SmallBizResource Blog -- Productivity

Let Your Customers Make Their Own Appointments

Posted by Benjamin Tomkins Monday, Aug 25, 2008, 01:40 PM ET

Some types of business -- sales and service -- thrive on appointments regardless of the size of the company. In some cases, getting the appointment is the toughest step toward closing the deal or keeping the customer happy. Automated appointment setting may be yet another way for technology to streamline a longstanding, and often arduous, business process.

Of course, there's no replacement for the high-touch component of the appointment itself -- where the relationships and revenue really happen -- and the most vital appointments will always require hands-on attention. However, for the nitty gritty of logistics of scheduling an appointment with a willing party, TimeDriver offers an appealing path through the morass of back-and-forth required to agree on a meeting time.

According to Cindy Johnson, Vice President of Marketing for TimeTrade Systems, the TimeDriver application "eliminates phone and e-mail tag." Based on the company's product tests of TimeDriver, Johnson's on to something. The application has been in private beta for several months and results so far show a 56% average increase in confirmed appointments and a 76% reduction in so-called "e-mail and phone tag" to set and confirm an appointment.

I used the application myself to schedule an appointment with Johnson and TimeTrade co-founder and chairman Marco Peterson. They sent me a link by e-mail that took me to a page with Marco's photo and a calendar interface displaying times he was available to meet. I picked one that worked for me, clicked, and received an e-mail confirmation and the appointment was added to my Outlook calendar. Meanwhile, it did the same on his side (plus an e-mail reminder before the meeting). All-in-all it was pretty easy and an application I'm likely try for managing my own appointments.

Now that the beta has gone public, anyone using Outlook or Google Calendar can use TimeDriver --the ad-supported Web application is free. And once you get set up by specifying the times that you're available to meet, the application syncs with your calendar to continuously update your availability. Plus, you can embed a link to schedule an appointment on a Web site, blog, or in an e-mail. Examples of the types of users during the private beta stage included college professors, massage therapists, sales people, rental agencies, and even a probation officer.

Productivity