How to book appointments with your customers

Businesses have come a long way when scheduling appointments, from the traditional back-and-forth phone conversations to the simplified action of picking a time slot from a booking page. In fact, the effort it takes to schedule and manage appointments keeps reducing with tech enhancements.

This opens up opportunities for you to invest your time into other areas of your business.

What are the different ways to book an appointment?

• Walk-in appointments
• Appointments made via a phone call
• Appointments made via emails
• Creating and sending calendar invites
• A website form that collects details for appointments
• Appointments scheduled through scheduling software (booking links)
• A chatbot that collects appointments from the website
• Appointments booked via APIs on a custom-built app

And of course, today's progress in AI is bound to add new ways for businesses to collect appointments.

But, why is setting up an appointment important?

Setting up an appointment is establishing a commitment. A meeting is a business opportunity that honors each attendee's time to get things done. Taking others' time for granted is unprofessional, especially when meeting with clients or customers.

Setting up an appointment ensures that the following are finalized:

• The meeting's date, time, and duration
• The duration of the meeting
• The participants' availability for the meeting
• The agenda or the purpose for the meeting
• Communication about the required resources or documents

Appointments move the needle for any business. If you’re scheduling a meeting to offer your expertise or a service, then you’re more likely to charge a fee, and that directly impacts your revenue. So ideally, the booking experience you offer should help you get more such appointments from your clients.

How to book appointments with your clients or customers

Based on the list that we’ve shared above, there are various ways a business can choose to schedule appointments with their customers. The steps involved will also vary based on the opted medium.

1) Scheduling appointments via a phone call

Before booking an appointment

• Ensure that your contact number is published across various channels so customers can reach out to you.
• If you’re cold calling your target customers, research beforehand to get their basic business details and some of their pain points.

During appointment booking

• Check for their preferred date and time.
• Verify if you or anyone else from the team is available for that time slot.
• Confirm the availability or suggest an alternative time slot.
• Collect their contact information and send a confirmation message.

After booking an appointment

• Mark the appointment in the team calendar and send a calendar invite.
• Update the concerned team or staff about the appointment.
• Update your CRM or any other system in place to track and automate other appointment-related tasks.

2) Scheduling appointments via email

Before booking an appointment

• Add your email address to the contact information of your website, social handles, and other relevant places so customers can reach out to you.

During appointment booking

• Share a few of your available time slots, or check for your clients' preferred availability.
• Loop in any other stakeholder for the meeting and come to a consensus for the time slot.
• Send an appointment confirmation with the necessary details.
• Send a calendar invite, and create an online meeting link (for a virtual meeting).

Tip: You can use scheduling software like Zoho Bookings and share a booking link to simplify the appointment booking process without any back-and-forth.

After booking an appointment

• Update your CRM with the meeting information.
• Schedule a reminder email if required.

3) Scheduling appointments via contact forms

Before booking an appointment

• Create your contact form on your website with the necessary fields to collect appointment requests.
• Ensure that you’ve added your contact forms to the necessary webpages.
• Ensure that you’ve created an automation where you receive an email for every form submission so that you can follow up.

During appointment booking

• If the contact form displays your available time slots, then customers can choose their preferred time and book an appointment.
• Otherwise, you can send an email confirmation for the meeting if the requested date and time is available.

Tip: You can also set up form submission rules to create a routing form. Based on the responses in the form, you can redirect customers to a Zoho Bookings link to schedule appointments.

After booking an appointment

• Based on the contact forms integration capabilities, it can update data into your CRM or other business apps.

4) Scheduling appointments via appointment scheduling software

Out of all the other ways to schedule appointments, scheduling software like Zoho Bookings simplifies the entire booking process without any manual intervention, scheduling conflicts, or back-and-forth communication.

You can sync it with your calendar, display your availability as time slots, collect more information through a booking form, manage team scheduling, automate appointment reminders and confirmations, integrate with other apps to extend the scheduling process, and so much more.

With Zoho Bookings’ contextual AI, getting started with scheduling software is made quicker and simpler. Based on your business, the AI contextually customizes your in-product labels and creates a new meeting type in your appointment booking dashboard. You can then simply start sharing your scheduling links to book appointments with your customers.

Before booking an appointment

• Create your appointment types and sync your external calendars.
• Add your available times to get booked for appointments.
• Assign team members to get booked in round-robin fashion.
• Conduct virtual meetings with video conferencing apps.
• Configure booking rules and online payment collection.
• Create workflows to send reminder or follow-up emails/SMS messages.

Leverage your booking links for appointment booking

Appointment scheduling software offers you multiple options to share booking links with your customers. This opens new avenues for your business to bring in more customer appointments.

With booking links, you can:

• Share your booking links via email.
• Send booking links via messaging apps.
• Add booking links to your email signature.
• Add a booking widget to your website.
• Hyperlink your booking page link as a website button.
• Add booking links to your social handles.
• Schedule appointments via your CRM.
• Add booking links to customer tickets inside an help desk software like Zoho Desk.
• Schedule appointments from your web chat via Zoho SalesIQ.
• Fetch booking links from a browser extension anytime.
• Manually add appointments within the app.
• Utilize APIs to customize the booking process completely.

After booking an appointment

Since the scheduling app handles tasks like sending reminders, sharing calendar invites, and pushing data to other apps, you can focus on preparing for your meetings or take on other tasks that demand your attention.

However, you can also use the application to:

• Update appointment statuses.
• Easily reschedule or cancel appointments.
• Generate appointment or revenue reports.
• Fetch appointment-related information.
• Export appointment or customer data.

5) Scheduling appointments via a chatbot

Before booking an appointment

• Create and configure a chatbot with the required communication flow.
• Sync your external calendars to add new appointments.
• Add the chatbot to your website.
• Integrate with your CRM and other business apps.

Tip: Integrate with scheduling software like Zoho Bookings to simplify the booking process right within the chat window.

During appointment booking

• Based on the customer's requirement, route them to the relevant booking type.
• With scheduling software, you can show your available time slots, and customers can book an appointment easily.
• Without a scheduling software, you can collect their appointment preferences similar to a webform and confirm your availability manually.

After booking an appointment

• Loop in any other stakeholder for the meeting.
• Send an appointment confirmation with the necessary details.
• Send follow-ups or reminders for the meeting.

10 tips for booking an appointment

1. Ensure that your schedules are updated in your calendar to avoid double-booking or conflicts.

2. Use scheduling software like Zoho Bookings to manage and automate your appointment booking process.

3. Send appointment confirmations with all the necessary details like the date and time, location, meeting links, appointment duration, and other important information that can help customers.

4. Have some buffer time before and/or after your appointments to avoid any hassles.

5. Send reminders before the appointment to avoid no-shows.

6. Suggest two to three time slots to make it easier for your clients to pick one.

7. Convert time zones accurately when meeting with clients virtually across the globe.

8. Send calendar invites to customers once an appointment is booked to be professional and to keep the customer’s schedule up to date.

9. Communicate about your rescheduling or cancellation policies, if any, in the confirmation email you send for the appointment.

10. Ensure that the booking process you opt for can be used on mobile devices as well.

Are you going to book appointments manually or automatically?

The process that you choose shouldn’t make it an obstacle in itself to book more customer appointments. If you find yourself spending a lot of time handling appointment requests, coordinating with your team, and scheduling these appointments, then it’s a clear indication that you need a system in place that can autonomously handle appointment booking once you’ve set it up.

With Zoho Bookings, you can enable scheduling automation for your business. With website widgets and booking links, you can cut down manual tasks and automate the booking process. The best part? You can leverage your booking links in all of your communication channels to get the most out of it. Ready to get started?