6 ways online scheduling can connect you with customers

We're a tiny company that does big things: Our team works across 3 continents, serving users who take more than 1 million bookings with us each month. To stay nimble, we use smart workflows and automate whatever we can. In this case study, you'll learn how we dogfood (use) our own software to make it easy for our users and prospects to get the conversations they need, when they need them.

In this case study, we'll cover how we use YouCanBook.me for lead qualification, demos, user training, escalated support, relationship building and success, and to facilitate internal shift scheduling.

Sales

Anyone interested in finding out more about YouCanBook.me can contact the team on our Sales page. As leads get in touch and describe what they're looking for, we route their requests to the right experience. Deals that require just a little help to purchase get assistance via email, and deals that require more complex conversations are routed to schedule on a booking page for pre-qualification conversations.

Sales: Pre-qualification

The pre-qualification booking page uses the "no preference" feature, which pools the availability of any available team member. Because our team is global, the booker sees availability in multiple time zones, so it's most likely they will be able to find a time – no matter where in the world they are.

Once they schedule the call, the booking's event is added to the calendar of the team member and the booker. The booker gets a confirmation email, and so do we. This email also goes to our shared support inbox so everyone has visibility in case the scheduled team member is out sick or has a last minute change of availability.

All automated reminder emails include links to let the booker cancel and reschedule in case their schedule changes. Each team member's static Zoom link is automatically included in email reminders and in the calendar event's location. Email reminders that go to us include more information, including all the answers we received on the booking form. This makes it a lot easier for us to prepare for the conversation.

Just one action triggers all of this: the prospect's booking. No calls, no emails – one and done, and fully personalized.

Each of our booking pages are chock full of automation like this, and that's a primary ingredient in the secret sauce that lets our team stay tiny.

Pre-qualification: After the booking

A Zap from YouCanBook.me fires into a Slack channel several days after the pre-qualification call to remind us to follow up with the person if we haven't heard from them.

A reminder email to the team member that hosted the call sends after the appointment ends with a pre-filled link to our demo booking page.

https://demoexample.youcanbook.me/?FNAME={FNAME}&LNAME={LNAME}&email={EMAIL}

This link automatically pulls in the answers the prospect entered when they booked on the pre-qualification page. When clicked, this link generates a booking experience that is pre-filled with the prospect's information – no need for them to leave those answers a second time.

This automation saves us a step of manually formatting the parameters of the URL and customizing it with the prospect's info. We send the auto-formatted demo link to the prospect after the pre-qualification call, and it's a great way to give the prospect a low-friction experience when booking their demo.

Sales: Demos

The demo booking page shows the pooled availability of the team, but if we know the qualified lead has a need that one of our team members is well suited to address, we pre-select the team member in the URL we share with the lead, so they automatically book the right person on our team.

The lead can invite as many people as they'd like to the demo. Simply adding their email addresses on the booking form means everyone will get a notification from YouCanBook.me and a booking event for their calendar. No extra steps for them – or for us.

User Training

Not everyone needs a demo. Most YouCanBook.me users get started all on their own, without speaking with us. As they begin taking bookings and fully adopting YouCanBook.me into their workflows, users can register for weekly training sessions to get ideas on how to customize their booking pages to their specific needs.

Users can pick from one of our scheduled training sessions when registering for a training. Each session has a maximum number of attendees, and when the training is full, that slot becomes unavailable on the booking page (using the Units per Slot feature).

Success

Direct access to success managers

Our success managers play the role of trainer, support, consultant and advisor to our biggest customers. Their number one priority is building and maintaining relationships that make these users' jobs easier and their goals more achievable (at our price point, not every customer gets directly managed – but we eagerly provide this for our enterprise customers).

Our outreach to these users is regular and proactive, and we encourage them to book time with us whenever they need it. We love these calls because it keeps us in touch with customers changing needs and priorities which means we can serve them better.

Each success manager gets their own individual booking page, which integrates with their Zoom account (and generates a unique link for each call). SMS reminders for us and for our customers make sure everyone gets to the meeting on time. We use the follow-up email feature to remind ourselves about any tasks that need to be done on the back of the call.

Bespoke booking pages

If ever we need to have more than one person on the team on a call – for a handover from Sales to Success for example – we can easily create a new booking page that shows the mutual availability of both team members. The booking page will only show times that both team members are available.

In these scenarios, the fun bit is creating a completely bespoke booking page – with colors and logo of the Customer – so they know it's been made just for them. It only takes a couple of seconds to create based on an existing template, and the impression goes a long way.

Support

Most users get the answer they need from support over email, but sometimes a conversation is better had – and an issue is more easily explained–- face to face. This booking page is one we reserve for the most intricate support scenarios, and it is set for the pooled availability of the whole team.

We list our Zoom links and allow customers to automatically reschedule or cancel if we're able to solve the problem before we meet.

All-hands Support

Everyone in the company takes a turn at answering support tickets. "All Hands Support," as we call it, is important because it helps the engineering and product team – even the CEO – stay close to our customer.

Our All Hands Support booking page lets everyone book an hour a month when they will hop in the support queue. While most of our Support team is based in the US, the rest of the company is based in Europe and the UK. To make sure we get the right hours of coverage in the email queue, we use Custom Availability. Team members select an hour that works for them, and receive email and SMS reminders before their support shift starts. To make it easy to schedule their next month's shift, we send out a follow up email with a pre-filled link so all they have to do is click on a time.

YouCanBook.me provides flexibility and easy customization for every possible scenario that we have, internal and external. Its powerful automations allow us to drive customer engagement at the rate of a much larger team, enabling us to serve our users, stay tiny, and win awards while we're at it.

Are you ready to use scheduling on your team? If so, we'd love to help you figure it out. Let us know here – we can't wait to hear from you!