5 Infusionsoft / AppointmentCore Tips That Make Client Scheduling Work

by Ted Moskovitz, AppointmentCore

If scheduling troubles have ever left you feeling like this poor guy, you’re not alone.

We've all been stuck in the back-and-forth hassle of trying to find a time to meet with someone. Whether you’re a consultant, personal trainer, sales team, yoga/martial arts class instructor or recruiter, we all spend too much time scheduling sessions and meetings.

Our team has found that it takes an average of 5-6 back-and-forth emails and 10 minutes of productive time to schedule a single meeting. If you have 5 meetings a day, this totals 6 hours per week, and 312 hours a year. What could your business do with TWO EXTRA MONTHS OF PRODUCTIVITY every year?

On the flip side, recent research showed that 72% of individuals who began automating appointment scheduling generated additional revenue, and 62% saved more than 30 minutes per day. Most impressively, over half of people said they generate more appointments now that they have automated their scheduling.

Here Are the Top 5 Scheduling Automation Tricks Used by Infusionsoft Pros:

1. Keep your business or organization open 24 hours a day with an online scheduler.
   Many of your customers have their own jobs from 9-5 and would love to schedule their meetings after hours. But, you only have schedulers staffing the phones during business hours. By automating your scheduling you allow people to book themselves into your calendar 24/7. Now your business is running ever when you’re asleep.
2. Increase conversions by embedding a calendar directly onto your website:
   Scheduling Automation isn’t just about saving time, its about increasing your conversions as well. We all have calls to action on our websites (if you don’t, you should!! Whether “Schedule a Demo,” or “Book a Lesson,” or Z, the easier we make it for someone to take this step, the more likely they will be to take it. Seems easy enough, right? So, instead of requiring someone call or email you to speak, embed an automated calendar directly onto your website to get prospects on the phone.
3. Coordinate multiple staff members' calendars using Round Robin and Rotate Availability.
   ALTERNATIVE #3: Use Scheduling Automation to Appear Accessible While Maintaining Control
   Why did we build this product? Well we want to seem available to our customers and clients, but we also need a high degree of control over our calendar. So how would we normally do this? Generally we tell our assistant “hey, I don’t want to wake up before 8, don’t want mtgs until 9, I like to have a coffee break around 11, but if you book me mtgs back to back make sure I have time for lunch. But this person still makes mistakes. Sometimes you want to be able to add things to your calendar on the fly, but you want to make sure you are never double booked. So, what’s the solution?  All of the things we just said you should tell your assistant should instead be “told” to an automated scheduling solution. You set it once, and then you’re done. No more checking your calendar, no more back and forth, no more human error. No more frustrated schedulers, who are now free to spend their time on far more productive tasks.
4. Stay connected and engaged with your customers with followup, coupons, specials.
   Automatically send follow text and emails offering discounts or coupons to your customers. You can also automatically send qualitative surveys to gain insight about your customer’s experience. With AppointmentCore, you can send as many followup text or email reminders as you like.
5. Link your Booking Link to your webform or invoice for a seamless, automated scheduling experience.
   Allow customers to pay for your services online right when they book. Not only will you decrease unnecessary trips to the bank, but you’ll also see a decrease in cancellations when customers have prepaid.
6. Use AppointmentCore to Save Yourself Time and Money
   AppointmentCore was the 2013 Infusionsoft Battle of the Apps Champion, beating out about 100 other Apps. They won for a reason. AppointmentCore is an easy and slick scheduling automation tool built specifically for Infusionsoft users. Its very deeply integrated, so all of the time saving tips discussed above can be done with AppointmentCore right out of the box. For example whenever someone books with you using AppointmentCore, you can automatically create a contact record and/or apply a tag to an existing user. This allows you to kick off a campaign any time someone books an appointment with you. It also makes use of Infusionsoft timers and custom fields—it’s a great feature, and the reason we stopped searching for other tools. Most importantly, the AppointmentCore team You can sign up for your 30-day free trial of AppointmentCore HERE.