Booking and Scheduling During Crisis and Lockdowns

Booking and Scheduling During Crisis and Lockdowns

For more than a year now, many businesses and employees have had to change their business operations. As a result of the Covid-19 health crisis, social distancing measures have been adopted across the world and more people compared to ever before have started working from the comfort of their own home, rather than in the office or workplace with the rest of their colleagues. 

How things Have Changed

Although most changes have been made for good reasons, to help stop the spread of coronavirus, it has nevertheless presented most of us with new challenges and problems. After all, most interactions are now happening virtually, thereby a lot of adjustments have been necessary for the booking and scheduling department. 

If either you, your business, or your employer has recently made changes to your work arrangements, you may be struggling with managing scheduling along with bookings. It does not matter what industry or sector you’re operating in, whether it’s IT, medical, engineering, software development, or something completely different, and in case there are appointments that need to be booked with clients, customers, or even patients, meetings with teams and colleagues, as a result already difficult situation can be extra tough. 

Some of the Problems We Face

Although there have been various forms of video conferencing and video call programs available for a while now, it is not always guaranteed that you are going to benefit the best experience by using them. Can you think of anything worse than your sales call with a crucial client or just any customer stalling and freezing, which costs you being unable to close the deal? It’s not only frustrating from your point of view but similarly from the standpoint of the people you are communicating with. 

For instance, if you work in the healthcare field, as a GP office, and are taking video appointments with patients, they may feel apprehensive about being able to explain their issues. This anxiety could potentially be exasperated if your connection is not as secure as you’d like to, and the video call is not running smoothly. 

Even team meetings could be a disaster if the video conferencing software you were using did not provide you with high-quality video and sound. 

And that’s even without getting into the issues around booking, scheduling meetings, and appointments while ensuring everyone knows what’s happening and when.

Booking and Scheduling

The Solution

Fortunately, just like working arrangements have been evolving over the last year, technology has also been evolving, even before the pandemic. Video conferencing software has improved enormously over the last few years, which means that you can continue to hold meetings with team members or several different teams at once, speak to patients if you are involved in the medical field, and have sales calls with clients and customers. 

There is also more robust booking software available than there ever existed in the past, which makes the transition of a workforce working under the same roof and close to one another working in their own respective homes easier.

These modern technological and software advancements, however, raise other possible questions such as“ how do you tie them all together so that it works cohesively?

Combination of Booking Software, Video Conferencing, and Scheduling Application

Although most modern booking software and video conferencing apps are normally designed to work with scheduling programs and online calendars for different businesses, you may not still want to juggle with various different online tools. Fortunately, to help streamline everything so that you only have to go to one place for everything outlined above, there are companies like https://missed.com/. They offer high-quality and smooth-running video conferencing which is fully compatible and integrated with booking software as well as a free scheduling app for small businesses

It means that you don’t need to click repeatedly back and forth between different screens and applications. You can take bookings, payments, schedule calls, and meetings that you can then take part in all from the same place.  Many of us are having to adapt and use these new forms of communication and planning for the first time, which can be a challenge. Especially as you are trying to keep clients, customers, colleagues, employees, and employers happy and navigating new terrain at the same time. Having the right management software in place, however, does not have to be as quiet and tricky as you may think.