Why the heck would you want an online scheduler?

Imagine it is the middle of the night and your ideal client is on the internet searching for a therapist. He reads your online therapist locator listing and likes what he sees. He wants to make an appointment, but during regular business hours he will be in meetings. So he closes up the computer and says to himself “I will call another day to make an appointment.”

You know the story. Days go by - then weeks and maybe one day he gets a referral to a different therapist from his co-worker. That therapist gets the client that was originally drawn to your website.

Now, imagine you had a tab on your website that said “Schedule an appointment.” When your ideal client visited your website, it would be of great benefit to him to be able to schedule the appointment online - without having to play telephone tag with you. Then he can go into his all-day business meetings knowing he has an appointment scheduled with you within a couple of days. Now you both win - he feels great that he has scheduled an appointment and you have a new client!

More and more I hear of therapists getting a lot of referrals from “the internet.” (Which is support for my point that the internet will be the #1 place you will get new clients in the next decade.) So, let’s make it easy for your web visitors to schedule time with you!

Here is how it works…

You, the therapist, put the times into the scheduler that you want people to see as “available.” Potential clients sign up (give you their information) and pick a session time. You both get an email about the appointment. Your job is to call the client asap, connect with him and do your normal intake call script. After speaking with the potential client, you get to decide if this is a good client for you.

I am telling you - if you do this now, you will be ahead of many of the other therapists marketing via the internet. As I’ve mentioned before, some of my clients are getting as many as 5 new clients a week with their online scheduler.

An added benefit is that you can invite your existing clients to use the scheduler, thereby almost eliminating the telephone tag around rescheduling appointments.

You can also set it up so that you will have a certain amount of notice (24 or 48 hours) before someone can schedule or cancel. That way you won’t be surprised in the middle of the day.

Are you using an online scheduler? If so, please let us know your experience below in the “comments” section.

Happy practice building!

Casey

PS Visit www.CaseyTruffoRecommends.com for a link to the appointment scheduler we recommend - and see other tools you may be interested in there too! Stay tuned - I will be announcing our new “do-it-yourself website builder” soon!