquisition processes. As the first step in “greeting a customer” in the new hybrid world, appointments present an opportunity for businesses to engage with customers, build relationships, and generate revenue.
Great appointment setting experiences are especially valuable for high-touch, high-value customer facing interactions in retail, automotive, financial services, insurance, event management and other industries.
However, many businesses still rely on legacy appointment setting and scheduling processes. Systems that rely on a "call to book an appointment" do not allow for self-service, which is the preferred method for the new generation of consumers and busy, high-end customers. Further, inefficient digital appointment setting can also result in lost opportunities and extended response times for customers.
For example, appointments that are double-booked or canceled at the last minute are frustrating for customers and leave them with a negative impression of the business. In today's competitive landscape, businesses can't afford to lose customers due to poor appointment setting and scheduling.
There is a solution that can help businesses improve their appointment setting and customer acquisition processes: JRNI. JRNI is a cloud-based platform that enables businesses to automate and optimize their appointment setting and scheduling processes. By using JRNI, businesses can increase growth in appointments by up to 60% annually. Better appointment setting software generates significant value not only through boosting customer satisfaction, loyalty and increased purchases (AOV), but also through increased operational efficiencies and employee satisfaction.
There are four additional benefits of using JRNI to improve appointment setting and customer acquisition.
Delighting Customers
We all know the feeling of delight when we receive great customer service. It's that "wow" moment when everything just clicks and we feel appreciated and valued as a customer. These moments of delight can be rare, but they're also incredibly important for creating loyalty and repeat business.
Appointment setting is one of the most important touch points between a business and its customers, yet it's often overlooked as a source of customer delight. There are so many potential friction points in the process of booking an appointment, from finding the right time slot to dealing with reminders and follow-ups. But if businesses can focus on making this experience as smooth and seamless as possible, they'll be rewarded with higher conversions, repeat business, and more delighted customers.
Improving Coordination of the Customer Journey
From booking to the appointment itself and post-appointment follow-up, every step in the customer journey should be a well-oiled machine. Unfortunately, this is often not the case. In today's environment, with customers' time becoming increasingly precious, it is more important than ever to have a customer experience that is coordinated and seamless.
Customer changes, from location to time, can easily disrupt the coordination of an in-store appointment. This not only causes frustration for customers, but can also lead to lost sales. In order to avoid this, it is important to have a system in place that can quickly and easily adapt to changes. JRNI provides such a system, improving event booking by 45%.
Changes in internal resource availability can also disrupt the customer experience. By quickly and easily linking resource availability with appointment scheduling, JRNI ensures that the customer experience is not only coordinated, but also expedited.
Improving Sales Associate Productivity
It's no secret that sales associates are the lifeblood of any retail operation. They are the ones who interact directly with customers, provide product knowledge and recommendations, and ultimately drive sales and profits. Given their importance, it's critical that retailers do everything possible to optimize their sales associates' productivity.
One key area that is often overlooked is appointment setting. Without proper appointments, sales associates can end up spending a significant amount of time dealing with walk-ins or ad hoc consultative requests, which can take them away from other tasks or scheduled appointments. This can lead to staffing issues and inefficiencies, as well as decreased customer satisfaction.
Systems with strict timetables and pre-booking capabilities for appointments can help safeguard sales associates from having to deal with unscheduled requests. This allows them to better plan and coordinate their time, as well as ensure that the right associate is available at the right time. It also allows retailers to prepare for pre-scheduled appointments, so they can deliver a better in-person, consultative sales experience.
Better Physical Customer Experience
In today's digital world, it's easy to forget the importance of the physical customer experience. But in many industries, from retail to banking, the in-person experience is still a critical part of the customer journey.
Creating a great physical customer experience requires staff to be highly engaged and focused on providing a personalized, consultative service. This can be difficult to achieve if staff are bogged down by operational tasks or managing a high volume of ad hoc requests.
Automating and optimizing appointment setting and scheduling processes frees up staff to deliver that great physical customer experience.
Ultimately, businesses that invest in improving their appointment setting and customer acquisition processes will be well-positioned for success.
