Booking time

The dawn of the ‘internet revolution’ may by now be lost in the mists of the past but it seems as though at last the benefits of internet connectivity have moved into mainstream living.  This Christmas more than one third of all shopping will take place on line with features such as click and collect proving popular.

As we toast the end of the year with internet tills ringing we are also shortly to be waving goodbye to another British institution.  The Government has announced that the paper car tax disc is to be phased out.  With authorities relying on purely electronic records the move will save time and resources.

In fact way back in the early days of the internet the benefits to be gained from the saving of time and resources were widely predicted but in the intervening period it has sometimes seemed as though all that the internet has done is bring more work.  In the early days ‘dial up’ was so slow that many people could get in their cars and drive to the shops faster than they could order goods online.  Now thanks to improved internet speeds allied with programmes designed with ease of use and speed in mind, the internet has at last come into its own.

One benefit of this improvement is the way in which health service providers are able to manage their diaries.  For the health practitioner the time spent in booking appointments is effectively ‘dead time’; time which is spent away from treatment and time which potentially impinges on another patient’s treatment.  That is why practitioners turn to services such as those provided by virtual assistants who can take calls and manage bookings on behalf of the health practitioner.

Now there is a new service available from Callagenix which not only saves the health practitioner from taking calls, it also saves the client from having to telephone.  Online booking enables clients to browse and book an appointment at a time to suit them.  This quick and simple appointment service perfectly ties in with the general move towards using the internet as the first port of call.  The service is flexible and practitioners can choose whether to accept new or existing clients via the online service as well as restrict online booking to certain treatments or to certain times of the day or week.  Time saving, easy to use and flexible; online bookings are a perfect example of the way in which the internet can make life better for all.