It’s Time To Let Go Of Those Manual Ways
Inefficiencies within a business create barriers that lead to slow growth or, in some cases, stagnation. It’s certainly a truism for training providers and organisations who run various courses, classes and events. The types of business that have traditionally been faced with long and winding processes and high volumes of admin when taking and managing bookings.
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Friction in the booking journey
Like with any other sales process, if the journey from lead and enquiry to booking confirmation is slow, or if the prospect needs to take a lot of steps to complete, then you’re putting barriers in the way of growth.
As we’ve discussed on these pages before, the slower the booking process and the more stages you have, the more likely you are to get drop-outs, abandoned baskets and unsold spaces on your course.
If your booking process is wholly manual, then you’re inherently slowing the journey down.
- Prospective clients have to send an enquiry or pick up the phone.
- Your sales or admin team have to respond to the enquiry, with the potential of some back-and-forth communications.
On the client side, they’re being given plenty of opportunities to drop out. On the sales and admin team, it means a lot of time and effort for every booking.
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Less time for business development
If your team are spending excessive time managing the bookings and courses being run, how much time is left for business development?
Not only do manual processes slow the booking journey for your clients, but they tend to create mountains of admin that can drain the time from your staff’s working day, and in some cases, suck their motivation away.
An overload of manual admin stifles the ability to focus on business development activities such as marketing campaigns, lead generation activity or even social media engagement.
Taken a step further, by introducing more automation and simpler processes with a booking system and course management software, you’ll be introducing tools that will actually help your business development initiatives.
With the right platform you’ll have access to customer data and real-time reports that help insight, commercial tools to help upselling or creating promotions, or even messaging tools to directly engage with your clients.
Furthermore, offering your clients more self-service options and greater control over their bookings and courses, is itself a selling point when pitching for new corporate clients.
Self-service tools and online bookings improve customer experience and adds value to your service
To encourage new clients to work with you, you need to demonstrate the value you can offer them. If you’re selling training and development courses to a corporate client, for instance, the quality of your course delivery will, of course be imperative.
But, if the process to get candidates onto courses is long-winded, or access to course history, upcoming bookings or managing invoices is slow, clunky and unfriendly, then you risk devaluing the relationship.
However, what if you can provide a platform that offers an efficient full-management process that offers your clients:
- A simple online process to register candidates
- Easy processing of invoices and purchase orders
- A corporate account with records of all candidate course history
- Reminders when training dates are due
- A simple way to cancel, edit or move a booking
By giving your clients in control of their own account, you not only improve the ease with which they can engage with your services, but you’re also providing them with an invaluable and efficient platform to manage their own bookings and training records.
Manual processes slow your business and stifle your growth
Things change, technology advances and the way we go about our lives and business evolves. If you’re still manually typing registers into spreadsheets, sending reminders, or taking payments in person, then you’re spending your time on activities that can be dealt with automatically and considerably quicker.
With the right investment in your technology, you can create a more streamlined booking process, greater efficiency in your course management and free up the time within your team to work with more productivity and a focus on growth and longevity.
At thinkBooker, we specialise in online booking systems for training courses, classes, activities and events – optimised for efficiency, growth and ongoing client satisfaction.
Browse the site to learn more about course booking systems, sports booking systems, event booking systems and more, or get in touch directly to find out how we can help you.
