Save Time With An Appointment Scheduler
Episode 007
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Points Covered
What is an Appointment Scheduler
Appointment Scheduler features
How I use an Appointment Scheduler in my business
Where to start if you’ve never used an Appointment Scheduler before
Episode Transcript
Hey, everyone, and welcome to Episode 7 of The Seriously Sorted Podcast. Today I want to talk to you about online appointment schedulers and how you can use them to save you time and make you money. I feel like I've spoken about this topic with almost every single one of my clients over the last couple of weeks in some form or another. So I thought what a great topic to talk to you all about on the podcast.
So today, I'll take you through what an online appointment scheduler is, what are some of the features, how to use it to your advantage to save you time and make you money, and a little bit about how I use one in my business.
What is an Appointment Scheduler
Okay, so what is an online appointment scheduler. So an online appointment scheduler is a piece of software that allows clients to see your availability in real time without having full access to your actual personal calendar, someone can then choose a time that suits them, while also knowing that you're going to be available, lock that in with you and have it booked in with your calendar and their calendar at the same time. So I'm sure you can understand why I really like using something like this. It really avoids that back and forth of "I'm available on these days at these times. How about you?" "Oh, I'm only available on this day at this time." It just cuts out all that back and forth and boom, you've got an appointment set within a matter of minutes.
So the two most popular online schedulers, Calendly and Acuity Scheduler they're probably two of the main ones in this realm, and I will make sure I have links to those in the show notes. Both have free versions that you can use, as well as some more premium features as you move up in paid plans. But essentially, from a logistical point of view, what you would do is you would sign up to one of these accounts such as Acuity or Calendly, you would then link your personal calendar, your Gmail or your Outlook calendar, Office calendar, up to the service so that it can view your availability, you can then go in and further select your availability - like you might not want to be available on Mondays and Fridays, for example, to take appointments and things like that. And then you essentially would either embed the schedule into your website so when clients perhaps goes to your contact us page, for example, and wants to book in an enquiry call with you they can see your availability and select a time from there. Or you can send people straight to a dedicated page that has your appointments on it, they both have that facility as well. So that's in a nutshell, pretty neat.
Appointment Scheduler Features
But they all do have lots of different features that you can sort of further build out your availability and your appointment book. Some of them go into this in more of the paid features, and some of them in the free features. But you can essentially have a number of different types of events and appointment types that you can book. You can have sessions that are group bookings, for example. So if you're a personal trainer, you might have a session that has up to five people can book in. You have the ability to have people pay up front when they book an appointment. So if you have a one off strategy session that is sort of not worth a whole client agreement, invoicing, big onboarding process going through for an existing client, you might just want them to pay up front when they book for your strategy session, boom, and it's done. It can also link in with your accounting software and things like that. There's so many integrations that you can use with these software’s. If you like to use Zoom for your meetings, you can link it to Zoom so that they'll always get a Zoom meeting URL in their calendar invitation, things like that. What else can it do? Oh, goodness, you can embed forms within the scheduler. So if you want to take down for example, for an enquiry call, if you would like to get a bit more information, so for in my enquiry call form I have, you know, What is your business name, What is your website, Tell me a bit about your business, What is your pain point, things like that. So right up front, before you even talk to the person, you've got a little bit more information about them.
And one of the best features I think, is being able to set limits on your appointments.
So for example, if you have quite an intensive strategy session that you do with someone, you might want to restrict it that so that only one person can book in with you for that type of session each day. So even if you have the availability for more than one, the system will only let one be booked in each day so that you can manage your time as you wish. So that's a really, really key feature for me is that I have different types of appointments set up and I have different types of restrictions set up on each appointment so that I always energized for each type of appointment, and I'm always giving my best to my clients.
The other great thing that I love that a lot of people don't really think about is that you can actually book the sessions on a client's behalf. So you don't always have to be waiting for a client to book an appointment with you. Let's say you've got a coaching business and it's a five session package. You could be on the phone to the client and be you know, discussing what the availability of you both are and agree on all the sessions in one go and then you could go in to the software and booked all those sessions at the back end. And it will send the client that notifications, rather than relying on the client having to go in and making sure that they're booking in all the times that you agreed upon. So that's a really key one for me as well. When I'm on a call with someone if the natural progression is to book the next session at the end of this one, I'll actually discuss that with the client, and then all go in and book that next session on their behalf. And that way, it's booked into both our calendars, they're going to get the reminders and the text messages and the other fancy things that it can do, rather than just booking it straight into my Outlook calendar and it potentially not having the ability for that person to reschedule or let me know that they need to cancel and things like that.
How I use an Appointment Scheduler in My Business
So I've talked a little bit about it throughout the episode already, but just to sort of list out how I use Acuity Scheduler at the moment, I have my Discovery Call appointment type embedded into my contact page of my website where people can book directly into speak with me on a Zoom call. And then for each of my services, I have each type of appointment that exists within those services set up in Acuity as well. And for the most part, I actually use them myself to book in the clients appointments. But at least they then have the ability to reschedule them as they wish, if something was to crop up, and they needed to reschedule. The only thing more exciting than seeing a new enquiry come through my appointment scheduler is actually when someone uses the scheduler to reschedule their appointment. And I just think, yes, think of all that time saved where we didn't have to go back and forth at the last minute to decide on a new time, it just, I just get very excited.
Where to start if you’ve never used an appointment scheduler before
Okay, so if you're thinking that the thought of an online appointment scheduler that really appeals to you, where should you start? My advice to you would be to start with one appointment type only and see how you go. So I would definitely encourage you if you don't already to use this for your Enquiry call. So that's the best one to start with, because it's a nice simple one that you can embed on your website. It really encourages people to book straight in with you without the back and forth, it will save you so much time.
The other thing I would suggest is having just a little bit of a play around with how the availability restrictions work and just stick with that one appointment for a little while until you get the hang of the availability. So that is the other big point to make in general, when using a scheduler for it to work well, you need to make sure that your personal calendar, your Gmail, your Outlook calendar is as up to date as possible all the time. So it's not going to work if you forget to put in even a personal appointment into your calendar, if you've got a hairdressing appointment at 10 o'clock on Thursday, and it's just in your head, and it's not in your calendar, that means the scheduler won't know about their hair appointment, and someone could potentially book over the time when you're actually not available, and that will just create, obviously not a great experience for the potential client or the client. So that is something to think about.
This only really works well when you use your calendar as your one source of truth for your availability for your life, basically.
So have a real think about that, and that's why I suggest start just start with one appointment like an enquiry because they're often short, which means if you've accidentally forgotten about an appointment that you already had booked, and you need to reschedule with someone, you know, because it's such a short appointment, it's likely that you still might be able to just move it to that same day, for example.
So definitely something to think about is how you use your calendar already, but I can absolutely attest and assure you that once you get the hang of it, I mean, I've got so many appointment types in my Acuity Scheduler, it's not funny, and I just use it religiously. I even use it now for well I use it for my podcast guests, they will book through that scheduler out with a private link, but I use it for even personal Zoom catch ups with biz buds and friends. So that you know, if we need to move it, they can just move it. They know that I'm someone that's always gonna use some kind of scheduler so they're okay with it. But yeah, it's a really wonderful tool to save you time, to make you money, to help you manage your workflow and your workload and to have consistent experiences for customers.
So if you do give it a try, let me know send me a DM @SeriouslySorted on Instagram or Facebook. I'd love to know how you went with it.
your podcast hostess
Lauren Stratford
I’m Lauren and I help overwhelmed creatives like you embrace their strengths, get clear on their customer journey and maximise their impact (without adding to the never ending task list!).
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