It’s Monday morning. You’re pumped up and ready to start the week!
You get in...
Megan is at her desk with a list of clients to speak to. They tried to get in touch but she wasn’t in the office when they rang. They can speak to her at 2:00, but she’s got a meeting then.
Max has been in a conference room for 20 minutes waiting for a customer to show up. He’s not sure if they forgot the meeting entirely, or they just weren’t able to reschedule.
Maisie has an exciting new prospect who wants to meet. She sends an email offering some dates and times. They reply. The next day. With different dates and times.
Back and forth...
Finding a time to meet is an age-old problem. And for your team to succeed, it’s got to be done. But you hired this group because they are incomparable client managers, first-rate recruiters, and hit-it-out-of-the-park salespeople. Why are they spending so much time organizing appointments when they could be actually having appointments?
“This allowed us to stop wasting time on tasks that don't add value. Now we’re focusing on doing what our clients care about most.” Gregory Swedberg WittKieffer
Eliminate the back-and-forth emails and the waiting around for no-shows. Online scheduling means appointments land in your calendars without needing to speak, and rescheduling and cancellation happens automatically.
It gives your customers a friction-free experience that they can manage on their own terms.
And it gives your team members their time back, to focus on what they do best.
Consider these factors that make offering online scheduling a good choice:
Online appointment scheduling isn’t new. You probably already use it for lots of services. Just like you, your customers are time-poor. That means Convenience is King.
If you’re looking to boost your team’s productivity and give your clients a consistently awesome experience, look no further.
This Ultimate Guide to Online Appointment Scheduling for Teams has everything you need - including advice and input from real users! - to choose the right tool for your team.
Let’s start with the basics - and get rid of some common misconceptions about automated scheduling.
At the minimum, most online scheduling tools you’ll find today work like a wrapper around your existing online work calendar (usually Google or Microsoft). They give you an online booking page that shows your free and busy times, based on specific rules you’ve set around your availability.
“This has allowed customers to schedule on their own terms without sending any emails or phone calls.”
This means two things: you have complete control over when and where your customers schedule with you. And your customers can access your availability at any time, day or night, that suits them - a convenience that is increasingly expected in all areas of life.
Looking for more? Well, the more powerful online scheduling tools will give you an entirely customized experience, so your booking page looks just like your website branding, your booking notifications have the same tone of voice as the rest of your communications, and your customers experience friction-free appointment scheduling that takes them just minutes.
“You have access to a lot of great features that allow for customizing the appearance and look and sending automatic reminders and emails to everyone when you make an appointment.”
And, finally, the best online scheduling tools will do all that for you, and for every one of your team members - no matter where they work, no matter what kind of appointments they have, and no matter how complex your set-up is. They’ll also make it easy for you to monitor booking activity, evaluate booking data, and evidence the impact your team is making for your company.
“It empowers your team, saves you the headache of coordinating, and streamlines the process.”
We’re not sure we can think of any team, in any organization, that doesn’t. But here’s a quick quiz to check for yourself.
1. Which of the following does your team spend the most time on:
2. Which of the following is your team missing every week while they do all those things?
“...it helps your organization become more productive and your clients become so much more satisfied with your output.”
If you checked just one of those boxes, your team needs an online appointment scheduling tool!
Call us biased, but there is no question that automating your scheduling with the right online scheduling tool will give new life to your team. It will:
All that and more. Would we joke about something like this? In a decade of working with organizations implementing online scheduling systems, we’ve heard over and over again from teams working in Sales, Recruitment, Customer Success, and User Experience how their online scheduling tool has delivered more focused work for staff, better planned projects, and an easy, friction-free experience for customers.
Introducing change can be a challenge. But when you see the benefits that an online scheduling tool can bring to your organization, you won’t regret it. And getting your team onboarded and taking bookings quickly won’t be hard if you select a tool that is focused on helping teams.
We’re so glad you asked!
There are a number of online scheduling tools available so the first thing to do is to take a look at what you are already doing.
Next, decide on your absolute requirements versus your nice-to-haves. Here are some ideas to get your brain juices flowing:
| Bookings in different languages and across time zones | Separate branding for different clients |
| Unique meeting links for video calls | Multiple reminders & SMS options |
| Enterprise grade security and accessibility | Easy integration with the other tools you use |
| Great experience on mobile devices | Dedicated account manager |
| Multiple team members in the same meeting | Easy onboarding and role-based access for team members |
Then, think of what has to happen to move your team from where it is now, to where you know it can be.
“My advice would be to first imagine the biggest possible win that you want to achieve and outline that as what you want this tool to do.“Danny Ryel
Spending a bit of time on those questions will help you to quickly identify your shortlist of potential online scheduling solutions. It also makes for a much better onboarding experience with the tool you choose, because you’ll already know what success looks like for your team.
Finally, get a demo from the tools on your shortlist. This is a really valuable step to take some time with. A live demo will not only demonstrate how well the tool can help with what you know you need. It may also reveal solutions that you didn’t even know you could dream of!
“If you are looking for something that empowers your team, saves you the headache of coordinating, and streamlines the process, YouCanBookMe is for you!”
YouCanBookMe embeds a decade of experience into every booking. Over the years we have honed our features to offer the best available experience for teams, including easy team onboarding that scales as you grow.
YouCanBookMe is your team’s secret weapon for powering up productivity:
“I encourage all professionals to use YouCanBookMe on a regular basis. I can swear that you will see your productivity skyrocket”
Our users love the customization and flexibility that YouCanBookMe offers. You get a unique booking experience that displays only your branding, and sends notifications in your voice. Customers are booking with you, not with us!
“The level of customisation within YCBM allowed me to create a user flow that was easy to use and communicated with our customers in a voice that represented us and our values.”
Create booking pages for every scenario: different languages, locations, client teams and booking options.
Powerful integrations allow you to sync YouCanBookMe seamlessly with the tools you already use, meaning more powerful data and better evidence of your impact.
“Managing a team of 20 can get complicated, with emails cluttering up your inbox. YouCanBookMe seamlessly integrated into our existing software and hasn’t failed us yet!”
For larger teams, a dedicated Success Manager will work with you to make sure we know your priorities and that you have what you need to be successful.
Getting your team started with a new appointment scheduling software doesn’t have to be painful.
In Chapter 3, you’ll have seen our advice on how to choose the best online scheduling tool for your team. If you’ve done that work, you’re already really prepared.
If you haven’t, it’s worth taking a moment before you start getting your team set up on YouCanBookMe to consider:
Moving to online scheduling doesn’t mean you need to change your existing processes. You just want to automate the parts that YouCanBookMe can do better, so your team can get on with doing what they do best!
All the things you do now, can still be done when you’re using YouCanBookMe. We recommend taking the time to map out your workflow so you can replicate it using online scheduling.
Planning ahead what you want your customers to see and feel while they’re scheduling appointments with your team will help to inform all the areas that can be customized in YouCanBookMe.
You’re not making this change for nothing. Are you looking for
Whatever your goal with online appointment scheduling, be sure to set up the metrics early so you can show yourself, your colleagues, and your boss how productive your team is and the impact it is making on your business.
“This streamlined process has increased the number of candidates I am able to capture in any given week.”
Once you’ve worked everything out, it’s time to get stuck in with the YouCanBookMe settings.
A great way to get your team up and running fast is to create one or several default booking pages. Create the kind of page you want your customers to see. This includes the logo, the message on the main page, any questions that need to be asked, and all email and SMS messaging.
When you have it the way you want it, you can just simply duplicate that page every time you need to use it.
Inviting your team members to join your YouCanBookMe Company account is simple and secure. You can decide how much access they get to the Company account using role-based permissions.
They:
Now send out those links! Embed the pages on your website, add them to your email signature, post it as a QR code on an office door, add them to your social media. Wherever your customers are, you can be there too. Making it easy for them to get in touch with you in a way that suits them.
“YouCanBookMe is embedded in all our cold email campaigns, it's embedded in our website, it's in our email signatures. I have a lot of conversations on WhatsApp and I send the link through there all the time. It works really well and it drives leads.”
Deepak
Pearl Lemon Leads
For many teams, YouCanBookMe works “straight out of the box”. But there’s a lot more you can do if you want to take it further.
Your team is unique. You may have colleagues in different states or different countries. You may work in different languages. Some may work part-time while others work overnights.
You can configure the availability for each team member so YouCanBookMe shows everyone’s availability at the right time, in the right time zone.
Use Padding to add time between appointments so your team can take a breath, take a break, or prepare for what’s ahead.
Use Fixed Times and Minimum Notice periods to define exactly when customers can book with your team.
Tentative Bookings allow your team members to accept a booking before it is confirmed.
Give your customers a choice during the booking process and it will pay dividends for your team. Let them select the kind of meeting they want, or the team member they need to speak with.
Use questions on the booking form to ask multiple-choice questions.
All these choices can be used later on to personalize your communications, send different information so it is correct for each booker, or help your team prepare for the meeting.
There’s no need for YouCanBookMe to sit apart from the rest of your systems. Use Zapier, webhooks or our public API to seamlessly integrate your booking data with your sales tool, CRM, or whatever data-crunching tool you use.
Send information about a booker - account number, sales rep, favorite product - into YouCanBookMe so it will be included in our data export, or in your own integrated systems. You can pass it through without the booker seeing it using hidden questions.
Redirect bookers to a URL on your website to track visits.
YouCanBookMe really can be customized to do pretty much anything you need, except make the tea!
If you know you need to do something but you’re not sure how to get in touch with our team!
“Have a conversation with someone from YouCanBookMe. There are a number of ways to achieve different things and the YouCanBookMe Support team is amazing for that.”
Danny Ryel
Portland State University
Throughout this guide, you’ve heard from our customers about what they value most about YouCanBookMe.
Now, go further with them to find out how they are using YouCanBookMe for their own use cases, and what impact using an online appointment scheduling app has made.
Without YouCanBookMe, we would lose 25% of our new business contract value. There would just be too much friction.
Sales Team relies on YouCanBookMe at every stage of their sales funnel. He embeds his booking page throughout his website and loves how he can customize it to match his brand perfectly.
We saw a 50% uplift in bookings.
Global recruitment team uses strategically placed booking links to increase candidate engagement. Joost gets evidence-based results with A/B testing.
When we moved to YouCanBookMe, it was a breath of fresh air to be booking people within minutes.
Advising and Career Services Department creates equity for non-traditional students by enabling friction-free booking for busy people. They save 5 hours a week for every team member.
We’ve stopped wasting time on the stuff that nobody cares about, that doesn't add value. Now we can start focusing on the things that actually do add value.
Executive search team gains time to focus on providing a white-glove customer experience by automating low-value tasks.
Schedule a call to find out how YouCanBookMe can help you take the first step towards giving your team what it needs to be the best it can be.
Create your free booking page today. No credit card required.
Written by
Kate is YouCanBookMe's Director of Product. She was YCBM's first employee and feels privileged to have been a part of the journey: from supporting our customers, to helping bring YCBM to life in our blog posts, and now helping to develop a product that our customer love.
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