What you do with the limited time in your working week is what you get paid for by clients. So poor time management can be one of the greatest inhibitors to your client services business.
At some time in any client services business owner’s life – sometimes even weekly – you encounter what might be described as ‘appointment tennis’: that scenario where you’re trying to book an appointment in somebody’s diary, or they in yours, and you end up with a back and forth of emails trying to arrange something.
It’s a frustrating time killer and often leads to taking appointments on a day, or in a location, you don’t want to have them.
Connectably combines your calendar, email and booking forms into a quick to use appointment scheduling software.
In this help section we cover both the automated appointment booking system, where your leads and clients book time directly into your diary, and also booking appointments from the contact or the opportunity record, where you initiate the meeting request.
Get Appointments Booked Automatically
Save time booking meetings by allowing your prospects and customers to book time with you online.
The Booking Process
The time taken to get your prospects and customers to book meetings with you can be time consuming, playing 'email tennis' to organise a mutually convenient time to meet.
Connectably integrates with your Google Calendar or Outlook (Office365) calendar. The appointment booking function of Connectably allows you to set times that your prospects and customers can book time directly into your calendar.
Contacts will book appointments based on diary rules, then get tagged and added to - or updated on - the system and can be added to follow-up email sequences using the booking information in confirmation and reminder emails.
The video below describes the process end-to-end, including the different parts of the set up:
To set up different types of appointments, head to Appointment Types in settings (section 15) and click the '+ New Appointment Type' button.
General Info
Name: Give your appointment type a name. Contacts will see the name of the appointment when they visit your appointment booking page to select their appointment, so choose something that they will understand.
Duration: Choose a duration for your meetings in minutes. This will be the duration of the meeting that will be booked in your's and your contact's calendars.
Block Off: Choose if you will have the appointment booking system block off time before or time after a meeting, so that you are not overrunning meetings or you are able to allow all-important coffee-drinking time or travel time between your meetings.
External / Internal: Internal meetings are only bookable by users on the Connectably system. External meetings will be bookable by any contact.
Make Zoom Meeting: If meetings are online, and the user has a Zoom online meetings account, then Connectably will not only automatically set up both the meeting in the user and the meeting booker’s diary, but also include Zoom meeting details in the appointment that has been set up.
Show Logo (Yes / No): choose if you show your business logo on the booking form. If you're embedding the form on another page, then you'll likely switch this to 'No'; or if you're using the appointment booking form as a standalone form, then you'll likely want to set this to 'Yes' to give a context to the visitor.
Show Heading (Yes / No): choose if you want to show the 'Book Appointment' heading at the top of the booking form. If you're embedding the form on another page, then you'll likely switch this to 'No'. If you're using the appointment booking form as a standalone form, then if it's not obvious to your visitor why they're on that page, then you'll likely want to set this to 'Yes' to give a context to the visitor. Most users switch this to 'No', however. The booking form and 'Name' of the appointment is usually enough to give your visitor a context for the meeting.
Thank you page URL: If you want appointment bookers to be taken to a thank you page after booking, then include a URL to direct them to a specific page on your website once they've booked the appointment. Here are a couple of examples: general thank you / podcast booking thank you. You can leave this field blank and the booker will receive a confirmation message of booking on the same page.
GDPR Settings
GDPR Checkbox Description / Link to Privacy Policy: Provide details here of what you'd like the booker to agree by way of GDPR consent (e.g. 'I give my consent for you to send me marketing content (GDPR)') and provide a link to the privacy policy on your website that needs to provide further details on how you use data collected.
Availability
Do Not Show Appointment: If you want to be sure of allowing a minimum time before a contact can book a meeting with you, or not allow them to book beyond a certain timeframe, then set time restrictions using the 'Do Not Show Appointment' setting. For example, if you know that you would like to send the contact a few 'introductory' emails before the meeting so they come better prepared, then you may want to not allow them to book time with you for a few days from the time they visit the scheduling page. Limiting how many days or weeks ahead somebody can book typically reduces the number of no-shows or cancellations from contacts later deciding they don't want to meet with you any longer.
Available Slots: Choose to show time slots in combinations and variations of every day, on weekdays, weekends, on specific days, and choose time slots on those days that the appointment selector will look for availability in your calendar. Use the '+' and '-' buttons to add or remove possible availability slots.
Appointment Form Fields
By default, the appointment booking form requests First Name, Last Name and Email Address. If you would like to ask for further details from the contact booking, then select fields from your system in this section. Use the '+' and '-' buttons to add or remove fields. You can set up additional custom fields in your system if you need extra fields in your form.
Tags
Choose tags that will be applied to the contact when they book a meeting. Use the '+' and '-' buttons to add or remove tags to the list. You can set up additional tags to your system if you want to apply additional tags to the contact.
Users
Choose the user calendars that will be checked for availability in the appointment booking selector. Selecting multiple users who can have time booked with them is useful in circumstances where you have multiple sales reps or a team of support staff and it is not important to the contact booking the appointment who their appointment is with.
Saving Your Appointment Type
When all of the settings above have been set, click the orange 'Update Appointment Type' button to save the appointment type in your Connectably system.
Viewing and Testing Your Appointment Scheduler
You can view and test the appointment scheduler for any appointment type by clicking the 'View' button for that appointment. Copy the URL of the 'Book Appointment' page to share it with people who you would like to invite to book time with you.
You can practice making an appointment by selecting an appointment and filling in the form (perhaps as yourself, or with a test email), going through the three steps of 'Book Appointment', 'Your Details' and 'Booking Confirmation'. Clicking the orange 'Confirm' button in the 'Booking Confirmation' section adds the booking to your calendar. As Connectably adds the appointment into the user's calendar, that system (Google Calendar or Office 365) will send the invitation out to the contact booking the meeting.
