Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
We recently conducted a survey of nearly 200 businesses using Apptoto to get feedback on how well we’re doing and to get insight that will drive our future priorities.
We were very pleased with the results!
Reviewing the data, it’s clear that we have made an enormous impact on many businesses.
We’ve been able to deliver a great experience that has transformed the appointment process from one that requires a huge investment or time and money into one that’s nearly seamless and automated.
And in fact, 90% of the respondents were very or somewhat likely to recommend Apptoto to a colleague.
We learn a lot by listening to our clients, and this survey has helped us understand our impact and where we can improve. Thanks to everyone who took the time to fill it out!
No-shows no more
One of the biggest challenges for any appointment-based business is appointment participants who just don’t show up!
People miss their appointments for a litany of reasons, but one of our company’s main hypotheses has always been that with the right combination of appointment reminders and nudges, businesses can dramatically reduce no-show appointments.
The data from our survey show that this is happening in a big, big way.
Of those surveyed, 69% of respondents indicated that using Apptoto has lowered no-shows by at least 25%.
But, most impressive, over 50% of respondents have seen a drop in no-shows of 50% or more.
From a business perspective, being able to reduce no-shows by 50% makes your schedule more predictable. It means you can see more clients or patients without downtime from missed appointments or rescheduled time slots.
In a nutshell, this has a huge impact on any appointment-based business. It improves efficiency, effectiveness, and the bottom line.
Time saved is time earned
In addition to helping reduce no-shows, Apptoto is also designed to make the entire process of setting and managing appointments less tedious.
Time spent managing the calendar can grow to consume entire days or weeks’ worth of effort, and it becomes increasingly arduous as your business grows.
Nearly 75% of respondents said that they spent 1-4 hours per day booking and managing appointments before using Apptoto. However, 76% of those surveyed say they now spend less than one hour on these administrative tasks.
Apptoto has saved them an estimated 5-15 hours of work per week.
That’s 20-60 hours per month – an entire work week!
Viewing this from another angle:
- 63% of users had reduced their appointment scheduling time by at least 50%
- 65% of users using Apptoto have saved up to at least one hour a day in scheduling
- 25.5% of users saved at least two hours per day in scheduling appointments
Obviously, cutting down the amount of time spent managing appointments is a huge benefit. But, more importantly, this allows business owners and staff to spend time focused on other work.
Rather than spending time managing a book of appointments, they can focus on providing a better customer experience, growing their business, planning for the future, or maybe even taking a day off every once in awhile.
Happier customers
It’s interesting to note that many companies focus more on acquisition than customer retention, even though it can cost 7x more to acquire new customers.
Appointments are a two-way street. While time and cost savings for businesses are good, they can’t come at the expense of providing an enjoyable customer experience.
To measure this, we also asked our customers to provide details on their customer retention rates before and after using Apptoto.
We hope that by using our system, businesses can reduce the overhead associated with appointment management and provide a value-added service to their clients or patients. This is a win-win situation.
The findings here were also positive.
Nearly one-third of respondents indicated that their client retention rate has seen a boost since they began using Apptoto.
This indicates that the overall trend appears to be that Apptoto is improving the overall customer experience.
We see this as an area where we can improve. Apptoto has many features that can help with retention, but they aren’t easy to find. We will be working on making them easier to work with in the future!
Convenience remains a top priority
Looking beyond the current state of Apptoto, we wanted to get a feeling for which upcoming features and product enhancements they are most interested in using.
Not only does this give us some idea of how to prioritize our product roadmap, but it also tells us about larger trends among our customers and informs the direction of our entire business model. We want to remain tuned in to the changing needs of appointment-based businesses and how we can build the best technology to help them solve their challenges.
When asked about upcoming features, Apptoto users expressed the most interest in our forthcoming mobile app for handling messages and scheduling from their phones or tablet.
This seems like a clear evolution for the Apptoto system.
While our app has delivered on the promise to reduce the amount of work and overhead related to appointment management, the entire experience can be made more flexible and convenient. That begins with providing a full mobile app experience.
As we look to the future, we will continue to strive to find ways to make appointment management a seamless and pain-free experience. Not only to save you time and money managing your business but also to provide a better overall customer experience.
—
Founder
