In service businesses managing the schedule of staff members can be challenging and very time consuming. In today's world this is further complicated with the increase in part time workers. They have their fluid schedules and cannot always commit to set hours or keep everyone informed about changes in their schedules. This increases the work load of the person responsible for scheduling as they try to make sure they have the latest updates and can prioritize who to contact first for new appointments. It's not uncommon that the scheduler is using email, phone, text messages and group messages to ensure that the everything is scheduled correctly. This is burdensome task that requires significant time and resources and if not managed correctly can have a negative impact on overall operations and limit business to run to its full potential.
In DoTimely we help the schedulers to be more efficient at their jobs by allowing the appointment requests to be forwarded and distributed to the team members. DoTimely allows you to automatically or manually forward the appointment request to your team from the web portal or the mobile app.
Three common scenarios where our customers are using request forwarding are:
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Last minute schedule changes can happen in any business. It could be your clients requested a last-minute service or your staff member called out sick and you need to re-adjust all the appointments. Finding a person available and quickly, could be a real pain. You will need to check your staff members schedule, see who is available and call them to see if they can pick this last-minute service up. Calling and checking with everyone could take you long time.
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if you are on the field like your other staff members, then request forwarding can be auto forwarded to right staff member to accept appointment and save you time to schedule all the appointments.
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In case you have Independent contractors whose schedule you don’t control. You can just forward them the request to see if they can service it. This way you can easily remain compliant with the regulation of independent contractor without the inconvenience of coordinating schedules for multiple people.
Automated Request Forwarding In DoTimely
In DoTimely we offer a request forwarding feature, where you can forward the new request to multiple staff members to see who is available to pick up this last-minute change. Once the request is sent out, the staff members are notified of this request via in-app notification. Staff members can accept or decline depending on their availability. Once the request is accepted, it is cleared from all other staff members queue. If any of the staff member decline the request, then you can see the information in your request history.
The biggest benefit is less time spent distributing walks with auto forward. It also aids in quickly setting schedules.
If a customer is always serviced by a particular staff member, you can directly assign the request to that person. Only if the staff member declines the service request is when you will need to interfere for scheduling.
As on-demand economy is replacing traditional business processes, you need tools that can help you continue to grow your business and automate scheduling as much as possible. This will help you save time and serve the customer in their last-minute need and earn their loyalty. You will also be able to meet the expectations of the on-demand workforce and keep them satisfied.
Request forwarding feature helps us to fulfil the request quickly and get the response back to customer. It is amazing what you have been able to design and accomplish with DoTimely! Schedule Forwarding is such an amazing feature and I don’t know what we would do without it! It’s so helpful to be able to get away from the computer while out conducting interviews or meeting clients and still be able to easily manage the incoming requests with my cell phone. It saves so much time and makes things much more efficient.
Businesses that don’t invest in evolving along with customer and staff expectations and demands, risk becoming obsolete or even die. Sign-up here and save your time and get the responses to customer faster.