Appointment Booking
The 360 DSE supports appointment booking linked directly to the schedule generating algorithm so that it is possible to interrogate the system using a simple query based interface.
The 360 DSE supports two different processes for appointment booking, based on whether the customer or the service-provider specifies their availability first.
Engineer-driven appointment booking
Since the 360 DSE will have actually allocated a particular call time, it is possible to be more precise than just ‘morning’ or ‘afternoon’ for a specific, chosen, appointment. The call will subsequently be constrained to this new one-hour window. If this option is not used, the call will merely be constrained to Thursday afternoon. Using this option offers the customer a higher level of service, but at the cost of reduced flexibility in the schedule. It will be up to the service management system provider to choose whether or not to offer it.
Customer-driven appointment booking
When the 360 Dynamic Scheduling Engine is supplied as a service (SaaS) the appointment booking functionality can be accessed through a self-service customer web portal. This enables customers to logon to their web portal, request an appointment and receive back a series of offers in real time. They can then choose which ever of these offers most suits them, or request a new time altogether. This further reduces the pressure on call centre volumes as more and more activities can be handled automatically by the 360 solution.