Employee Scheduling Tools Improve Client Experience
Published: 23/07/2022
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The topic of this article is enhancing the client experience to drive client retention. We are writing it for the operations staff to demonstrate that this and several other goals can be achieved through the adoption of employee scheduling tools. We will explore the various elements it addresses and how this supports your strategy.
Very often, businesses utilising shift workers suffer from high turnover rates for both employees and clients. The common cause is prioritising quantity over quality, which connects the two. For example, a business that prioritises having more clients will naturally need more employees. This situation means they may not be able to afford to hire many highly skilled workers, which is likely to impact quality. Upon receiving services that do not meet their expectations, newly acquired clients are likely to leave. The staff interested in pursuing growth and better pay opportunities will also depart.
In other words, the company will be at square one. The cycle will continue to repeat until their approach changes. When they begin prioritising client retention and relationship building, they will naturally strive to provide better quality. Alas, it’s a longer game, ensuring sustainable company growth as opposed to non-progressively dipping into the potential client pool.
The name of this section does not imply that ‘the client is always right’. Frequently, the reason your company is engaged is that the client acknowledges their expertise does not meet the level required to achieve the goal. Essentially, this means they are investing their money and trust in your services, which also encompasses guidance. Put simply, as an expert, you are expected to create a roadmap for your clients—this should involve outlining their needs and distinguishing them from the means.
The issue arises from the fact that clients aren’t always capable of this and can therefore be argumentative about your judgement to the point of offering you a higher pay, merely to prioritise what you’ve deduced to be ‘wants’. If you genuinely want to provide the best client experience possible, you will need to be prepared to push back. For this, you will need actual data to rely on - and such data is gathered by the software you use, including but not limited to scheduling tools.
It’s challenging to focus on providing the client with the best experience when much of your time is spent on essential yet repetitive business processes. Employee scheduling tools are designed to alleviate some of these tasks, freeing up time that you can repurpose for more client-oriented roles. An hour a day spent on collecting customer feedback or responding to it, instead of preparing a rota for your staff, may not seem like much—but it will certainly have a significant impact.
Anyone in a shift-based work environment knows that being understaffed is the worst. Not only does it place a massive strain on the employees who are working at full capacity, but it is often the reason behind a failing client experience. While the company might expect clients to understand the situation, they are often left feeling that they are not receiving the quality service they have paid for. Although in many cases this does not sour the relationship itself, it may leave a bit of a bitter taste.
Most employee scheduling tools are designed to help you avoid such situations. While many view them as simple conveniences that save time by eliminating the need for manual rota-building, their true benefit is greater. As modern technology continues to advance, most shift scheduling solutions can learn from the data they collect. Consequently, they can understand your business's peak hours and quiet periods and build schedules accordingly. Based on these trends, the software will allocate the amount of workforce that has proven to be most optimal in similar scenarios. The more you use the tool, the more accurate its insights will become. Ultimately, you will be able to resolve the issue of understaffing and overstaffing once and for all.
The key factor in ensuring a better client experience is understanding and catering to their success more effectively. Unfortunately, this cannot be achieved unless there is ongoing two-sided communication. It is important to remember that you are the expert, and therefore while the client may have a lengthy list of wants, you are in a better position to outline the needs. Depending on how different these are, it may be challenging to assure the client that your proposal is the best way forward. Moreover, if there is ineffective communication or unclear expectations, the client experience will suffer.
As stated at the beginning, it can be challenging to find time to invest in the success of individual clients when there are numerous internal business processes to maintain on a daily basis. Unfortunately, many companies fail precisely because they prioritise sustaining processes over enhancing the client experience. To put it shortly, if clients cannot achieve their goals with your company, they will not remain loyal. That said, while automation software is an investment, it is an essential one that generates ROI in the form of client retention. By delegating tasks such as payroll, scheduling, and others to machines, you will gain more time to engage with humans.
Since employee scheduling tools are generally designed for internal use, their primary purpose is to streamline team management processes. There are numerous moving parts involved in building rotas, and although often overlooked, mismanagement of these can hinder your company’s performance and team alignment. By employing the appropriate tools, you will not only avoid these issues but also enhance both areas.
Not only will you have more flexibility with your time, but a shift scheduling solution will also provide you with greater freedom in how you manage your business. Let’s return to the example of being understaffed. This situation doesn’t always arise from a miscalculation on your part; sometimes it occurs unexpectedly when allocated staff members call in sick or when an emergency arises.
Unless you are flexible, you won’t be able to meet clients' expectations. In this specific scenario, you can gain quick visibility of the available staff without having to sift through the papers, allowing you to allocate the vacant shift to them. Additionally, an employee scheduling platform can be programmed to send out a notification to the rest of the team that a shift in question has become available, which leads seamlessly into our next section.
Referring to the above sample, the automation features of a rota-building tool provide more autonomy for workers to communicate with one another to create the most optimal schedules. Depending on the size of your team, it's likely that your on-site employees have deeper insights into one another’s personal lives, making it easier for them to predict each other’s availability.
Not only can a scheduling tool serve as a platform for creating efficient rotas, but it can also facilitate both one-on-one and team conversations. Some solutions available include live team chats, while others enable teams to communicate through notices, posts, and comments in a manner similar to that of a social media platform. Overall, the right tool could significantly assist in eliminating team communication bottlenecks, leading to smoother workforce distribution and ultimately enhancing the quality of client experience.
While every business certainly needs to put its clients first, you must not neglect your staff either. After all, they are the force driving your business forward. Scheduling software is designed to make their duties a little more stress-free, and trust us when we say this gesture doesn’t go unappreciated. Don’t forget that your workers ultimately build the client experience - and if they are deflated, burnt out, or generally displeased with the issues in your company, it’s unlikely to have a positive outcome.
There’s little need for scientific confirmation of this statement, as most people have experienced it first-hand—your performance is better when you’re happy. However, the University of Oxford went the extra mile and proved that happy employees are indeed 13% more productive. While the very concept of happiness differs for everyone, it’s your duty as an employer to take steps to ensure the basic factors are met. For example, this would include accommodating their time-off needs and not scheduling them to work on the requested days.
It may sound like a demand that’s easy to meet, but it often proves to be an issue. Simply put, if you still manage holiday requests via email, these tend to be either lost, forgotten, or massively delayed. Involving multiple managers in the approval process adds complexity to the situation, as the one who approved the leave might not have communicated the decision to the rest. This results in the employee who’s supposedly off being scheduled, leading to frustration and potential financial losses. This can be easily resolved by a designated employee scheduling tool—and other similar employee satisfaction pillars can also be enhanced by automation.
Client experience is a vital element in ensuring client retention. Companies that make the mistake of relying on acquiring new clients rather than building long-term relationships typically experience a surge in growth but are quick to lose their potential and fold. Investing in a smaller client base while providing excellent client experience is a long-term strategy, but it also yields substantial rewards.
For companies that utilise the shift model, one of the best tools to enhance client experience is employee scheduling tools. They vary in functionality from simply generating rotas based on our staff availability to becoming a comprehensive team communication platform. In summary, even the basic features help you achieve three key objectives that contribute to serving your clients better: save time, improve your internal processes, and keep the employees happy.
Ready to give your client experience a boost? Let us know.