Call Center Software

Best Appointment Scheduler Software: Features, Types & Benefits

Last Updated: December 13, 2023

Staying organized is one of the major obstacles business owners stumble upon. You have to manage client bookings, reschedule somebody on brief notice, and deal with last-minute cancellations.

Add the ever-changing regulations, a global pandemic, and remote working to the mix, and booking appointments can overwhelm your corporate day-to-day.

With more and more virtual client calls and online meetings happening over time, are you confident you will not miss any crucial appointments?

Well, if you have not included online phone call scheduling in your enterprise communication armory, the time is ripe to do so.

Phone call scheduling software eliminates the menial, repetitive tasks pertaining to managing bookings and lets you focus on core business operations. The tech-enabled solution boasts several perks, particularly if setting appointments is critical to your business.

What is an Appointment Scheduler?

An appointment scheduler is a software tool that lets your clients self-book, reschedule or cancel appointments. Businesses use the scheduler to automate appointment scheduling, removing receptionists from the process. It puts your business calendar online so your clients can choose an available date and time for an appointment without having to contact you.

From the backend, you can set your business hours, availability, and other parameters for the booking. You also have the option to block time off when you or your staff are unavailable.

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What Does an Appointment Scheduler Do?

An appointment scheduling app helps you centralize all your appointments into one digital solution. It syncs with your calendar and gives you a bird’s eye view of all appointments, staff availability, and holidays.

Since the scheduling takes place digitally, you can entirely prevent double booking and overbooking. You can also have the online scheduler send automatic reminders to avoid missing any meetings.

Benefits of Appointment Scheduling Software

With manual appointment or call scheduling, conflicts such as phone tag, double-booking, or no-shows are bound to happen. You can avoid all these occurrences with a calendar scheduler.

Let’s look at some compelling benefits of appointment scheduler software.

Helps Attract and Retain Customers

A lengthy and complicated booking process will frustrate potential customers and turn them away. You can attract and retain customers by providing them with a convenient way of booking appointments through an online scheduler.

Prevents Double-Booking

Since the booking is automated, you will not accidentally double-book your clients. You won’t have to worry about disappointing or losing your customers on that account.

Improves Staff Efficiency

With an online scheduler, you will no longer need a dedicated receptionist to book appointments. You can employ them for other important tasks and improve their efficiency.

Minimizes No-Shows

The software tracks upcoming appointments and sends automatic reminders to you and your clients. It will reduce the chance of missing the meeting on both sides.

Enhances Revenue

Scheduling software speeds up the booking process, saves staff time, and prevents missed appointments. All this translates to more business opportunities and higher revenue for your company.

Types of Appointment Scheduling Software

All businesses schedule their appointments differently based on their infrastructure and client needs. Here are some popular appointment types you can schedule using appointment scheduler software.

Time-Slot Scheduling

The software displays available slots for customers to choose from and book appointments. They receive the booking confirmation via email or SMS.

Wave Scheduling

This type of scheduling allows a wave of customers at a time. They are served in the order they arrive.

Wave and Walk-In Appointment Scheduling

This scheduling approach lets customers book appointments for a specific time while the remaining period is kept open for walk-in customers.

Open Booking

This scheduling method gives customers a time range instead of a specific time for the appointment. The customers are served on a first-come-first basis.

Double Scheduling

Double scheduling allows two customers to schedule their appointment at the same time. It helps meet urgent customer needs when a business is already fully-scheduled.

Cluster Scheduling

Here, customers with similar needs are grouped together and given a single slot. It enables businesses to provide quicker and more efficient service.

Matrix Scheduling

A matrix calendar scheduler is used when your appointment scheduling is based on the availability of resources and staff. All the parameters are made available in a single calendar for easy cross-reference.

40/20 Scheduling

This scheduling spreads customer appointments over the hour. If the first appointment is set for this hour, the 2nd is placed after 20 minutes and the 3rd after 40 minutes.

Best Features of Appointment Scheduling Software

Appointment booking does not end with fixing dates with clients. You also must deal with rescheduling requests, changing staff availability, and following up on booked appointments.

Appointment scheduling software manages all these aspects with the key features given below.

Calendar Integration

Most third-party appointment scheduling apps can integrate with your existing calendar. This way, you can coordinate all appointments and staff availability in a single platform.

Real-time Appointment and Rescheduling

Not just booking but rescheduling and canceling an appointment is also self-service and automated with an online scheduler.

Automated Follow-Ups and Reminders

You can set up your scheduler to follow up on upcoming appointments and send reminders via email, text messages, or call.

Payment Processing

Some schedulers also provide integration with online payment gateways. It makes it easier for businesses to collect payment while booking appointments.

Waitlist Management

Businesses with high demand can optimize their schedule by quickly filling up cancelled or rescheduled appointments with customers on the waitlist.

Why Do You Need an Appointment Scheduler?

Appointment scheduling software streamlines the process of booking appointments for you as well as your clients. In a world driven by prompt communications, the appointment scheduler is a quick and convenient solution for planning your meetings efficiently.

Ease of Access

The online appointment scheduler is accessible through multiple devices. Clients can book meetings/appointments from anywhere and at any point in the day. In this way, you can increase your chances of getting more appointments.

Naturally, the more appointments you have, the more conversions you can get.

Smooth Self-Booking

A big advantage of appointment scheduling is that it allows clients to independently book meetings with you. There is no need for multiple correspondences between you and your clients.

All you need to do is provide clients with open slots which they can pick from. The appointment automatically reflects in your calendar. So, in just a few steps, you are able to schedule meetings with your clients and vice versa.

Put an End to No-Shows

On the flip side, the absence of a meeting scheduler can lead to a whole lot of wasted time and potential loss of customers.

Build a Rapport from the Get-go

Lead conversions thrive on meetings with prospects. Deciding on a mutually agreeable time and date for a meeting will likely take many emails and texts.

But, with the appointment scheduler, you can create a sleek, hassle-free experience for leads right from the outset. It only goes on to leave a good impression on the prospects and increase your chances of conversion.

Save Time and Effort

The appointment scheduler provides an additional layer of convenience. It spares you the unnecessary time and effort that would otherwise go into booking these meetings.

Imagine having to go through a series of back-and-forth emails before you finally decide on a time slot. With the online meeting scheduler, you just have to make your available slots visible on your public calendar.

Your clients can select from the available slots and make a booking.

Minimizes Costs

An online scheduler also reduces costs at various levels.

For starters, most of the administrative tasks around scheduling and managing your calendar are taken care of. In this way, your agents get more time on hand for important tasks, which eventually contributes to revenue for your business.

This also removes the need for hiring an administrative assistant. The software takes up most of the work done at a much lower cost.

Removes the Room for Error

Manually entering meeting details can lead to mistakes. This could mean double bookings and entering the wrong time slots leading to cancellations and loss of leads.

But, the appointment scheduler ensures that there are no such complications. Since attendees select meeting slots on their own, there is no almost no scope for error.

Moreover, there are automated reminders for confirmation.

Keep Sales Reps in the Know

Phone call scheduling software not only lets companies manage customer-facing interactions more effectively but also offers sales reps more visibility into whom they are serving and why.

With pre-scheduled bookings, your sales team will know the exact purpose of the appointment and can offer personalized experiences to the clients accordingly.

Learn More About Your Business

AI-driven analytics deliver appointment details from which you can pull out valuable data. These insights will help you tweak your calendar accordingly.

And when you know which are your top-selling offerings, you can market and sell them better.

JustCall: The Best Appointment Scheduler for your Business

Looking for appointment scheduling software for a small business? Look no further than JustCall.

The Appointment Scheduler by JustCall makes the process of booking meetings effortless both for you as well as your customers. You can set up your public calendar based on your preferences and sync it with your Google and Outlook calendars.

Meanwhile, your clients can pick a time slot from your public calendar and book a meeting with just a few clicks.

Setting up meetings becomes a lot simpler and quicker with the Appointment Scheduler. To fix meetings, you don’t need to have multiple back-and-forth conversations over emails. Clients can self-book meetings to avoid any hassle or confusion. And each appointment automatically gets reflected in your calendar.

Connecting the appointment scheduler with your Google/Outlook calendar ensures none of your appointments clash. There are automated reminders to keep the attendees informed and prevent no-shows.

Most importantly, JustCall encompasses a suite of features that make it easier for teams to evade organizational fatigue. The Appointment Scheduler is designed to help you manage meetings with minimal human intervention.

Getting started with the Appointment Scheduler is very simple and helps make your work routines a lot more productive.

How the JustCall Appointment Scheduler Works

1. Open Your Appointment Scheduler

Create a JustCall account and log into your account.

To create your public calendar, go to the Sidebar on the dashboard, click on ‘Scheduler’, and then click on ‘Appointment Scheduler’. Your public calendar is what becomes visible to the client. This is where you can offer up slots for meetings.

Next, click on ‘Add’ and create a name for your calendar. Click on ‘continue’ to complete setting up your public calendar. You can create more than one calendar for different purposes. And, you can add team members to your calendar, as well.

You can create a link to the public calendar for your clients. On opening the link, your clients can select from the available slots in your public calendar. You can share this link on your website, emails, etc. You have the option to customize your link as per your requirements.

2. Setting Up Your Public Calendar

Now, it’s time to start populating your calendar. You can choose the type of calendar, the name of the calendar, the slots on your calendar, and the timezone for your calendar.

You may want to create different calendars for different departments and/or products. Make sure to name these calendars accordingly.

You can set a default time zone for the calendar. In this case, you will have to pick a time zone, depending on the location of your target audience.

Lastly, you can set time slots for appointments by selecting the duration of each meeting.

3. Add Team Members

A single agent cannot carry the weight of all the appointments. This feature allows you to share your calendar with your team members. Your team members will get a notification every time an appointment gets scheduled.

Appointment-Scheduler-Team-Collaboration

The time slots are automatically removed from the public calendar as and when the team members are booked.

4. Add Working Hours

Add your working hours to the appointment scheduler. This is where you can add your available days and time slots during which you will be available for appointments.

You can add available team members for each day. The slots are distributed amongst the team members through the round-robin method. This ensures that appointments are allotted in a cyclic order, without putting too much burden on any of the team members at a time.

appointment-scheduler-agent-availability

5. Add Webhooks

With webhooks, you can fetch data from across platforms in an easy and convenient manner. For instance, you may want to sync information between the appointment scheduler and CRM. By adding webhooks, you can easily transfer data from one platform to another.

6. Embed Website Widgets

Next, you may choose to embed your public calendar on your specific website pages that have high traffic. You can achieve this by using website widgets. In this way, you can convert website visitors into leads and get more bookings.

You also have the option to send the code directly to your developer.

7. Check for Conflicts

Team members can sync their Google and Outlook calendars with the JustCall Appointment Scheduler. This helps avoid any overlaps with your existing professional or personal engagements.

appointment-scheduler-check-for-conflicts

With the ‘Add to Calendar’ feature, you can directly save scheduled events from your Appointment Scheduler into your Google/Outlook calendars.

Appointment-scheduler-software-for-meetings

8. Set up Your Confirmation Page

The clients will see a confirmation page once they book a slot on the calendar. You can simply show them the JustCall confirmation page once they schedule a meeting.

Alternatively, you can redirect them to an external custom page and add the URL for that page.

9. Customize Your Email Notifications

Your clients also receive email notifications once they book a meeting. For this, first, enable the option to send email notifications. You can customize the email notification that clients will receive.

Customizable fields include first and last name, calendar name, customer slot time, phone, email, and notes.

10. Send Text/Email Reminders

Finally, to avoid no-shows, team members can send out text and email reminders to attendees.

11. Schedule Calls and Appointments Manually

You can manually schedule meetings and calls on the JustCall calendar as well. Moreover, this functionality allows you to share the manually added calls with team members.

Now that you know how to get started with the appointment scheduler, let’s take a better look at the features and functionalities.

The JustCall Appointment Scheduler: A Quick Feature Run-Down

Busy agents and reps can benefit from call center appointment scheduling software such as JustCall, especially since it has a suite of calling features.

Here’s a quick rundown of all the features that come in handy:

Integrate Your Google/Outlook Calendar

Let’s say you are using Google/Outlook calendar for logging your other professional or personal engagements. In such cases, making sure your meetings do not clash with other events or appointments is important. This would typically mean going and back forth between the Appointment Scheduler and your calendars.

JustCall integrates with your Google/Outlook calendars, automatically removing your busy slots from the Public Calendar. For instance, you have a team meeting booked at 12 pm in your Google Calendar. With the ‘Check for conflict’ feature, you can avoid any overlaps between your 2 calendars. This also saves events from the Appointment Scheduler to your Google/Outlook Calendars.

Smooth Team Collaboration

The Appointment Scheduler enables smoother coordination between team members through the team collaboration features. Taking appointments single-handedly can be counterproductive for agents. Each team member can sync their respective Google/Outlook calendars with the Appointment Scheduler.

The Appointment Scheduler uses round-robin scheduling to distribute the scheduled events among the team members evenly. Round-robin scheduling allocates the calls to team members in a cyclic order.

Agents can add their working hours to their respective calendars. Your Public Calendar, in this sense, accounts for agent availability as well.

Appointment Reminders

Appointment or meeting reminders are an underestimated tool for lead generation. But, no-shows turn out to be a big problem. Appointment reminders help overcome this hurdle and ensure better attendance.

The Appointment Scheduler lets you send email reminders as well as text-based reminders with Zapier. This reduces the chances of no-shows and improves your lead-generation capabilities.

Add Website Widgets

Turn your website visitors into leads by using website widgets. You can embed the calendar to your high-traffic generating pages.

Instead of providing visitors with a link to your public calendar, you can place it right there on your website. In this way, you make booking appointments a lot more convenient for clients.

Webhooks to Transfer Data Across Platforms

With Webhooks, you can easily fetch data from one platform to another. For instance, you may want to log data from your appointment scheduler into your CRM. Webhooks allow you to easily transfer data from the Appointment Scheduler to other platforms, with ease.

Why You Need an Appointment Scheduler