Is an online scheduler impersonal?

I talk a lot about increasing efficiency (most recently in my client intake process), and I’ve been thinking about how I can do it by integrating an online scheduler with my calendar. When I’m trying to schedule a meeting with a client or new prospect, I want to avoid an email exchange that usually spans a few days.

I know lots of people who use online scheduler software, but I’ve hesitated…

I’m just one person…do I really need a whole system for this?

Is automating this process too impersonal?

Then I realized, the less time I spend on back-and-forth emails booking the meeting, the more time I have to dedicate to my clients on actual phone calls and doing other important work stuff. So I decided to get over it and automate!

Online schedulers I considered

In hopes of streamlining my own internal calendar and appointment-booking process, I considered three online scheduler programs that were recommended to me.

• Calendly
• YouCanBook.me
• Acuity Scheduling

Calendly is the winner because I like the clean interface and they offer a free plan to get started. Perfect! I have a client who uses Calendly so I’ve been on the user-end and it’s super easy to use.

I also looked into YouCanBook.me (I don’t like the interface as much—it’s not as modern) and Acuity Scheduling (which seemed too robust for my needs). Granted, these were just quick first impressions but like I said, I’m all about maximizing time.

I love the idea of being able to set the times I’m available because it makes it easier to stick to those times. For example, I don’t like to schedule phone calls on Mondays. Because Mondays. And I use it as “Marketing Monday” to focus on Jill Lynn Design stuff (blog posts, newsletters, finances, etc.). Using an online scheduler will help me set cleaner boundaries on when I can and can’t talk.

Where I put my online scheduler link

I want this to be easy for people to find whenever they want to talk to me, so I put it:

• In my voicemail. I hardly pick up the phone if I don’t recognize the number because I’m usually in-the-zone doing something else. (This is excluding the time a few weeks ago when my 1-year-old picked up the phone and I ended up doing a new client consult at 6PM.) Plus I’m not the best at returning calls in a timely manner. So I’ve added this to my voicemail: If you’re calling about a new project, please schedule time with me by going to this link…
• In my contact form confirmation email. After a prospect fills out my chat request form, they’ll get an email confirmation with my calendar link.

Now when people say, “Hey, can we chat about this?”—I can say, “Sure, here’s my calendar link.”

I started using the calendar link a few weeks ago and have already booked 11 calls. Talk about the time savings!

Now I ask you: What online scheduler do you do use? and/or Which ones have you tried? Please comment below.