We’re happy to schedule appointments for your callers! We work with your preferred calendaring system available on your website so you’re never double booked.
Don’t have a scheduling platform yet? We've had a lot of success with Calendly! Read more here!
We’ve worked with various scheduling platforms extensively over the years and have come up with some specific guidelines that ensure our receptionists are able to schedule your appointments successfully.
Scheduling Platform Considerations
Time Zones
First, it’s important to consider how your scheduling system handles time zones. Our receptionists work in multiple US time zones. Your scheduling platform might require that a time zone be selected when scheduling, or it might default to the local time zone where the link is opened. If your calendar automatically books an appointment based on where the person who is filling it out is located, we’ll want to make sure the receptionist can manually adjust the time zone to reflect the caller’s location, rather than the receptionist’s.
Accessibility
It’s important that our receptionists are able to easily navigate your calendar and schedule an appointment while speaking with your caller in real time.
Your calendar should be easily accessible for receptionists, using just a single click to get there. Receptionists should not be required to log in, accept terms and conditions, or create an account in order to schedule an appointment. It should be accessible from a Chrome browser.
Gathering Information
If there are any required fields, they must be noted as "required" in some way. If a caller refuses to provide a piece of required information, the receptionist will not be able to schedule the appointment but will take a message or connect them through to someone in your office instead.
If you’re a covered entity, we can support HIPAA-compliance, however you should make sure your scheduling platform is HIPAA-compliant as well.
Appointment Details
The duration and location (e.g., in person, phone, or via tele-confrencing) of the appointment should be clearly defined so that our receptionists can relay that information to the caller. If there are any other details about appointments that you would like us to pass along to callers, that information should be clearly displayed after the appointment is booked. Alternatively, we’re happy to add that information to your call-handling instructions.
We are not able to schedule recurring appointments.
Additional Ruby Scheduling Considerations
- Ruby does not have any insight into your day-to-day availability for scheduling events other than what you have setup in in your scheduling platform. It’s important to make sure your calendar accurately reflects your availability – we’d hate to schedule an appointment at a time you weren’t actually available!
- We are not able to proactively reference your calendar to setup Ruby Statuses to hold your calls during scheduled appointments. It's still necessary for you to communicate with Ruby directly about temporary changes you’d like to make to your call-handling instructions. However, if your appointments are linked to your phone's calendar, you can sync your phone's calendar to our app to create automatic Statuses. Learn more about this feature here!
How to Add Scheduling to Your Account
Ready for Ruby to start scheduling your appointments? Send us the URL to your online calendar, along with the following information to assist us in setting up your scheduling call-handling instructions:
- Will all appointments be set in the same time zone? Is your scheduling platform locked into your time zone, or should receptionists fill in the time zone manually when scheduling?
- In the event a caller declines to provide an email address or other required information, we won’t be able to schedule. Or if the form has an error, we may not be able to schedule. Our default in these instances is to take a message for the caller instead. Where would you like us to send those messages, and what information would you like for those to contain?
- In the event a caller asks to cancel or reschedule an appointment, we won’t be able to manage your calendar to make that update. How would you prefer we field those requests? For example:
- Most scheduling platforms allow you to cancel or reschedule your appointment via the confirmation email. We are happy to point your callers to this email in these instances.
- We can also take a message letting you know a caller would like to cancel or reschedule.
- Are there any expectations we need to set upon scheduling the appointment? It’s best to keep these concise and brief. For example:
- Should they review their appointment confirmation email for instructions?
- Should we be prepared to offer driving directions?
- Do they need to bring something to the appointment?
We’ll review your calendar to make sure it fits within our guidelines and follow up with any questions we have. Click here to reach out to the Customer Happiness team!