How a Scheduling Tool Can Help Your Team

Are you recruiting someone? It’s time to schedule an interview.

Did you score a promising lead? Better schedule a chat to demo your product. 

Did you just land a new client? Keep them happy by scheduling their onboarding ASAP.

Holding office hours? Best to schedule your students so they don’t all show up at once. 

We could go on and on…but to spare you, we won’t! Plus, we think you get the idea. 

For many teams, including recruitment, HR, sales, customer success, UX, and university, scheduling and attending meetings is an essential part of the job. 

With so much riding on the success of these meetings, finding a way to plan, prepare, and manage them is critical to job success. We’re here to help. 

We’ve gathered pointers on how your team can organize fruitful meetings using what’s sure to be your new best friend: an online scheduling tool. 

Our goal is to save your team:

• time,
• hassle,
• and a whole lot of frustration.

As a bonus, we’ll throw in some booking page, appointment type, and email templates to help you manage your meetings even better. Are you ready? 

Let’s start making your meetings more efficient, productive, and profitable!

How to look professional while booking meetings

So your customer, student, team member, whoever they may be, wants to book a meeting with you. Great! You’ll want to make this experience as pleasant and efficient as possible. 

Say goodbye to the days of sending back-and-forth messages trying to decide on a time to meet. Instead, all you have to do is send the booker (aka the person who wants to book a meeting with you) a link to your booking page, and they can choose a time that suits them instantly.

What is a booking page? And how does it work?

A booking page is where the booker can see all the times you are available to meet. 

By integrating your Google, Microsoft, or Fastmail calendar, YCBM reads your free and busy times and creates new events in your calendar. 

From the booker’s perspective, your booking page will look something like this:

When a booker visits your page, all they have to do is click on a time that works for them, input their information into a booking form, and click “Confirm Booking.”

You can create up to 30 booking pages without any added cost. Don’t worry – all your booking pages will be linked, so you will never be double-booked. 

You can also create booking pages for your entire team, and either randomly assign a team member to a meeting, or have the booker choose who they want to meet with.

This example from a recruitment team demonstrates how beneficial it could be to create a group booking page for career fairs. With a quick description of each team member’s role, you ensure that every potential candidate speaks to the recruiter that’s right for them.

Check out this article for more examples of how recruitment teams can benefit from a scheduling tool.

What else can you use YouCanBookMe for? 

That’s a great question, so we asked our users!

No matter what you are using YouCanBookMe for, it will create a professional and seamless experience for your bookers. 

Have international customers? We’ve got a solution

YouCanBookMe’s online scheduling tool caters to customers all around the globe. 

With traditional scheduling (aka back-and-forth messaging to find a time to meet) time differences can get in the way. Each party has to wait for the other to respond, which could take hours when working in different parts of the globe.

YouCanBookMe takes the waiting out of the equation. Your customer can book a meeting that suits them day or night, without having to wait for your reply.

YCBM’s online scheduling tool automatically detects time zones, which means no more pesky calculations. Additionally, booking pages can be created in 24 languages to facilitate relationships with clients in many different countries.

The result? An incredibly accessible and easy-to-use booking experience for customers around the world.

Catering to Gen Z? Remote meetings and convenience are key

In PwC’s Future of CX Survey, the top two things people valued most in their customer experience were efficiency and convenience. This holds even truer for Gen Z, who expect almost instant results and a seamless transition from PC to tablet to phone.

If you want to give your customers what they crave, you have to level up your booking experience.

Luckily for your customers, YouCanBookMe’s scheduling tool is optimized to work seamlessly on all devices, including the three we just mentioned above.

Your bookers will appreciate being able to schedule on whichever device suits them. 

P.S. If you are dealing with Gen Z, we’re pretty sure they will be using their phones! 

Make the inconvenient convenient (yes, it’s possible!)

Two of the most inconvenient aspects of arranging meetings are cancellations and rescheduling.

It can be overwhelming to try and figure out a new time that fits into everyone’s schedule. And cancellations? No one likes being the bearer of bad news.

Thankfully, with YCBM’s calendar booking software, cancellations and rescheduling are just as quick and easy as booking an appointment. 

YouCanBookMe includes two handy links in each confirmation email, one to cancel and one to reschedule.

If something pops up and your booker needs to reschedule, they can click the corresponding link and are immediately brought back to your booking page to pick a new time. All without any back-and-forth messaging. 

All calendar invites, confirmations, reminders, and follow-ups will be sent to match the new meeting date with no extra work for you or your customer.

In fact, 61% of YCBM users say a significant benefit to online scheduling is giving clients the ability to cancel or reschedule their bookings without having to get in touch.

Easily schedule remote meetings

Want to schedule a convenient meeting for your customer? Then a virtual chat is the way to go.

It’s much easier for your customer to take the time to meet with you online rather than face-to-face.

YouCanBookMe makes scheduling online meetings a breeze by integrating with Zoom, MS Teams, and Google Meet. This means you will automatically be able to generate and send unique virtual meeting links for all your remote chats.

Take control of your time and calendar

Your schedule should fit your needs. It needs to be flexible and adaptable to easily adjust to your workflow and customer demands. 

When you don’t have to spend as much time worrying about your schedule, you can dedicate more time to achieving your goals and driving results.

With YCBM’s scheduling tool, you have two options: either create a recurring schedule that repeats every week or set up a custom one.

When setting up your YCBM account, you integrate either your Microsoft, Google, or Fastmail calendar. YouCanBookMe then automatically reads all your busy times – such as public holidays, scheduled vacations, and other meetings you have planned.

These will be immediately blocked off on your booking pages, so you never have to worry about being double-booked or booked during your time off.

Now let’s say you work a typical 9-5 schedule that doesn’t change week to week.

In this case, repeating availability is perfect for you. You just set your regular working hours, click save, and wait for the meetings to roll in.

However, for more control over your schedule, you will want to use custom availability. 

This will let you set a changing weekly schedule and limit available booking times. You can set aside different times for different meetings – such as Mondays for discovery calls, Thursdays for product demos, and team check-ins whenever you find free time in your schedule. 

Offer different appointment lengths and types

It’s time to say goodbye to booking vague “meetings.” 

People book with you for different reasons, and your appointment types and lengths should reflect that. 

With YouCanBookMe’s scheduling tool, you can create as many different appointment types as you need. 

Let’s take career advising at a university as an example. There are so many different reasons students may want to schedule a meeting. 

They could have a quick question, need help with their resume, or want to prepare for an interview. With YCBM, when a student clicks on a booking page, they can select the meeting that’s right for them.

See this booking page in action. 

This lets both you and the student prepare and know what to expect for your meeting. It will also save you time, as a student who only has a quick question won’t be booking the same time slot as someone who requires more extensive help.

As a result, your schedule will be well-organized and tailored to your job role. 

Curious to see more examples of appointment types and booking pages? Click through the following links to see how one university can use YCBM’s scheduling tool for 9 more use cases.

• Academic advising
• Professor office hours
• Resources
• Financial aid
• Student success coaching
• Faculty and staff support
• Admissions interviews
• IT support
• Health center

Check out more about how educators use YCBM to schedule appointments. 

Make sure the right meetings end up in your calendar

You want your booking page to be accessible so that booking with you is quick and easy. However, you also want to make sure that your calendar isn’t bogged down with unnecessary meetings that aren’t the right fit.

YouCanBookMe has two solutions for you: tentative bookings and password-protected pages.

2. By requiring a password to view and make appointments on your booking page, you can ensure only certain people can schedule with you.

This can come in handy when you have a project or service that is only meant for a specific group of people.

Prepare for each meeting and set expectations with a scheduling tool

Your time is valuable. You want to make the most out of every meeting and we understand that. That’s why YouCanBookMe has the features you need to fully prepare for and get results from every meeting.

Ask the right questions before you meet  

With YouCanBookMe’s fully-configurable booking form, you can ask all the necessary questions before your meeting.

Let’s say you work as an IT specialist who helps people solve tech difficulties. Wouldn’t it be useful to know what problem you need to solve before your meeting? 

Of course it would be! That’s one of the reasons Jeremy Hommowun, the Faculty Support and Educational Technology Specialist at Illinois College, relies on booking forms.

You decide what information to ask for on the booking form, such as contact details, how customers found you, and what they want to discuss. 

Choose between different question types, including:

• Short answer
• Long answer
• Checkbox
• Multiple choice
• Pass through
• Hidden
• Phone number
• Email address

You choose the order the questions are asked and which are mandatory vs. optional.

The customizability and potential for data are what make booking forms one of YCBM’s top features. In fact, 83.5% of our survey respondents said it was their favorite feature. 

That number jumps to a whopping 100% for HR teams. Interested to see how HR teams use YCBM to boost employer branding? Check out our booking guide for human resources.

Automated, personalized notifications

What’s our users' second most-beloved feature? If you haven’t already guessed it based on the title above, it’s customizable notifications. 

74% named automated notifications, including reminders and follow-up messaging, as a must-have feature.

Once you book a meeting, you want to ensure your customer has all the information they need so they can prepare for and, most importantly, show up to the meeting.

With YCBM’s scheduling tool, you can automatically send confirmations, reminders, and follow-up messages to ensure your bookers are always kept in the loop. All without any additional work on your part.

Let’s take a confirmation email from a UX researcher as an example. Here, the researcher is confirming a usability testing session with a participant:

“Hi {FNAME},

Thank you for signing up for our usability testing. Your feedback and experience are extremely important to us. 

Your session with {BOOKING-PAGE-TITLE} is booked for {START}. 

It will take place on Google Meet via this link: {GOOGLEMEET} 

The testing will last approximately {DURATION} and will focus on [points of focus/list of products]. You will be required to [explanation of process].

If you have any additional questions, feel free to reply to this email or reach me at [phone number]. 

Best,

[your name]

[your position]

[your company]”

Remember all that information you collected in the booking form? It comes in handy for all your notifications through shorthand codes.

Shorthand codes are essentially nicknames you give to pieces of information. You can then use those nicknames to easily personalize all outgoing communication, saving you an incredible amount of time.

Everything included in these brackets { } in the email above are shorthand codes that will automatically pull up the required information, instantly customizing all your notifications.

Say goodbye to no-shows thanks to reminders

We’re human, which means sometimes things slip our minds – including meetings. 

With YCBM’s automated email reminders, you can make sure you aren’t sitting around waiting for someone who simply forgot about your appointment.

Coach Sheri Gazitt uses these reminders in a myriad of different ways. For some clients, she sends a reminder a week before, and for others, she schedules multiple – including the week before, a day before, and even 30 minutes before. 

Sheri takes these reminders one step further and uses them for more than just a quick nudge about an upcoming meeting.

For some, SMS reminders work even better than emails. Deepak Shukla, the founder of marketing agency Pearl Lemon Leads, says his company would lose around $4,000 - $6,000 a month without YouCanBookMe’s scheduling tool. He cites the SMS functionality as one of the key components of their success.

Take the headache out of scheduling group meetings

Imagine you have to coordinate a meeting with 15 different staff members, who all have various meetings and commitments already scheduled. Sounds like a nightmare, right? 

It gets even more complicated if you have a dispersed staff that works on different schedules and lives in different time zones.

With YCBM’s appointment scheduling tool, you can find a time that suits everyone in seconds. All you have to do is create a group booking page with all team members included and you will instantly see the times everyone is available to meet.

Want to schedule group meetings for customers? Let up to 50 people sign up for one time slot to schedule information sessions, tours, training, and seminars.

Get booked (and earn money)!

More meetings = more clients = more money. You want to land more meetings to earn more revenue. The best way to do that? Boost your visibility and make it easy to book appointments with you. 

Share your booking page far and wide 

Meetings are often a vital tool to sell products or services. In order to secure as many deals as possible, it’s important for potential customers to be able to book with you while their interest is highest. 

The more accessible your booking page is, the more likely it is that clients will book a slot.

The most popular way our users book meetings is by sharing their booking page link in emails. Adding a link to your email signature will ensure that anyone you correspond with can instantly book a meeting.

"YouCanBookMe drives all our sales," Deepak adds. "Our sales funnel starts with the website. We've got ‘Book a Call’ buttons for booking a meeting with the team in multiple places on multiple pages.”

You can also share your booking page by:

• Creating a QR code to include on all printed advertisements, brochures, business cards, and any other promotional materials
• Embedding YCBM’s scheduling tool directly on your website for instant bookings
• Posting it on your social media so everyone seeing your posts can easily get in touch
• Adding a link to the end of your videos to convert views into meetings

Follow up to secure your deals

Staying relevant and at the top of your customers’ minds can be hard. Our automated follow-ups make it easy. Simply create a template and schedule it to send after your meeting ends. 

With YCBM’s scheduling tool, you can send as many follow-ups as you need. Schedule one to go out an hour after your meeting ends, another a week after, and one more a month after – it’s all up to you. 

Here is an example of a handy follow-up email a sales team can send after a discovery call.

“Subject: Thanks for meeting with {BOOKING-PAGE-TITLE}

Hello {FNAME},

Thank you for taking the time to meet with me. It was a pleasure chatting with you about [product] and learning about your team’s needs. 

Based on our chat, we believe [product] will be a great asset to your company. We would be happy to schedule a demo to show you exactly how our tool can help you [insert benefit i.e. achieve your targets, save time, simplify your payroll].

[Click here]({BOOKING-PAGE-LINK}) to schedule your demo. 

If you have any additional questions or need any assistance, feel free to reply to this email or reach me at [phone number].

Best,

[your name]

[your position]

[your company]”

As you can see from the template above, you can move your leads further down your pipeline by including a link to sign up for a demo in the follow-up email. 

Get paid for every booking

Your time is valuable. Make sure you receive a payment for each booking by integrating Stripe – a secure and reliable payment software.

You can add it to the booking process to take payments without any added hassle or complications. Simply set your rate and get paid before every meeting.

Create a consistently excellent customer experience

You have a brand to uphold, and we understand that. That’s why with YouCanBookMe’s scheduling tool, it’s all about you and your customers. 

Keep your brand and tone of voice

YCBM’s booking software is highly customizable, which means you can truly say it your way. How? 

1. Write all your confirmations, reminders, and follow-ups to fit your style and customers’ preferences. 

2. Add your colors, logo, and photo to booking pages so that your bookers immediately recognize your company. 

3. Adjust meeting lengths and create appointment types that are right for you and your bookers.

4. Keep your brand in the spotlight by embedding YCBM’s scheduling tool directly on your website. This works great for the recruitment company Tempo Team.

5. Create a confirmation page that works for you. You can customize our built-in page or redirect customers back to your website. 

6. Personalize your booking link by renaming it to: yourname.youcanbook.me, yourcompany.youcanbook.me, and even yourawesomeidea.youcanbook.me. 

Ensure each meeting adds value

Each of your meetings contains valuable data, especially if you tailor the booking form with relevant questions. With YCBM’s scheduling tool, you can view, manage, and export your booking data into a CSV file. 

Let’s say you manage an academic advising office at a university. The booking data you collect will help you understand when students like to meet, what time of year is busiest, and what students typically want to discuss. 

You will also see which of your advising staff receive the most appointments so you know which advising methods work best. Based on this data, you can tailor your advising services to student needs to ensure a positive experience. 

For eyewear retailer BonLook, the data collected through YouCanBookMe’s scheduling tool helped improve four key areas: resource management, sales, business planning, and business intelligence.

Zap and hook your way to more time

Thanks to YouCanBookMe’s integration with Zapier, you can automate the bulk of your tasks to save time to focus on the things that really matter. Zapier is a popular workflow automation tool that lets you connect YCBM’s scheduling software with over 5,000 powerful apps.

Thanks to Zapier, certain actions in YCBM will trigger different actions in apps of your choice.

Ben Dlugiewicz, host and producer of YCBM’s Get More Done podcast, uses Zapier and YCBM to speed up his podcast process. Once he accepts a potential guest’s appointment in YouCanBookMe, a variety of actions are triggered.

Two templates are automatically created in Google Docs – one for a blog post and the other for Ben’s notes. Two Trello tasks are also automatically created – one for the copywriter to write the blog post and one for Ben so he can manage his time accordingly.

If you want to take your scheduling automation a step further, you can also use webhooks and the YCBM API to send and retrieve data from various applications.

A scheduling tool can do so much more than just book appointments

Sure, a scheduling tool can save you time and back-and-forth hassle, but it can also help you build stronger relationships with your customers and scale your business faster.

Easier and streamlined scheduling could be the very thing that unlocks a new era for your business. Why not try it out for yourself today? After all, you’ve got nothing to lose and a lot to gain!