How A Scheduling Software Empowers Financial And Wealth Advisors?

Decisions and the timing of decisions both have the parallel power to decide one's monetary success or failure. Agree? Decisions reap their best returns only when made at the best time. So, as a financial and wealth advisor, you can help your clients plan their best investments only when your communication timings are on point.

However, scheduling appointments or getting a slot from your client's heavy schedule is probably the biggest demon to fight. While you spend hours going through several financial reports to guide them, all the effort and time is wasted when there are no-shows, overlapped bookings, or other avoidable challenges. Moreover, owing to the pandemic, most of the work has been forced to go online, including the working space of advisors. Now, it is almost mandatory to have a website so that the 73% of investors searching for advisors on Google can find you.

But first, let’s look into some of these challenges that are hindering your success trajectory: 

Challenges faced by financial and wealth advisors

• Repeated back and forth emails to fix a date and time that works for both leads to a wastage of time and effort. In most cases arriving at the conjunction is a frustrating process and could lead to a client drop. 
• Once finalised, there is a huge chunk of time and resources wasted on manually calling and confirming the scheduled meeting or its subsequent rescheduling or cancellation.
• The advisor needs to make sure that the client is manually reminded of the meeting with some buffer time in hand to avoid no-shows or cancellations without intimation. Manual gaps in executing reminders and reminding each client before meeting consumes a lot of time.
• Manual scheduling often has overlaps and gaps that create confusion and disruptions in your schedule for the day.
• The meeting timing is usually open-ended leading to uncontrolled extensions. There is no fixed duration for a meeting which could lead to a delay in other scheduled tasks.
• The client often attends the meeting without sharing the set of information or documents essential to execute the meeting effectively. 

The biggest problem in any profession is the loss of time and effort. Be it any field of work, back and forth emails from the client to an advisor or vice-versa can consume a lot of effort and time. Further, if due to human error, these appointment mails create a miscommunication, then it can lead to damaged client relationships. 

How can a Shopify based Scheduling application help?

Shopify brings you a feature-enriched platform where you can get every application to help you run an online business successfully. It has all the accessories to help you extend your reach, control your leads and manage the business along with a solution for all of these challenges too. Shopify hosts a plethora of amazing online appointment scheduling applications in its bag of tools and applications that can be your solve-for-all. These scheduling apps have sorted most of these problems and have made things automated. 

Adopting an online scheduling application from the Shopify store can help you fix and execute appointments seamlessly while saving all the time spent on chasing the client for a meeting slot. These applications allow the client to book their preferred slot from your calendar. Latest scheduling applications are also stuffed with numerous other features that help you cut down the rate of no-shows, delayed arrivals and most of the other challenges highlighted above. As a financial advisor, you also get customizable options to have booking forms, options to block specific dates or regulate your working hours and send out auto-reminders.

• Book a Slot 

With these applications say goodbye to the back and forth emails exchanged to find a suitable time for the meeting, confirm the meeting, and subsequent rescheduling, cancellations, etc. The applications automate the entire system by allowing your client to book a slot from the open slots available in your calendar, reschedule it and cancel it from the same application. So now they can book from anywhere, at any time and in just a few clicks the meeting is scheduled with end to end intimation to both attendees.

• Syncs with the work calendar

These applications seamlessly sync your bookings with your and your clients’ work calendar to ensure both of the attendees stay on the same page concerning the timings, place, duration and everything. It makes things convenient and more synchronised for the client as their calendar shows the booking while executing all future line-ups, and the same works for you. 

• Integrates with multiple applications

These scheduling applications have cut short the hassles of executing a scheduled meeting. Video conferencing software and visitor management software can be easily integrated to make the process seamless. Even payment gateways can be integrated to collect the advisory fees. Sharing business ideas, proposals, or investment plans can now be done through one application which takes care of everything else needed to execute the meeting and make it worthwhile.

• Sends reminders and notifications about the meeting

Now you and your team do not need to individually call or email your clients reminding them of the meeting time.  It has become easier with automated reminder notifications that neither forget nor delay reminders and make sure there are minimum no-shows and your client has enough time to prepare for the meeting. It also triggers automated emails for slot bookings and meeting confirmations, rescheduling and cancellations thereby removing all manual interventions in the process.

• Customisable booking forms

The applications allow you to create a booking form that needs to be filled out before the client books the slot. The booking form can call and capture all the essential information from the client that is needed to make the meeting fruitful. It also helps you prepare well for the meeting and you don't need to bother even if the client comes to the meeting empty-handed.

• Analytical dashboard

Any entrepreneur needs to analyze their performance to understand the progress or identify the roadblocks. This helps them manage the clients and understand the reason behind cancellations or dropouts. The scheduling applications come with real-time monitoring facilities and store past data and records.

This application has a feedback section, where a client can state the reason behind the cancellation or why they intend to join the session. Overall, the advisor gets to understand the current market trend and requirements. Further, this acts as an effective channel for an overview of the performance and calculating the future risk.

• Advanced search filters

To simplify the process, these applications are integrated with advanced search facilities. Thus, the advisor can filter out the number of appointments for the day. Based on that, preparations can be made on whether any additional resources would be required during the meeting. This saves time and also ensures to provide the best meeting room.

• Secured and maintains privacy

These appointment scheduling applications are optimised with complete privacy features. None of the booking details is revealed, and only you have the right to view or alter an appointment.

Clients or any third party cannot enter the system administrator with the intention of deriving personal credential details. The admin can monitor and manage the resources associated with the application. Further, the data is also not shared with any third-party application due to strict security compliance and data integrity norms.

• Easy to configure

These Shopify applications are extremely easy to configure. You can very easily configure these applications to your website with a few clicks. Most of them come with a free trial period to understand and evaluate the pros and cons of the application and then take the final call. 

The most promising scheduling applications for 2022 are:

Appointo

The most talked-about Shopify based online scheduling application is Appointo. It manages online appointment booking for all online business services with an extremely simplified UI that allows bookings in a few clicks from anywhere, anytime. It also has the facility to send email notifications and supports multiple languages. Appointo also set up a reminder mail or text to give an automated heads-up to your client before the meeting. For all your appointment rescheduling, cancellations and confirmations, Appointo intimate both parties with automated notifications. So now, design your booking form, capture the required information, get the slot booked in seconds and execute the meeting. Sounds like a done deal!

Sesami

This can be called the run-on-any-device tool that Shopify hosts. The application helps to customize the booking experience and manages the bookings super efficiently. You can sync Google Calendar and also gain team management facilities. It offers a customizable appointment confirmation and reminder feature to give the heads-up your clients need. It's also super easy to access the dashboard to help check all the scheduled appointments.

Easy Appointment Booking

With this application, anybody can manage multiple team members and manage all the booking rush seamlessly. You get to stay updated with its automated email and notification features so you don't miss anything, and neither does your client. You can easily sync it with the Google Calendar and create events.  You can also use zoom to attend online meetings directly without the need to manually share them over email. Sounds like an easier life, isn’t it?

BookThatApp

If you are looking for an application that can provide real-time calendar integration and help you amplify booking rates, this is for you. This application displays the real-time availability for online booking. The clients also get personalized reminders and follow-up texts. Most importantly, the facilities are diverse and hence it is counted one among the top favourite booking platforms.

Appointment scheduling app by Copilot

This Shopify-based application helps keep track of the payments and schedules your service bookings online. It allows customers to schedule appointments and use a separate calendar to check the setup availability. Further, it also supports internationalization and can translate to more than 40 languages. One can block dates such as public or national holidays so your calendar stays in your control while your client feels empowered with the autonomy of booking a slot of their choice. Sounds smart, right?

Conclusion

Scheduling applications are responsible for maintaining a smooth transition. There is nothing to fret about, if you are a financial advisor, all you need to do is list your requirements and choose an application that can work for you to solve your problems and make processes streamlined. All these applications come with a specific free trial period, and after that, you need to get the premium version to continue using it. So, try and finalize the best-suited scheduling application today and let your advisory services expand like wildfire.