Moving potential leads through to confirmed customers can often be about shaping the pathway of least resistance: making it as simple as possible for a prospective browser to take you up on your offer and move on with their day, uninterrupted.
When it comes to offering services that are attached to appointments, shaping the process from interest through to booking to be as simple as possible is crucial in converting casual browsers through to confirmed clients. No matter the service industry youโre in, taking time to manually confirm, decline or change appointments is a costly admin exercise at every touchpoint. For your customers, too, who are juggling their own busy schedules, being able to access immediate availabilities and confirm what works within their schedule is key to a smooth booking experience.
There are a number of great apps on the market that offer seamless integrated booking automations, designed to remove the booking clutter from your inbox + keep your customers coming back for more. Hereโs a range of the top contenders for the job.
Calendly – Calendly is a powerful piece of scheduling software thatโs all about simplicity. Book appointments, meetings and events while eliminating the frustrating back-and-forth of schedule comparisons and availability checks. Calendly allows you to set your availability based on automated checking of your existing calendar, opening up one-on-one invitations, sending out round robin meeting bookings or bringing groups together for webinars or training purposes. Calendly offers a robust notification system that can lead to a direct increase across your no-show rate and is smart enough to build in buffers between events as per your direction. With automated time zone detection, Calendlyโs set up for global activity, ready to go when you are.
Acuity touts itself as โyour online assistant, working 24/7 to fill your scheduleโ. Acuity is also an appointment scheduling tool that can be used to offer classes, private sessions or subscriptions with ongoing consultations. It also offers client intake forms within its scheduling environment, collecting crucial data at the point of booking confirmation that can enhance your ability to serve your clients according to their individual needs. Confirmations can be branded, as can reminders and follow-ups, to ensure personalised professionalism at every point of engagement
YouCanBook.Me is another app that offers direct calendar integration, personalised booking pages, time zone detection and customisable follow-ups. YouCanBook.Me can also offer automated creation of Zoom conference details for each meeting, eliminating another manual step in the process thatโs become all too common in the time of online business practice. With direct integration with Zapier, YouCanBook.Me can be the portal that brings your booking data into thousands of wider services.