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front office desk

6 Front Office Tasks You Should Automate

Starr Campbell

Your front office staff are the first point of contact for clients when they arrive for their visit. The reception desk can be a busy place with incoming calls, appointment check-ins, and constant exchanges of paperwork. Overwhelming the front office with duties is a common mistake for business owners; but thanks to technology, it’s an easy fix.

What if your staff could complete the same amount of work in a fraction of the time, plus have better interactions with your clients? The ability to automate specific tasks with the help of technology makes it easy to manage and organize services every front office must provide. While some tasks may be better handled one-on-one, there are plenty you can automate, starting today!

Intake forms

Collecting the right information from your clients or patients is vital, but you don’t have to do it the old-fashioned way. Your online booking forms can be set up to include the specific questions you want to know, plus allow attachments for waivers or disclaimers when you use a scheduling tool like TimeTap.

Our tool makes it easy to send and receive intake forms to clients. All your staff has to do is customize the form’s fields to ask clients the right questions. From there, clients simply access your online booking site to make an appointment. They will receive an automatic confirmation email with a link to the form with no further assistance needed from the front office.

Client management

Keeping a database of clients helps you serve them to the best of your ability. Viewing details like contact information, past visit history, and payment status with the click of a button reduces the time your front office spends filing and pulling records.

Adding a new scheduling tool to your front office’s workflow means more than just easy scheduling with TimeTap. Our software comes with a handy CRM that stores pertinent client information in profiles. Your staff can quickly read and record notes, which will improve the quality of visits for clients and their future providers.

Privacy concerns are of the utmost importance when handling sensitive data. You can set permissions for each user on your account, only allowing certain staff members access to the full client profile. From the client's side, they can see past and upcoming appointments as well as any outstanding payments, which generally results in fewer calls to your receptionist.

Easy check-in

If you have a full schedule for the day, your front office is probably bustling. It’s great to have an office full of clients, but you don’t want a line forming just to check-in for appointments. To reduce traffic and frustration, you can give clients the option to check in on their own.

Clients can check-in from their devices or a self-service kiosk in your office with TimeTap. Your staff will receive the notification and note that the client is present and ready to be seen. Alternatively, your staff can check-in clients themselves with one click. Either way, your waiting room will be less congested, and your staff will have more time to prioritize other tasks.

Invoices

Tracking which clients have unpaid invoices (and following up with them) can be tedious if you don’t have a reliable system. It takes more of your front office’s time to remind clients of an outstanding balance by phone or mail, resulting in even more money lost for your business. 

The longer it takes to get payments processed, the more likely it is your business’ bottom line will take a direct hit. To avoid this, companies that still do things manually will act by adding costly late payment fees or sending accounts to collection agencies.

While this is a common process, unfortunately it takes a long time and has a negative impact on the relationship with your customer. It’s better to have an automated system in place that will remind clients about their balance and collect payments for you. Our tool's invoice and payment processing system allows clients to pay their preferred way, whether it be with a debit card or through a digital wallet on our secured LumaPay platform.

Configuring your payment settings to best fit your business can be done in a few steps. Once you have payments set up, your staff can let our software do the rest.

Waitlist

With an online scheduler, you can create online wait lists for the services, locations or classes you choose and invite clients to sign up. Clients can join the wait list on their own with TimeTap, saving your front office staff valuable time. 

You can set up a customized email to automatically send out when someone joins the waitlist to inform them how the process works. Once an appointment or time slot becomes available, another alert will be sent to waitlist members.

With this helpful feature, you can automatically fill available appointments when someone cancels. 

Follow-up appointments

Clients can make a follow-up appointment at the end of their visit, but what about the ones who don’t? Some people may need time to look at their schedule or may be under the impression they can schedule at any point. Your front office staff doesn’t have time to contact every patient and ask if they’ll be booking another appointment – but with an online scheduler, it can be done for them.

TimeTap’s recall campaign feature allows you to set up customized messaging to send to specific clients, aiding in boosting your retention rate. You can choose which locations, staff, or services receive certain messages and when.

If a significant amount of time has passed between appointments for certain clients, set up a recall campaign to send text message reminders. Recall campaigns can be used as guides and not just reminders. If a few clients booked a service that should be followed by another appointment or additional service, you can create a recall campaign to inform those clients what they should be booking next.

As the command center of your business, the front office should be supported as much as possible. Luckily, with the right software and tools, there’s no need to hire additional staff or try multiple services to fit your needs. To learn more about how TimeTap can boost your front office’s efficiency, contact us today!

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