What is automated scheduling?

Meetings move your business forward, but manual admin tasks around scheduling take up valuable time. If you’re used to doing the great calendar shuffle or playing a game of email tag to book a meeting, automated scheduling can create a better experience for meeting hosts and attendees. 

All types of businesses and teams can benefit from automated scheduling, like sales reps scheduling discovery calls, service providers setting up appointments, and recruiters arranging candidate interviews — just to name a few.

Automation makes the scheduling process easier and helps you save time, grow your business, and impress clients. Here’s how.

How does automated scheduling work?

Automated scheduling software creates a booking page people can use to schedule meetings with you. It’s an easy way to set up meetings with clients, prospects, candidates, colleagues, or anyone else who wants to book a meeting or appointment with you. (Note that auto scheduling for meetings and appointments is different from employee scheduling for shift work.) 

Here’s a step-by-step breakdown of how automated scheduling works with a tool like Calendly:

1. Connect your calendars. You link your personal and/or work calendar(s) to the scheduling software and set your available hours. Calendly uses this info to show your real-time availability on your booking page. (No one can see the details of your whole calendar — Calendly only shows the meeting times you’re available.)

2. Share your booking page. When it’s time to set up a meeting, send invitees a link to your booking page so they can quickly see when you’re available. You can also include a link to your booking page on your website or in your social media bios, so people can schedule time with you right away. Available times will automatically be shown in invitees’ time zones, so nobody has to do mental math.

3. Let invitees choose a meeting time. Invitees choose their preferred time and, in just a few clicks, your meeting is scheduled! No back-and-forth emails necessary. Then, the scheduling software automatically adds the event to your calendar and sends you a notification.

You can even connect video conferencing tools to automatically add meeting links to calendar events, which invitees get right away. That way, you don’t have to remember to send a link after each booking, and clients can easily join the video conference when it’s time to meet. If your appointments happen in person, you can include your address during booking so customers know where to find you.

10 benefits of automating your scheduling process

Handing the reins of meeting scheduling over to a scheduling tool may feel different at first, especially if you’re used to handling all of the admin yourself. But automatic scheduling creates a better experience for you — the host — and your invitees. Plus, as you’ll see, you still have plenty of control over when and how meetings are scheduled. 

1. Spend less time on admin and more time on business growth

Meeting admin is time consuming. Calendly's 2024 State of Meetings Report found that 43% of professionals spend at least three hours a week just scheduling meetings — up from 36% last year.

When you cut out the back and forth of finding a meeting time, you can invest that time in growing your business. Take more calls, work on your marketing strategy, or finally catch up on your to-do list with your newfound free time.

“After using it for just a couple of weeks, I definitely experienced fewer headaches when it came to coordinating calls. When I realized I could easily share one link and empower my customers to schedule and reschedule calls, I was sold!”

Tiffany Keel

Head of Customer Advocacy, Product Marketing at ClickUp

2. Avoid double booking

When you connect your calendars to scheduling software like Calendly, it looks at your complete availability, including scheduled meetings, personal events, and your personal calendar preferences. You have total control over your booking boundaries, like blocking off uninterrupted time each Monday morning to handle other admin like invoicing or outreach. 

Since your booking page only shows your open time slots — the ones without any other scheduled events or time blocks — you don’t need to manually check for scheduling conflicts. 

Connecting both work and personal calendars to your Calendly account means you’re never double booked over professional meetings or personal obligations (or vacations!).

3. Create a better customer, client, and candidate experience 

Make each booking a great user experience with an automated scheduling system. Instead of dealing with endless emails to find a time that works, customers can see your availability and book instantly. This quick, no-fuss process shows you respect their time and makes a great first impression.

You can also use Calendly to send automated reminders, which help cut down on missed meetings and are a great way to share helpful pre-meeting info. By taking the hassle out of scheduling, automated tools allow you to focus on what really matters — meeting customers' needs and building better relationships.

4. Schedule faster with meeting templates

With manual scheduling, you have to enter event details — time, duration, location, agenda — every time you book a new meeting. Calendly Event Types take those admin tasks off your plate.

Think of Event Types as templates you can reuse every time you book a meeting. Your Event Type could be objective-based, like a sales discovery call or hiring manager interview, or it could be time-based, like a flexible 30-minute meeting.

Event Types also help save you time by automating your meeting agendas. Add templated meeting event details to make sure every invitee has the info they need. You can even add custom questions for invitees to answer when they book. For example, if you’re meeting with a potential customer, you could ask them what problems they’re looking to solve with your product or service.

5. Stay in control of your calendar

Automated scheduling tools consider the events on your calendar to determine your availability, but you can also fine-tune your preferences to create your optimal schedule. For example, you can automatically block off holidays or certain days of the week, add mandatory buffer time to avoid back-to-back meetings, limit the number of meetings that can be booked per day, and prevent last-minute bookings.

6. Connect with interested customers sooner

Letting potential customers schedule a time right away through your booking link helps people act as soon as they’re interested, which could help you win out over your competition. You can add your scheduling link to your email signature or social media bios, embed dates and times right into an email, or turn website visitors into booked meetings by embedding your booking page on your website.

7. Find a meeting time that works for the whole group

Without scheduling software, finding a meeting time for a group of people feels a bit like herding cats. Everyone has different schedules, priorities, and maybe even time zones, and it all plays out in a reply-all email thread.

Group scheduling app functionalities like Calendly’s Meeting Polls let attendees vote on their preferred meeting time — without adding ten messages to the email thread. If a few of your team members are co-hosting a meeting with an external invitee, like a panel interview or a client meeting, Calendly’s Collective meetings pool the availability of co-hosts, so invitees can only see times when all team members are available.

8. Spread meeting assignments across your team 

Some automated scheduling tools have built-in round-robin scheduling, which gives customers more available time slots and then assigns the event to a staff member based on their availability. This scheduling feature helps you book with customers faster and automatically distribute the workload.

For example, if a client wants to come in for an appointment ASAP and doesn’t need to book with a specific team member, Calendly’s Round Robin meeting types let them book with whichever team member is available soonest.

9. Reduce no-shows with automated reminders

Customers, clients, and prospects set up a meeting time with you because they want to connect, but sometimes life gets busy. Automated meeting reminders are a helpful way to get everyone on the same page. 

With Calendly Workflows, you can customize meeting reminders via email or text. Automated reminders help reduce no-shows and build relationships without needing to manually send each email. Plus, you can automate meeting follow-ups to send a thank you message, share helpful additional resources, or get the next meeting on the books.

You can also include cancellation or rescheduling information in the meeting reminders, just in case something comes up last minute. Being transparent about your policies and making it easy for customers to reschedule keeps the relationship positive, even if events don’t go as originally planned.

“By allowing us to put in cancellation policies, we can inform our customers, ‘we would like to at least hear from you if there's going to be a cancellation.’ Those things happen!”

Bradley Thomas

Senior Customer Onboarding Program Manager at Docusign

10. Get more done with integrations

The tools you use in your business are like separate ingredients for a great recipe — they might be nice on their own, but you’ll get more out of them when you combine them. Integrations help your tools work together so you don’t need to manually move info from one system to another. For example, with Calendly + PayPal, you can collect payment at booking, making it quick and easy to collect deposits — no manual invoicing necessary.

Calendly offers 100+ integrations, including many of the tools you and your team use every day:

• Calendar integrations (Office 365, Google Calendar, Outlook, and Exchange)

• Video conferencing (Zoom, GoToMeeting, Webex, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams)

• CRMs and marketing automation (Salesforce, HubSpot, Marketo, Gong, ActiveCampaign, and Mailchimp)

• Recruiting software and applicant tracking systems (ATSs) (Greenhouse and JazzHR)

• PayPal and Stripe, so you can collect payments at booking

“Calendly auto-generates Zoom links and Outlook meetings without me having to think about it. I appreciate anything that makes my life simpler when I’m juggling many, many meetings and emails.”

Kate Nachazel

Business Coach at Fireproof Performance

Save time and grow your business with automated scheduling

Scheduling needs to be easy and fast for you, your team, and your customers. Taking the meeting admin off your plate frees up time you can dedicate to tasks that grow your business. Plus, an easy scheduling process leaves customers with a great impression and helps you serve them faster. 

Teams of all sizes, industries, and departments use Calendly's scheduling platform to automate scheduling and achieve their goals. Marketing teams can add easy booking to their website, converting visitors into leads at the height of their interest. Sales teams can keep deals moving forward with quick scheduling and automated communication. Recruiters can impress top talent with self-serve interview scheduling, speeding up the hiring process. And financial and professional services providers, from entrepreneurs to large firms, can take on more billable work by saving time on scheduling.

Ready to make scheduling easy and efficient? See why over 20 million people trust Calendly to simplify their scheduling. Sign up for free.