Calendly – Less Scheduling, More Work
There’s an adage – “Time is Money” – and it applies to every person and organization. Appointments, sending reminders, and follow-ups are all crucially important to maintain a successful workflow. But often, scheduling hundreds of appointments every week can be a stressful task. It can suck at your productivity, and eventually affect your deadlines.
Did you know that on an average, making phone calls to schedule/reschedule, or cancel an appointment takes around 8 minutes? This means that scheduling a mere seven calls can fill up an entire work hour. If an employee’s wage is $20 per hour and he/she spends an hour every day scheduling appointments, you could be spending nearly $5,500 a year on call scheduling!
Why not save all that money by using automated scheduling software? You would also become more productive with such a tool in your hands.
And if you’re wondering which tool to use for the purpose, we’ve got the perfect solution – Calendly.
Calendly – An all-in-one solution for all your scheduling needs
Calendly is automated scheduling software that simplifies the process of setting up meetings. The software eliminates the need to exchange emails back and forth for knowing the schedule of every attendee before setting up a meeting. It can find meeting times that work for your entire team, and then schedule them automatically so that no-one’s time is wasted.
Set meeting preferences
The software offers a variety of meeting preferences that give you ownership of your schedule. For example, you can fix how many meetings you wish to attend each day, and how much time you need between meetings. Calendly has a feature called “available times” that lets others know about your preferences.
Different Meeting Types
Calendly supports a variety of meeting types to meet your business needs. You can schedule a team meeting or a one-to-one meeting as per requirement. You can also send an invitation to multiple invitees when hosting webinars. The software allows you to automatically distribute meetings to your team members based on various factors like availability, priority, and equity.
Automated workflows
Calendly gives you the ability to automate text messages when an email is booked, request for follow-ups meetings, email reminders, thank-you emails, feedback surveys, and more.
Metrics
The software provides you with metrics to track campaign scheduling activity, attendance, and invitee engagement.
How it works?
Calendly has an easy to use interface and its work can be explained in five steps.
1. Account setup
Sign up with email or Google credentials and fill in the required details. You also have the option of integrating Google Calendar during the registration process.
2. Event creation
An event refers to an available time slot in Calendly’s terms. The interface gives you a clear glimpse of who sees your available time slots and how they’re used. You can create different event types when you’re available, and others can select slots accordingly. You can also fix your weekly schedule.
3. Calendar sharing
Calendly allows you to share your event calendar with other users. After you’ve personalized all event types in your calendar, you can invite users to book them or join. When you send the link, they can see the available time slots and choose the best one that suits them. You can share the calendar link via social media, website, SMS message, or any other means.
4. Integration with other calendars
You can integrate other calendars while creating a Calendly account or add them to your account later. It’s easy to access other calendars through the “Calendar Connection” option. After you’ve added another calendar, the data is automatically synced. You can also remove any calendars easily.
5. Automation
Calendly offers seamless integration with more than 1500+ apps. Some integrations like Zapier allow you to automate the workflow while some allow you to import contact lists from CRM.
How to Use Calendly – Video:
Evaluating Calendly
No software is perfect, and Calendly too has its share of strengths and weaknesses. It has so many desirable features, but like every other software, it also has some drawbacks that will slow down your decision-making process.
What we like?
- Makes schedule setting a breeze
Calendly displays the names and schedules of all invited members. It allows you to go ahead with meetings by checking their schedules and you don’t have to go back and cancel or reschedule meetings due to conflicting schedules. In simple words, it lets you know who can attend in advance. - Schedule as per availability
There’s no point in scheduling a meeting if another person isn’t available. Calendly allows the invited member to view the schedule of the concerned person and select a meeting time that fits their availability. No more phone calls or direct communication to choose a time slot. - Merge with other calendars
Calendly works efficiently with other calendars. If you have a scheduled appointment on another calendar, Calendly will make a note of it and ensure you don’t miss it.
What we don’t like?
- Lack of clarity on user response
Calendly doesn’t show you how many users clicked the link schedule but didn’t give confirmation. This leaves a lot of room for uncertainty as you think the other person has not yet seen the link while in reality he/she may have checked it without confirming. - Crashes Occasionally
The app runs slowly and experiences crashes occasionally. The glitch experience does cause some frustration when you’re in the middle of scheduling an important appointment.
Make meeting scheduling efficient and hassle-free with @calendly calendly.com/ via @supermonitoring
Final Verdict
When you have so much to handle in the office, scheduling meetings over the phone can break the workflow and dent your productivity. Calendly is a simple yet powerful automated scheduling tool that makes it easy to connect with others for work. It gives every user the flexibility to accommodate others’ schedules and keep productivity high.
