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Customer flow means the free movement of people around a store, office, or commercial establishment. Customer flow management thus refers to the practice of overseeing, directing, and managing the movement of people inside your store. Efficient customer flow management is important if you want to maintain peaceful in-store decorum. We are going to discuss ways to manage & improve customer flow management.

But customers should also be able to get what they want without much disturbance, so as you see it is a tricky area. There are various methods to use for improving customer flow in your store premises like appointment scheduler, queuing management, footfall management, etc. In this article, we will talk about using appointment reminders to effectively manage customer workflows in an office.

Here Is How Appointment Reminders Can Help You?

Appointments are another way to offer a personalized in-store experience for customers without destroying the store decorum. You can either use a virtual queue management system or a traditional queue system, but do remember the current Covid-19 safety protocols. Using appointment scheduling software helps you plan the footfall in your stores systematically and calmly rather than in a rushed and haphazard way.

Also if you systematically manage your store’s footfall then there is a high chance of increased sales, since the customers are in a relaxed stage they can purchase some items off the shelves. 

A come on in sign at a store. Manage & Improve Customer Flow.
Photo by Álvaro Serrano on Unsplash

Here are some more ways using an appointment scheduler can help your growing business:

1. Gives More Options

Appointment scheduling gives your customers more than one way to reschedule their appointments rather than going to your store to reschedule them.

For example- instead of unnecessarily going to your store for making or rescheduling appointments they can conveniently use your appointment scheduler program to do it from the comfort of their home.

This way the consumer has more power to choose their convenient timing according to other commitments and you also get an improved customer flow in your store. The store staff will also take a breather since consumers will not unnecessarily queue up in their store. So this is how an appointment scheduler program can give you lots of options to use for business growth.

Shopping Cart In Store
Photo by Eduardo Soares on Unsplash

2. Flexibility

Flexibility and agility were the two most important things which saved businesses during the initial years of Covid-19. Now it’s been more than two years, still, Covid-19 uncertainties remain. So considering area-wise restrictions you can plan your in-store policy and framework accordingly. Since not all cities are following the same public gathering policy, using an appointment scheduler can give you some room to plan ahead.

If you use an appointment scheduler then you can plan your store footfall according to the area and hence increase or decrease stock in a particular store. You will also be agile when you know exactly how many customers will frequent your store, using this information you can buy sanitizer supplies accordingly. Your staff can also better prepare for the incoming customers when they know exactly how many of them are coming.

Woman Shopping In A Store
Photo by Korie Cull on Unsplash

3. Segregation

There can be numerous reasons why customers would want to make appointments. You as a business owner do not have control over this, but what you can do is segregate the types of appointments into categories depending upon their priority of them. An appointment scheduler software lets you do just that. Your customers can use it to book appointments with the right staff member and get a more personalized experience.

For example- suppose you are a diagnostic center, so you will have different patients coming in for different tests. By using an appointment scheduler you can segregate the appointments and make sure the time commitments are honored and also by the correct person too.

If the customer goes to the wrong department or goes to the right department at the wrong time due to a bad queuing system, then do you think they will return to your business in the future? NO. To eliminate problems like this a priority and accuracy-based appointment scheduling software is to be used.

4. Peak Traffic

One thing which every consumer-centric business owner understands is that consumers are highly unpredictable. You can use business analytics programs and other data tools like machine learning, big data analysis, etc but that too works up to a certain degree. An appointment scheduler system can help you with more data and other tools, using which you can approximately guess the footfalls in your stores and hence prepare your staff for that.

For example- there will be a rush during the evening time at your stores in the city but there will be rush in the afternoon in the stores in the hinterland. This is due to the difference in thinking approach for both the places of customers. You can use this insightful data for your benefit and then formulate a plan of action.

Conclusion

There are numerous appointment reminders available in the market. It is essential that you choose one according to your needs rather than choosing according to your budget. Think of this as an additional business investment rather than a business expense.

Categories:  St. Louis Small Business

About the Author

James McMinn

Senior Digital Strategist

James is a savvy digital marketing specialist with a Masters of Science in Internet Marketing. For the past fourteen years, he has been specializing in SEO, PPC & Marketing Strategy. He has a super sharp analytical mind and a finely tuned creative eye for marketing initiatives that optimize brands.

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