Appointment Scheduling Software

Customer Appointment Manager and QuickBooks Synchronization Help Keep Records Up-to-date at Away With Words Interpreter Services, LLC

"It’s so nice to have it all in one place instead of separated in a schedule and in multiple files. It’s much faster to create reports with Customer Appointment Manager Pro.”

Nancy Hockley
Away With Words Interpreter Services, LLC

Customer Profile

Away With Words Interpreter Services, LLC has 10 subcontracted interpreters that travel to places of business and medical facilities in Northeast Washington and Northern Idaho to help them communicate with their customers and patients who are deaf, deaf blind or hard of hearing and use American Sign Language to communicate. There are two appointment schedulers at Away With Words Interpreter Services, LLC Nancy Hockley and Michelle Patterson. 

Situation/Challenge

Nancy and Michelle had been using Customer Appointment Manager Pro for over 10 years at a non-profit organization she had formerly worked at that had 25 subcontracted interpreters and were scheduling 10-12 appointments a day. They had been using a paper schedule of which they flipped through to find open appointment times and to see an interpreter’s appointment calendar. The inefficiency in rescheduling appointments prompted her to ask the Board of Directors for funding for electronic appointment scheduling. “Every time a customer wanted to reschedule an appointment we had to manually rewrite the customer’s name, time and location of the appointment,” said Nancy. She shopped around for appointment scheduling software, but found many that were much more expensive and also took up a lot of computer memory.  

Solution

At her former workplace, they used the Monthly Summary report to show the Board of Directors how many different types of appointments were scheduled each month. They set up custom fields on the Appointment Form to indicate if they were medical or legal appointments. They were also able to report how many appointments were scheduled for each type of service, such as interviews and team group assignments performed during that time period. The Monthly Summary report was ready in seconds, even though they had 23 different types of services.

At her new business, they’ve placed an appointment request form they set up on www.TakeAppointments.com onto their own company website, so their customers can ask for new appointments whenever it’s convenient for them. “It’s a convenient and safe way for our customers to request appointments,” explained Nancy. “Hospitals and clinics can’t add details about their patients to an online appointment scheduler due to Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA) rules. This way the contact information for the person who’s requesting the appointment is added to the form. We call them within an hour to schedule the appointment.”

They communicate appointment details to interpreters via email. “For security reasons, we’re able to use customer ID’s instead of customer names when we email appointment reports to our interpreters,” Nancy described. “We take the name out for HIPAA compliance. Emails aren’t encrypted and we don’t want reports with confidential information floating around out there.”

At Away With Words Interpreter Services, LLC, they mainly use two software programs: Customer Appointment Manager Pro and QuickBooks. “We love the synchronization with Quick Books,” Nancy said. When an interpreter is finished with an appointment they text Nancy or her co-worker details about the meeting, including the actual amount of time it took for the appointment and mileage. Then they’re able to add those details to custom fields they’ve set up in the Appointment Form and create an invoice through QuickBooks that same day which keeps both programs up-to-date. Nancy and Michelle use Statuses to communicate with each other when appointments are confirmed and when invoices have been created.

Benefits

“It’s so nice to have it all in one place instead of separated in a schedule and in multiple files,” said Nancy. “It’s much faster to create reports with Customer Appointment Manager Pro.” She reviews how many appointments were scheduled, the average appointment length and what services were scheduled most often when trying to plan for the next year.

Customer Appointment Manager Pro has been very easy for both users at Away With Words Interpreter Services, LLC to learn and implement. “We installed it one day and were using it the next day,” declared Nancy. She appreciates the Monthly Tip of the Month e-newsletters that gives examples and detailed instructions about how to use individual features in the appointment software. “Because of those monthly newsletters, we’ve started using features we didn’t even know existed,” exclaimed Nancy. “I also add new features ideas to the Online Feedback Form whenever I think of them. Sometimes they call me back to tell me I can already do it with Customer Appointment Manager Pro!”

Nancy is very pleased with Customer Appointment Manager Pro, as well as the customer service and technical support at Atlas Business Solutions, Inc. “Buying software without the support is like buying a pencil without a pencil sharpener,” Nancy said. “Every time I call, the guys are knowledgeable and very kind. They’ve been great at responding to questions.”