My continuing theme is various apps / software programs and how they can help you in your business. The topics are:
1. Accounting
2. CRM
4. Appointments / calendars
This week I want to look at some of the apps you can use to help you to manage appointments.
Do you have a business where you would like people to be able to book calls or face to face appointments with you? Before the pandemic you might not have thought of this as an option, but now many businesses set up apps to allow clients or others to arrange a time to speak – maybe on Zoom or Teams. It can all be seamless if you set it up correctly, so that the meeting gets created automatically, as you wish.
You might also run classes or courses and you can use these apps as a way to get people to book for those – and pay online.
There are a number of options available (as ever) but the ones you have probably heard of would include Calendly, Acuity Scheduling (this links to Squarespace) and Appointedd.
Most have a free trial where you can see how the app might work for you, and again you need to be clear about what you want the app to do before you launch yourself into your free trial. The free trial will generally give you access to all the features, so take the time to think about what you will need so that you can work out how the pricing would affect you.
Allowing people to book time with you has several benefits:
• It’s on 24/7, so you can have the link on your website, on your email footer, in a Lead Magnet – and you will just get a notification that the call or meeting is scheduled
• You can be clear about the time limits – the app will generally let you schedule different lengths of appointment – this sets the expectation right from the start regarding how much time you are giving (either paid or free!)
• You can be in control of YOUR time. You can (and should) build in buffer time before and after each meeting or call.
Also – and I can’t recommend this highly enough – DO NOT just open up your calendar for people to book any time – have pre-determined days and times when you will accept calls – otherwise you won’t be able to get uninterrupted time to get on with something meaty!
If you want to sell classes or courses – for single clients or multiples – then these apps are great. You can set the times, and the capacity, and the price – and just let people book on! And you can make them book a set of classes – e.g. a 6 week block.
Integration is of course the key here you need to integrate with your calendar (outlook or google) so that everything is synchronised, so that if you add something to your google calendar then that slot will become unavailable for booking. If you pay for multiple users then you can manage all the calendars for your team.
You can also integrate with a payment app such as Stripe or Paypal so that you can take payments by card. And you can use Zapier to add any new contacts to your CRM! (and lots more).
So again – the question is – what do YOU need the app to do? Make a list of the things YOU need and then you will be able to evaluate the different options. Again – think about what other apps you might want this to talk to in addition to your calendar – what do you use regularly?
Hopefully this has given you some food for thought and I am always happy to chat about what you might need.
Do let me know if you want to know about other types of apps.
Get in touch if you would like to discuss further.