5 Keys to Appointment Scheduling Automation

Ever wondered how to get close to qualified leads and strike a conversation that eventually clinches the deal. Prospects who often ask for help by scheduling a call of a short duration are more inclined to purchase your product. They are more qualified as they have all the necessary information in place and want to know a little more to fill the gaps in their awareness. This is also a good sign for the sales reps as the cycle becomes short by doing away with the top of the sales funnel and getting straight to the business. If you want to make the most of this process, a better appointment scheduling software can get you there.

For any growing business, appointment scheduling with prospects and customers can turn out to be a tedious task. Based on the size of their business and the volume of calls that go in and out every day, they can adopt an appointment scheduling software that simplifies the process.

Here are five keys for appointment scheduling automation:

1) Use Online Calendar Links

The best way for a sales rep to ask a prospect to schedule an appointment is by dropping the calendar link in the email signature. After going through the sales pitch, the prospect then may click the link and schedule an appointment. This saves his/her time for browsing the website to find the link or reply on the email to get one.

For website visitors, you can display the calendar of sales reps and tech support executives so that the prospect or customer can freeze the available slots for further help. Here’s what the call scheduling page of Agile CRM looks like.

2) Trigger Tasks and Campaigns

Appointment scheduling automation when coupled with CRM software helps you to trigger tasks based on the action of the prospect. You can run a campaign to send newsletters or discount coupons to a prospect who is interested in your product.

In the above example, as soon as you receive a sign-up you can run a campaign to send the calendar link to fix an appointment.

3) Sync Multiple Calendars

Another striking feature of automated appointment scheduling is integration with other calendars such as Google, Outlook and Office 365. You can view the schedules and activities of all the calendars with a single calendar access with info pulled from all calendars.

4) Group Appointment Scheduling

The online appointment scheduling software can become more productive when you use it for Group Appointment Scheduling. The calendars of all the CRM users can be shared with a single scheduling URL. The contacts can pick the person and time slot as per their convenience and set up a meeting. With this new addition, it will be a win-win situation for both customers and executives. The sales and support staff can manage the call load among team members.

5) Gathering Leads

The appointment scheduling software integrated with CRM automatically creates a new contact record for anyone who books a new meeting. It helps you to gather leads and capture their details such as phone number, email, Skype id. You can add tags to the contact for proper segmentation. As you publish the appointment calendar to your blog or website, you can get more appointments from your leads. This opens up a parallel track for lead generation. You can keep a track of your appointments with the customers alongside giving them onboarding support.

So next time when you are tired of playing around with manual appointment scheduling, embrace automation for better performance of your reps in the smartest way. This eliminates the old school technique and makes way for best practices at your workplace. Place the calendar links everywhere – emails, website, campaigns so as to get hot leads in your sales funnel.