The online appointment revolution

We can easily understand this high percentage considering the advantages of this solution. From the point of view of the patient, the main interest is the availability 24/7 of the booking module. The patient saves time because he sees on the same website the practitioner and the time slots available for each of them. He doesn’t need to call them one after the other to find the best possible date.

From the point of view of the professional, the main advantage is the administrative simplification: he doesn’t have to answer the phone to record the appointments. The other advantage is the reminder feature that allows to send automatically an SMS or an e-mail to the patient to decrease no-show.

From a higher perspective, the health sector is one of many sectors that might be interested by this innovation. We note that 92% of French people go online every day and that 57% of the online appointments are taken outside the opening hours. Thus, we can easily imagine the online appointment will become the main channel for customer to book a time slot with a service provider. Lawyers, mechanics, hairdressers… all have a great interest in offering online appointments to improve their customer experience. By the way, some studies announce a growth of the annual revenue of 9,80% in the next five years.

The issue is so important that the administration follows this movement in order to improve its image regarding the user reception. Some standards add in their quality approach the online appointment as an essential and indispensable service for a good relationship with the citizens: the Qualiville standard for example, a well-known standard for the City-hall.

Nevertheless, we can mention two limits to this system. First, it facilitates the volatility of the customer⁵. He has access to all the professionals for the sector (geographical and economical), nothing encourages the customer to be loyal to one of the professional.
The second limit is about the use of the data after the registration of the customer. The professional is not the owner of these information and he loses the ability to use them for his loyalty policy and he becomes dependent of these platforms.

As an expert of the reception, ESII offers an online appointment solution that benefits from 35 years of experience with professionals of all sectors. Doctors, hairdressers, city halls… trust us and use our Orion appointment solution, totally customizable and adapted to their needs. They set-up the solution directly on their website easily and intuitively with an iframe and they configure the features to improve the customer experience (design customization, e-mail and SMS reminder…).