4 scheduling automation workflows to make meetings easy

There are few business activities that offer greater value than meeting directly with your prospects, current customers, and team members. After all, emails and team chats only go so far.

But the work behind setting up those meetings—finding a time, sending conferencing links, juggling calendar events, filling out contacts—is tedious and repetitive. With automated workflows from Zapier, which we call Zaps, you can automate most of the tasks involved in setting up, confirming, and following up on meetings.

Here are some ways you can let Zapier's automated workflows take care of the scheduling details so you can focus on preparing for the meeting itself.

Automatically sync contacts across your calendars and CRMs

We all feel overloaded with meetings sometimes. A study in the MIT Sloan Management Review shows that meetings are longer and more frequent than ever. Executives suffer the most, spending almost 23 hours a week in meetings—more than double the amount from the 1960s.

Modern calendar tools are supposed to help this problem. But because there are so many different tools, appointments and meetings can fall through the cracks. With Zapier, you can automatically keep all your calendars in sync.

Use these Zaps to keep Google Calendar in sync with tools like Calendly, YouCanBook.Me, and CoSchedule.

Use these Zaps to do the same for Microsoft tools like Outlook and Office 365

Your calendar isn't the only tool you have for managing people and events. It's likely that your customer relationship management (CRM) tool, such as Salesforce, Pipedrive, or HubSpot, plays an even more important role than your calendar when it comes to meeting with customers.

Use Zapier to automatically update your CRM based on activity in your scheduling app, so new prospect and customer activities are logged right where you need them.

Confirm meetings and send video-conferencing links automatically

Get a seamless start to your meetings. Rather than manually following up with meeting invitees, let these Zaps automatically confirm newly scheduled meetings right after booking them.

Getting everyone to show up on time is only the first step. To really ensure your meeting starts without delay, use these Zaps to automatically create video-conferencing rooms for your new bookings

You can also use Zapier to update calendar events with video conferencing information, or to send a link by email

Use scheduling automation to ensure you don't miss a meeting

Missing a meeting is embarrassing—it can also mean lost sales or lower morale.

These Zaps connect scheduling tools like Calendly, Doodle, Appointlet, and YouCanBook.Me with communication platforms such as Slack, Twilio, and Gmail so you can instantly get notifications for your upcoming meetings.

For example, Calendly is a handy tool for finding the perfect meeting time for both you and your team members. You select the best days and times for you, share a link, and then your attendees pick what works for them. Zapier integrates Calendly with Slack and SMS so you always know when someone books or cancels a meeting.

Doodle is similar to Calendly. Instead of emailing back and forth, you can send a link that shows your availability and allow attendees to indicate their preferences. With Zapier, you won't miss the meeting time you settled on.

Appointlet is a tool specifically for sales professionals. You can make a custom appointment schedule and booking page to share directly with your prospects. These Zaps ensure your prospects can count on you to be at each meeting.

YouCanBook.Me connects to your calendar tools so that you only have to share the available appointment slots with your customers. These Zaps help you stay on top of new bookings.

Follow up after your meetings to nurture your relationships

It can take eight "touchpoints" to go from interest to conversion. Your follow-up isn't a nice-to-have—it's the difference between a pleasant meeting and a sale.

When you're meeting with many contacts, it's important that those people get recorded in the right spot. These Zaps help you effortlessly keep your contacts current across tools so you never misplace contact info again.

Even with a current contact list, there's still a lot of work to do. Getting those eight touches will be overwhelming if each prospect requires eight separate manual calls or emails. Your prospects, who are likely shopping with multiple vendors, will likely find this overwhelming, too.

Instead, subscribe willing prospects to a drip campaign that can slowly cultivate their interest with targeted emails. These Zaps automatically add attendees from Calendly, Acuity Scheduling, and ScheduleOnce appointments to your Mailchimp email list.

Let scheduling automation take care of the repetitive work

Every time you meet, you have the opportunity to glean new, unique insights. The right customer research call could inform your next line of products or even let you know there's little market desire for that shiny new idea.

But while meetings themselves are full of interesting discussions, setting them up is tedious and time-consuming. Use automation to take care of all the details so you can focus on taking care of the person you're meeting with.