How does a virtual assistant automate an appointment?

Appointment Automation System: We invite you to learn more about virtual assistants 🤖, the advantages they provide ✅ and how they can help you realize an increase in your company’s profitability!

Due to the State of Alarm situation the country has gone through because of COVID-19, the economy has suffered greatly. But not only the economy, but also businesses in all sectors. Above all, those that provided a closer customer service (face-to-face), either for the completion of procedures, appointments, …

For example, public or state administrations where there was a person in charge of giving us a previous appointment to be attended.

Everything has changed a lot and, now, these people will no longer be able to perform these functions because physical contact with people must be avoided in order to prevent a possible resurgence of the pandemic.

For this reason, more and more companies are returning to «normality» by using a virtual assistant to answer calls from citizens requesting appointments.

In addition, it will assign the appointment and reserve it in the Google calendar (Gmail) or in the company’s CRM so that customers can carry out the appropriate procedures. And all this without human intervention.

But … what is meant by a virtual assistant? The International Association of Virtual Assistants defines it as follows:

Virtual Assistants are independent contractors who (from a remote location, usually their home or office) support multiple clients in a variety of industries by providing administrative, creative and technical services.

The benefits it provides to businesses are diverse, but even more diverse are the advantages that those who have this service benefit from. In addition, any company, whatever its size and whatever sector it belongs to, can have a virtual assistant to manage and automate appointments with its customers.

Now, we will try to explain the advantages it provides and why its use will provide your company with a guaranteed increase in profitability.

On the other hand, if you are considering the possibility of having a quality CRM and/or ERP software in your company, Gesditel has it at your disposal.

How does the appointment automation system work?

The virtual assistants are able to perform the management of appointment allocation to customers in a fully automated way and without human intervention at any time. This is because they possess great artificial intelligence that gives them the ability to interact like humans and not like machines.

In fact, it not only manages the staff’s agenda, but also performs social media management, travel arrangements, sends quotes and invoices, creates and manages web pages, performs data searches on the Internet and reports.

But … what does the process of appointment scheduling actually look like? Let’s say a customer calls a hospital to request an appointment.

Once the customer has contacted the hospital and via DTMF voice or text dialing selects the «appointment» option, the virtual assistant is activated and communicates with the customer.

The first thing it will do is ask what service do you want the appointment for? And when the customer responds, the assistant will access the specialty agenda and inform the customer of the first free slot, indicating the date and time.

If the client accepts this first option, the assistant will assign the appointment by registering it in the hospital’s agenda and will send the client a message with the appointment details.

If the client cannot accept the appointment provided by the assistant, the assistant will offer the client another appointment at another time.

If for any reason the client cannot attend the appointment, once the client calls to inform the assistant, the assistant will cancel the appointment in the agenda and will send a message to the client confirming the cancellation.

Remember that the assistant is able to communicate with the client through any medium and has the text to speech function (translates a written conversation into voice) and speech to text (translates a conversation from voice to text).

It is undoubtedly a great service that greatly benefits companies, helping them to increase their productivity while offering a quality service. Get to know all the functions that a virtual assistant offers you.

What advantages does a virtual assistant offer when managing appointments?

The main advantage offered by virtual assistants is their availability 7 days a week, 24 hours a day. In addition, they can act as a voice and text gateway to connect the company’s CRM or agenda with the customer’s request.

Thanks to the use of the functions described above, such as: dialogflow, text to speech, multi-language, translation, gateway, telephony, payment gateway, … But not only that, it also offers such notorious advantages as:

• It means cost and time savings for companies.
• It allows you to employ your human resources in more productive activities.
• Offers various specialized services.
• Information without instant limits.
• Control of the agenda and calendar.
• Timer.
• Connection with other electronic devices.
• Time optimization.
• Offer uninterrupted communication to your customers.
• Increase customer satisfaction and confidence and create a positive customer experience.
• Reduce customer satisfaction and trust.
• Increases the company’s productivity by relieving the human team of some tasks.
• Makes your brand more competitive.
• It allows you to get to know your customers better by analyzing the interactions they have with the assistant.
• It allows you to launch, implement, promote and follow up a marketing campaign.
• Optimizes customer service.
• Resolves technical problems.
• Provides and manages appointments, reservations, … synchronizing them with the company’s and the customer’s agenda.
• …

How will it increase your productivity?

As we well know, the vast majority of companies (SMEs and large) spend much of their time performing organizational, management and administrative tasks. These are essential tasks for a correct development of the business, but they are not main tasks. For this reason, they are usually performed by virtual assistants. That way, your workers can perform other more productive tasks, thus generating an immediate increase in your productivity.

We have previously seen the functions offered by virtual assistants and the advantages they provide to companies. All of them, with the aim of making your life easier (you as an entrepreneur, your employees and your company). But how does it really manage to increase your productivity? It’s because:

• They improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the tasks assigned to them, offering, in addition, a better quality of service.
• They can devote more time to deepening their knowledge of an ongoing investigation. Especially when it comes to analyzing the data to determine which strategy best suits the company.
• They are in charge of social media management and can provide ideas for your blog. Since it is able to keep track of what your customers and competitors are talking about.
• Favors the image and aesthetics of the brand by spending time perfecting the design of your publications.
• Counteract the company’s weaknesses by making them the assistant.
• …

Perhaps you are interested in having in your company a virtual assistant that is responsible for managing all the previous appointments of your customers. And, of course, to automate it with the calendar, the CRM or the management system you have.

If, on the other hand, you already have one and want to improve it or optimize it to the maximum to enjoy the advantages it offers, do not hesitate to contact us, we will assist you without obligation.

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