- Multiple Event Types
- Custom Themes and Branding
- Multi-User Support
- Group Sessions
- Resource Pools and Fair Distribution
- Time Zone Adaptation
- Categories and Tags
- Accessibility
- Localization
- Panel Meetings
- Reports
- SMS Notifications
1. Multiple Event Types
Scheduling meetings generally hit roadblocks when factoring in various event types. With this software, you can add multiple event types and the availability of employees to your booking pages. Sometimes, you may want to choose employees with a specialty in a particular domain. The software provides this functionality as well, thereby allowing you to cater to the specifics of a particular event. Thus, you have not only provided your employees with the best match of their skills, but you also have satisfied customers.
The following are some possible configurations for an event type.
Multiple Scheduling Options
There are a couple of ways in which you can do this. Firstly, some bookings may require the approval of a higher authority. Secondly, some of them might take place over time as a series of meetings, while others may require a single session. The final category involves either an individual customer or a group of customers. The software provides you with the ability to incorporate all of the above scenarios.
Multiple Time Rules
In some cases, there are only a select few within the company that can handle an event, and they may not always be available. To serve this purpose, you can create an event type with a set of time slots subject to the availability of these employees. You can also add a set of rules to ease the workload of these employees. From a customer standpoint, you can incorporate time zone differences and the commonly asked for time slot durations.
Custom Booking Forms
To diminish monotony, you can differentiate event types with different booking forms. It helps in collating information specific to a scenario. The data collected can be used for the analysis of improvements that you could incorporate.
Customer Notifications
Certain kinds of customers and customer events may require specific types of reminders, confirmation, and follow-up messages. The platform allows you to make modifications to customer notifications to cater to particular event types.
2. Custom Themes and Branding
Branding more often than not decides the success of a website. ScheduleOnce has its own rich set of hand made themes. If you are not satisfied, you can put your design skills to the test with their inbuilt designer. The platform provides you with the opportunity to modify both the hand made themes as well as allows you to create themes from scratch. You can set properties such as your brand logo, different backgrounds for different pages of your site as well as the font family, to name a few.
You can also apply a single theme across a multitude of pages. Also, if you are worried about breaking your site with a design change, the software handles this as well by seamlessly deploying your changes. Generally, branding takes on many forms. You can customize emails sent to clients as well as certain vital aspects of your website. Another critical area to showcase your brand would be the page your customer lands on once they schedule a booking. A good branding experience is a precursor to the customer becoming a successful convert.
3. Multi-User Support
Every organization has some form of hierarchy that extends to teams as well. As a manager or administrator, you may want to restrict access to certain aspects of the company. The software provides you with the ability to assign something called ‘roles.’ Essentially, this means that the team member has access to only those features that you associate with a particular ‘role.’ You can use this feature for teams involving multiple members as well.
You can use another feature called pooled availability while designing a booking page. What it means is that every scenario can make use of a set of team members having either the same or different roles. This feature then automatically chooses the most appropriate team member from the list.
The following are certain key aspects to be noted.
User Management
- Administrators are vested with the power to create and delete users, as well as change user types.
- Transferring ownership of a booking and restricting access, as stated above, for a page are offered as well.
User Notifications
- Notifications are a smart way to keep track of the occurrence of events as well as certain essential information associated with it.
- For example, a sales employee may get a notification pop up about the cancellation of a sales call.
Calendar Privacy
- In these changing times, Privacy is one aspect that one cannot afford to overlook.
- The software takes excellent care in ensuring that the personal and organization-specific appointments of a team member are separated. In this way, the administrator and other users do not have access to the user’s personal information.
Centralized Billing
- The platform records information about every payment made through the platform for every sales call. The software generates a centralized invoice detailing every transaction involving an employee.
4. Group Sessions
Due to time or budget constraints, a company may find itself unable to cater to every customer individually. Webinars are an excellent example of sessions broadcasting knowledge to a multitude of an audience in one sitting. This feature allows multiple customers to make a booking for the same time slot. To ensure that the team member is not overwhelmed, a cap can be set on the number of customers as well.
As soon a slot becomes full, the software hides it from the customer view. Group sessions are an excellent way not only for companies to save time but also for customers to get access to meetings at discounted rates. Companies can offer discounts for sessions with multiple customers. It is indeed a win-win situation for everyone involved.
5. Resource Pools And Fair Distribution
Sometimes, you may want to categorize booking pages catering to specific attributes. The software allows you to group based on department, time zones, skill set, or any aspect you deem essential. As a manager, you can keep track of canceled events, events where users never showed up, or events that were re-scheduled. In essence, this is what a Resource Pool is. This kind of flexibility of assigning a group to an event goes a long way in ensuring the managerial process is exceptionally smooth.
There are also two ways in which you can assign events to your employees. If employee satisfaction and consequently a fair distribution is what you have in mind, Round Robin assignment is for you. Round Robin refers to creating a list of employees and assigning the event to the next person on the list while ignoring other factors. Round Robin grants every member a fair opportunity. The other type of assignment is the Priority assignment. As the name suggests, it ensures that the most capable member of the team is assigned an event. The software does this to ensure that the customer has the best possible experience. Generally, a mixture of both Round Robin and Priority assignment would do great good for the organization.
Cancellations, postponements, or absence of customers for an event are inevitable. The software factors this in when a manager has to assess their employees. The software’s Auto-Correct Distribution Algorithm ensures that such mishaps do not hamper the team member’s chances and, consequently, performance.
6. Time Zone Adaptation
With technology connecting every nook and cranny, intercountry, and intercontinental meetings have become more widespread. The software keeps in mind different time zones and aspects such as Daylight-Saving time. Thus, both the customer and employee can rest assured that the software will pick a convenient slot for meetings.
7. Categories and Tags
More often than not, bombarding a customer with a lot of options is considered a bad practice in user experience design. The customer can easily find the website daunting and opt for an alternative. Categories and Tags allow the customer to find pages relevant to them. From the organization’s perspective, it leads to better organization of booking pages.
8. Accessibility
Accounting for the disabled is what makes a platform even better. The software makes use of the latest standards in accessibility design to support the blind and visually impaired by providing screen readers. Customers with low vision or color blindness can also find the website easy to use.
9. Localization
There’s no better way to convert a prospect than by providing content in their native tongue. The software has options to change the language on booking pages. It currently supports French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch with support for more in the pipeline.
10. Panel Meetings
Customers might sometimes wish to engage in dialogue with several employees of a team at the same time. This software allows you to create a panel with the most relevant members who are selected based on the Resource Pool feature mentioned above. Every panel is created by a panel owner who requests a member to join the panel through a calendar invite. Similar to customers, panel members, too, can receive notifications and reminders.
11. Reports
The importance of reports to an organization cannot be understated. As tedious as the process may be, they help an organization in gauging performance metrics and taking further steps. Fortunately, ScheduleOnce automates the process of creating reports.
The following are the classes of reports offered.
Summary Reports
As the name suggests, these reports provide a big picture or high-level overview of all bookings that have taken place. Specific parameters such as the number of successful converts, the percentage of events that customers end up canceling, etc. can be extracted from these kinds of reports. After that, you can employ corrective action.
Detail Reports
While summary reports are useful for the big picture, they do not provide enough actionable information. This area is where Detail Reports come in. The software creates a report for every activity with or without the complete booking details as per your preference. There’s also an option to custom-create reports by selecting specific fields from the booking form.
Revenue Reports
If you choose to make use of the payment integration offered by the software, it creates revenue reports as well. The software records every minute detail about a transaction. It then collates them to generate reports.
Data Export
Data has never been more critical. Whether to gauge specific metrics or improve the services offered, data is essential. The software provides the opportunity to export the reports mentioned above into commonly used file formats like CSV, Excel, and PDF to perform further analysis.
12. SMS Notifications
Practically every company has SMS as one of its notifications components. Whether we talk about OTP’s or reminders about events, SMS is essential. The software provides the option to send SMS for crucial steps like reminders and follow-ups. Reminders are vital as, in some cases, they convert or destroy a prospect who might turn out to be a no-show due to no reminder. The SMS can include both static and dynamic text.
