Jason Lemkin, founder of EchoSign and Saastr has said he’s never lost a customer he visited in person. While most of us don’t have the opportunity to travel around visiting our customers, booking software offers the next best thing: being available when your customers need you.
We all know that making appointment booking easy can help close deals. But after the sale, customers still want the option to talk to your team, and they want to do it on their own schedule. In fact, customers say that valuing their time is the most important thing a business can do, says a recent report from Forrester.
However, your time is also valuable and constantly being interrupted by incoming calls or emails can be frustrating. Implementing booking software can help your customer success team organize their schedule more effectively while still giving your clients the appearance of a direct line.
Here are five ways that using booking software can help you build closer relationships with customers you already have.
Phone support
Many customers still prefer to pick up the phone to get help from a company. In fact, phone support is still the most popular customer service channel (31.9%) compared to chat (30.7%) and chat (29.1%) respectively.
However, you might not have the bandwidth to staff an inbound phone line. It requires always having someone available to pick up the phone, should a customer call. So while customers love calling, your customer success team might not love interruptions.
One way around this is to let customers book a support call, and then have your customer success team call them at a time that’s convenient. Instead of emailing back and forth to find a time, the customer can just open their account manager’s calendar, select an available time and then wait for the call as they go about their day.
Plus, booking software means you can often gather some more information about what the customer wants before you call them back. This is often a lot more efficient than a cold call. If they are wondering about their latest bill, the account manager can locate the charges and make sure they understand any outstanding balances. If it’s a technical question, they might pull in the technical support team for help.
VIP Onboarding
Onboarding is the process of setting new customers up to be successful with your business, and equipping them with the knowledge they need to help themselves. Poor onboarding results in 23% of cancellations, according to Retently. It’s important to be very available to customers throughout the onboarding process, as this is the critical time when customers decide if they like your product, or it’s too complicated for them to use.
Booking software lets new customers be onboarded in their own time. Offer new clients the opportunity to connect with a team member to make sure everything is set up correctly, or to get a demo. And you can ask customers to book meetings through a variety of channels. For example, either embed the booking form directly in your app for new users, or use it as part of your onboarding email flow.
Being Approachable
With booking software, customers are in control of when they want to be reached. Whether you’re doing quarterly business reviews, just checking in, or problem-solving an ongoing issue, offering customers the opportunity to book time with you on their terms ensures they will actually show up.
Being approachable and available is a key way to build customer loyalty. Loyal customers will tell their friends about your excellent service and how easy it is to do business with you. Plus, they will keep coming back for more. On average it costs 6 to 7 times more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one, so it’s worth it to keep customers loyal.
Customers want to feel valued - and there is no bigger signal of value than making time for them. Booking software allows you to be available, but in a much more manageable way.
Premium Support or Consultation fees
Sometimes customers will pay more for advanced technical support, such as installations on their unique server infrastructure or specialized product consulting. Providing these services for free might not be feasible, because they’d eat up a lot of time.
However, with booking software, you can offer premium appointments to connect your customers with expert advice. Customers can easily pay for your team’s time using the Stripe, PayPal or Square integration.
Not only are you bringing in a little extra revenue, but customers feel like they have everything they need to succeed - and they are happy to pay for that.
Zapier integration tracks every call in your Help Desk or CRM
One of the best ways to develop a strong relationship is to build a history together. Understanding whether your customer has contacted you before, whether they’ve finished their onboarding, and how often they need to call in can provide more context to future calls.
If you’re using a booking software, you can automatically log every booked call in your help desk or CRM. Connecting Book Like a Boss with the Zapier integration allows you to send the details of a book to whatever system you would like - whether that’s Zendesk, Salesforce or Slack.
When the customer success agent is on the call they can take notes on the case, follow up through your help desk system and even send out a customer satisfaction survey after the call.
Book some time for Customer Success
Booking software is an excellent addition to your customer success team’s toolbelt. It makes scheduling ongoing support easier, and provides new ways to provide excellent customer service to your customers. If you’re not currently using booking software to offer on-demand meetings to your customers, it’s time to start!
