The Future of Enterprise Scheduling
Using first principles and user research to conceptualize a way of working around the most fundamental economic problem.
Team:
Karan Hallon, Anusha Paruchuri
Outcome:
Presented to EVP, Industries Cloud + SVP, Industries Cloud, along with Salesforce design senior leadership
Consider this
Fundamentally, why do we need to schedule appointments? Why did we need to create this concept in the first place?
Hint: What would it take to never have to schedule an appointment when you go the dentist? Or to never need to buy a ticket to Disneyland?
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The Answer
People, things and resources are scarce. This is the most fundamental fact of economics. We use appointments to ration the resources and people that we need to help us with something.
Where Salesforce can help
As an enterprise software company with thousands of customers who use Salesforce Scheduler, Salesforce has an outsize influence on the way that businesses everywhere schedule appointments and therefore, on the way that these businesses everywhere ration their resources to maximize value for everybody. While neither Salesforce nor any entity can eliminate scarcity, we can certainly try to ameliorate it with the efficient allocation of resources.
How many times has this happened to you?
You need to make a routine checkup at the doctor’s office. After making an appointment a month in advance, you’ve finally made it to the waiting room on time and are patiently waiting before it’s your checkup time. Just as your appointment time comes, the nurse’s head pops out of the doctor’s office and calls… someone else’s name? You grit your teeth and wait a little bit. 15 minutes later, the nurse pops out and tells you that “the doctor is running late.”
Situations like this happen every day in healthcare, banking, insurance and many other sectors. Situations like this cause knock-on effects throughout the day and every subsequent appointment is affected.
Conversely, there are days when doctors/bankers/dentists/tutors etc. have much lower demand, with no appointments to see. This equally causes problems as being less busy can mean lower revenue.
The Problem for Consumers
Bad resource utilization at businesses means that individual consumers have frustrating experiences. At worse, trying to visit an unavailable service provider can stunt the consumer’s whole day
The Problem for Businesses
On days with high demand, service providers are pressured to see many different customers. This may lead to a drop in quality if they are truly overwhelmed.
On days with low demand, service providers may be frustrated as they are not generating revenue or they simply feel as though their skills are not being utilized.
Our Proposed Solution
Our proposed solution to this commonplace problem, relies on a few different systems coming together:
1
Demand Forecasting
We know from research that certain days and times of the year are naturally higher demand times. Cultural festivals see much higher demand for doctors and veterinarians (think 4th of July or Diwali fireworks). Winter sees a spike in individuals seeking flu shots or coming in for cold-like symptoms. Knowing this information can help businesses plan ahead to manage their demand
2
Demand Management
When service providers and their businesses are unexpectedly overloaded with demand, managing the customer experience should be automated. Not only should the customer be informed about a potential appointment delay, but they should also know roughly when they will be seen
3
Proactive Appointment Scheduling
We know from research that certain days and times of the year are naturally higher demand times. Cultural festivals see much higher demand for doctors and veterinarians (think 4th of July or Diwali fireworks). Winter sees a spike in individuals seeking flu shots or coming in for cold-like symptoms. Knowing this information can help businesses plan ahead to manage their demand
4
Customizability
Service Providers should be able to reschedule appointments in a manner that works for them and their schedule.
The Project
In this project, we wanted to look beyond the next release’s work and think about “What might Salesforce Scheduler look like 3 - 5 years down the line?” To answer this question, I looked deeply into the kinds of requests coming in from customers and tried to get into the most fundamental issues that customers had while scheduling.
After doing user research, we identified two fundamental problems to be that
Appointment Allocation could be made much more efficient with better demand management. Knowing who to schedule for appointments and when would allow businesses to do more with fewer resources.
Employees that have urgent ad-hoc work such as doctors, nurses & dentists would need to re-shuffle their appointment times over and over again, creating churn for everyone else
Our Solution
In an ideal world, appointment systems would empower employees to set their own working hours for the day. We begin by asking the user how overworked they feel. Accordingly, we prompt them to set hours and a set of ‘recipes’ that execute when they have more appointments than time available
In action, the system would predict appointment demand in real-time and start re-allocating appointments based on urgency