Seasonal depression is nothing to scoff at. The freezing temperatures and lack of sunlight are enough to make anyone want to curl up at home in front of the fireplace. Unfortunately, this might mean that you’re filling fewer time slots in the wintertime as customers opt to stay indoors and schedule their appointments in the spring.
Encouraging appointment scheduling in the winter won’t be easy, but it’s a challenge worth facing head-on. Not only is getting your customers out of the house good for their mental and physical health, but it’s also good for your business. Here are some ideas to help you fill up your schedule even when the snow is falling:
Offer Incentives for Scheduling Appointments
People might not want to leave the comfort of their home for regular old appointments. Unless they absolutely have to, many customers are content with postponing them until temperatures start to rise again. To offset their desire to hibernate rather than book your services, you need to extend an offer that customers simply can’t refuse.
Incentives add an extra layer to appointments, making them more favorable even when weather conditions aren’t. For example, a customer might not normally book a winter appointment but be drawn toward your business by seasonal discounts and amped-up loyalty rewards.
Create Ambiance
The waiting room is an underrated aspect of appointment-based businesses. Even if you have the most streamlined booking system on planet Earth, every single one of your customers is going to spend some time in the lobby before or after an appointment. If you create an ambiance that’s comfortable and inviting, more customers will be willing to brave the cold and trek to your office.
How do you make your waiting room awesome? Look at aspects of your lobby that might go overlooked in normal circumstances. Warm lighting as opposed to blinding fluorescents can create a more inviting environment.
The music you play can also be quite influential. Replacing boring elevator music with modern, upbeat tunes or classic soul will make for a more pleasant waiting room experience. Even just keeping the common areas warm and cozy can bring out your chilly customers.
The exterior of your business shouldn’t be overlooked either. Clear sidewalks and parking lots will be a lot more welcoming to customers than icy pavement and snowy curbs.
Offer Online Check-In for Appointments
If customers have an option to wait in their warm cars until their appointment, they might feel more inclined to venture out for it. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be taking care of your waiting room. Rather, offering online check-in will provide another option for customers to consider. More options for customers means the business will have a better sales funnel.
Checking in online can easily be enabled through a mobile app or online software. All a customer needs to do is confirm that they have arrived at the office on time. A phone call, email, or text message will let the customer know when their appointment is about to start so they can quickly run from their car to the building, staying as warm as possible from start to finish.
Stretch Out Your Schedule
One reason why customers are hesitant to book appointments in the winter is because of perilous road conditions. Driving in the snow and ice is not a fun experience no matter how accustomed to it they are. This means drivers have to travel extra slowly, which might put them at risk of missing their appointment.
You can eliminate this fear by stretching out your schedule. Add some extra buffer time in between appointments just in case someone is running late due to poor weather conditions. You can also add more availability for walk-in customers if business is slow enough to accommodate them. This will give customers more flexibility and peace of mind.
Reach Out
If you’re using online scheduling software, you should easily be able to see when a customer made their last booking. Using this information, you can contact your regular visitors whom you haven’t seen in some time. Sometimes just reaching out to a customer is enough to bring them back for a winter appointment.
When getting in touch with customers, try to make your messages as personal as possible. Phone calls are easy to make personable but are more time-consuming. If you use some sort of messaging system, just be sure to draft up a message that doesn’t sound copy-and-pasted to your entire email list. When customers can tell that you sincerely care about them and want to serve them, you’ll have more success with winter appointment-setting.
Winter only takes up a short portion of the year, but it can feel like an eternity sometimes. Taking measures to fill up your appointment slots and stay busy will pass the time much more quickly and help your business start the next calendar year off on the right foot.
