BlogsSEDCO’s solutions were designed for social distancing even before COVID-19
If you’re struggling to strike a balance between serving your customers and applying social distancing rules in an ever-changing environment, you’re not alone. Ensuring a safe customer journey is more important than ever before. With SEDCO solutions you are up to meet these challenges, and beyond.
With mobile appointment and touchless solutions, it’s possible today to eliminate queues and comply with the branch occupancy by controlling the number of customers served per counter in each of your branches, in order to maintain with social distancing. Your customers can issue e-tickets and join virtual queues, they can wait for their turn safely at a convenient spot inside or outside the branch. They receive a notification about their turn so they can get served immediately or check themselves in with a touchless experience.
If you haven’t already got the above strategies and many more in place, now is the time to make a change. Read more about how our solutions maintain a safer, more hygienic experience during the pandemic.
Challenges Facing Essential Businesses
While many businesses have moved online or shut down altogether, customers still need access to face-to-face services like banking, healthcare, telecommunications, and the public sector.
Businesses need to minimize human interaction, reduce touchpoints, increase hygienic interactions, maintain social distancing, and control capacity. At the same time, they may need to optimize their resource utilization and educate and reassure customers through the changes.
These challenges may require big changes to your customer journey, depending on what current systems you have implemented. So, let’s talk about how SEDCO’s system can help.
Maintain Social Distancing Before the Customer Visit Starts
Fortunately, if you manage or work in an essential business, there are some practical changes you can implement over the next few months so that you can safely serve customers, while prioritizing the health of your staff and supporting your local community.
If you’re a bank, retail organization, public sector company, or healthcare organization and you’re finding it hard to adjust your services and systems to social distancing, we can help here:
Mobile Appointment Booking to Minimize Human Interaction
One of the best ways to reduce human interaction is to introduce mobile and online appointment booking through mobile app or web, so customers can book and plan their visit in advance, and avoid a crowded waiting room.
Here’s how mobile appointment works:
- Customer opens the app (a booking interface like ours can be integrated into your existing mobile app, website, or call center).
- Then chooses the branch and selects the service.
- Then enters the preferred date and sees available time slots, and selects the time.
- Customer then, is asked to confirm the appointment
- Finally, the customer is issued an e-ticket via mobile app or SMS
A clear advantage of this module is that you can configure the time slots periods and the number of maximum allowed customers per each slot in order to make sure the customer traffic complies with occupancy of your branches and your local social distancing rules.
One simple way to enforce these limits is to eliminate or control walk-ins, since you can’t predict the number of people you’ll have in your waiting areas. And instead use your online booking channels to plan your customer visits and ensure your face-to-face appointments don’t exceed the set limits.
With capacity mapping and mobile booking, your business stays compliant and your staff, customers, and local community stay safe.
Mobile appointment booking is one of the best ways to implement social distancing for your customers during COVID-19, it also will help in eliminating the queues, so customers will even appreciate it after the pandemic is over, too. No one likes to wait any longer than necessary, and it’s a great way to empower your customers so they’re in control of their journey.
SMS Notifications to Maintain Social Distancing
Some companies have tried to minimize the risks associated with queues by marking out safe distances or turning customers away to reduce numbers. But there’s a much more streamlined way to manage queues and minimize the number of customers physically waiting at premises.
When you enable SMS Notifications as part of your customer journey touchpoints, your customers can wait inside or outside the branch, or even in their own cars.
Customers will be notified with their turn approaches, they also will be called by SMS when their turn comes next, so they head to the right counter. This is one way you can provide a safer experience for customers and avoid a crowded waiting room.