Manually managing meeting schedules is a challenging and time-consuming task. It involves a series of back-and-forth emails and phone calls to find a suitable time that works for both you and the prospect.
This coordination becomes more complex when dealing with prospects from different time zones, as ensuring everyone is available at the right time can be tricky. The frustration compounds when your prospect decides to reschedule the meeting.
All of this significantly hampers your productivity. Instead of focusing on engaging prospects and growing your business, you end up bogged down in administrative tasks that drain your valuable time and energy.
So, what's the solution to this? The answer lies with the meeting automation platforms.
In this blog, we've curated a list of the top 10 meeting automation platforms, detailing their benefits and key factors to consider when choosing the right one for your sales team. Before diving in, let's first cover the fundamentals.
What is a Meeting Automation Platform?
Meeting automation platform simplifies the entire process of arranging a meeting with the prospect. It effortlessly coordinates schedules, even across different time zones, ensuring that everyone is available at the right time without the usual back-and-forth.
It handles last-minute changes with ease, significantly reducing the complexity and frustration of rescheduling.
Why Do You Need a Meeting Automation Platform?
A study shows that efficient meeting scheduling can enhance both potential and existing customer satisfaction and retention by over 5%.
To achieve this, you need a meeting automation platform.
Still not convinced? Here are 4 other reasons why you need a meeting automation platform:
1. Reduce Booking Errors
Manual scheduling is prone to errors such as incorrect CRM entries, double bookings, and time zone misunderstandings. Automating the scheduling process can eliminate these errors. The software reduces mistakes by:
- Displaying available time slots to prevent double bookings or scheduling conflicts.
- Instantly updating calendars with accurate information (names, dates, and times) to avoid outdated details.
- Automatically adjusting for different time zones to prevent confusion when booking with clients in various locations.
2. Streamline Your Follow-Ups
Without reminders or follow-ups, potential customers may forget their scheduled meetings, leading to no-shows. Manually sending out reminders is time-consuming.
Automating this process with a meeting scheduler tool simplifies follow-ups by sending personalized reminders and follow-up emails to clients, ensuring they stay informed about upcoming meetings. This proactive approach helps keep potential customers engaged and reduces the risk of no-shows.
3. Efficient Data Management
Meeting automation platform enhances data management by consolidating and organizing all meeting-related information in one place. It stores details such as meeting schedules, prospect names, contact information, and past meeting records on a centralized platform, facilitating easy access to vital data.
The software integrates with CRM, email, and calendar tools, enabling you to track meeting metrics such as peak booking times, no-show rates, and meeting durations. This data helps identify trends, make informed decisions, and improve overall efficiency.
4. Book Meetings Efficiently
Coordinating a single meeting often requires a series of emails or phone calls to find a suitable time for both you and the prospect, which is manageable with a low inbound lead flow. As lead volume increases, manually scheduling meetings becomes a time-consuming task, diverting valuable time from other important activities.
A meeting automation platform streamlines this process by eliminating the need for back-and-forth communication. Potential customers visiting your website or booking page can view available time slots and select the one that best fits their schedule. With just one click, the meeting is confirmed.
10 Best Meeting Automation Platforms For Sales Teams in 2024:
Here’s our curated list of the 10 best meeting automation platform options available in the market:
1. SchedX
SchedX is an AI Inbound SDR that lives on your website, calls and talks to your website visitors/ leads, answers questions on your business, qualifies them, books the meeting, and routes them to the right sales rep.
Key Features of SchedX
1. Responds Instantly Without Latency
SchedX processes conversations in real time, responding immediately to questions, objections, and prospect cues, ensuring smooth, uninterrupted conversations.
2. Trains Deeply on Your Product
SchedX learns your product inside out - your value proposition, customer pain points, case studies, differentiators, and more. With this deep understanding, it’s equipped to navigate tough product questions and objections, respond to competitor mentions, and give answers just like your top reps would.
3. Uncovers Need, Qualifies, and Scores Leads
SchedX asks targeted discovery questions to assess a lead’s need for your solution. It evaluates their responses against BANT, MEDDIC, or custom criteria to identify fit, ensuring only qualified leads are handed over to sales.
4. Handles Interruptions Naturally
SchedX can also handle interruptions naturally - recognizing when a lead interjects, adjusting mid-conversation, and providing relevant answers without breaking the flow.
5. Schedules and Routes Meetings Automatically
When a lead agrees to a demo, SchedX books the calendar slot and instantly routes it to the right rep, ensuring a smooth handoff without any manual effort.
6. Speaks Multiple Languages
SchedX can engage prospects in multiple languages, ensuring smooth conversations across global markets.
With SchedX, skip form fills entirely, and turn your website visitors into booked meetings in minutes.
SchedX Pricing
Contact SchedX to know more.
2. Chili Piper
Chili Piper is a comprehensive meeting automation platform that provides a range of tools and features to improve and simplify various sales and marketing operations. It is mainly utilized for optimizing appointment scheduling, lead allocation, and customer engagement for businesses.
Key features:
- Instant Meeting Booking: Prospects or customers can schedule meetings immediately via web forms, email, or other channels without the hassle of back-and-forth communication.
- Customizable Workflows and Rules: Users can design their own workflows and set rules for meeting scheduling to ensure that the process aligns with their specific business requirements.
- Personalized Booking Links: Generate customized booking links that allow leads and prospects to schedule meetings directly with designated sales representatives.
- Seamless Integrations: Chili Piper integrates effortlessly with popular CRMs like Salesforce and HubSpot, enabling data synchronization and enhancing the sales process.
Pricing:
- Instant Booker: $15/user/month annually; $22.50/month if billed monthly
- Concierge Live: $30/user/month annually; $45/month if monthly billed
- Platform Fee (based on inbound leads):
- Up to 100 leads: $150/month
- 101–1000 leads: $400/month
- 1000+ leads: $1000/month
3. Revenue Hero
RevenueHero is a tool designed to help businesses manage appointments and meetings more efficiently. It aids sales teams in organizing their schedules, automating follow-ups, and connecting with customers more quickly.
Key Features:
- Effortless Scheduling: RevenueHero enables users to arrange meetings with prospects and customers, taking into account availability, time zones, and customizable meeting types.
- Personalized Booking Links: Users can create personalized booking links to share with prospects and customers, simplifying the process of scheduling meetings at convenient times.
- Automated Reminders: The platform automatically sends email reminders to both customers and sales representatives, reducing no-shows and improving the efficiency of scheduled meetings.
Pricing:
- Outbound Essentials: $20/user/month; no platform fee
- Inbound Essentials: $25/user/month + $79/month platform fee
- Inbound Enterprise: $35/user/month + $79/month platform fee
4. Calendly
Calendly is a widely-used online meeting scheduler that makes arranging and managing meetings and events effortless. It's frequently utilized by professionals, businesses, and organizations to optimize and simplify their scheduling workflows.
Key Features:
- Group Scheduling: Calendly facilitates team scheduling by allowing multiple members to sync their availability and coordinate meetings collaboratively.
- Flexible Availability: Customize your availability and define work hours to simplify booking meetings that fit your schedule seamlessly.
- Automated Reminders: Calendly automates email notifications to remind participants of upcoming meetings, minimizing the risk of missed appointments.
- Payment Integration: Calendly supports payment integration, enabling professionals like consultants and coaches to charge for their time or services directly through the booking process. This feature enhances convenience and efficiency for both the service provider and their clients.
Pricing:
- Free: 1 event type, single calendar
- Standard: $10/user/month
- Teams: $16/user/month for 1–30 seats; $14.50 for 31–50 seats
- Enterprise: custom, starts at $15,000/year
5. Zoho Bookings
Zoho Bookings is specialized software crafted to assist businesses and professionals in optimizing the management of their meetings, reservations, and availability.
Key Features
- Customized Availability: Zoho Bookings empowers prospects and customers to schedule meetings online according to your personalized availability settings. This flexibility allows them to select convenient time slots that suit their schedules.
- Global Time Zone Support: Accommodating businesses and clients worldwide, Zoho Bookings seamlessly handles multiple languages and time zones. This ensures a smooth scheduling experience regardless of geographic location.
- Insightful Meeting Analytics: Gain valuable insights from booking data with Zoho Bookings. Track meeting history, analyze customer preferences, and monitor other pertinent metrics to enhance operational efficiency.
Pricing:
- Free: single user, single event type
- Basic: ~$6/user/month
- Premium: (price not publicly listed; contact sales)
6. Apollo Meetings
Apollo Meetings, integrated within the Apollo.io platform, is tailored to simplify and enhance the process of scheduling and managing meetings between sales professionals and their prospects. This feature enables sales teams to effortlessly organize and coordinate meetings with leads and to streamline the entire scheduling workflow.
Key Features:
- Personalized Meeting Configuration: Customize meeting settings to align with specific preferences and requirements. This includes integrating with calendars, personalizing meeting links, setting up video conference options, defining default availability, and establishing minimum scheduling notices.
- Diverse Meeting Types: Apollo Meetings offers flexibility with various meeting formats, catering to different needs such as one-on-one discussions, multi-host sessions, and round-robin meetings.
- Comprehensive Event Tracking: Users can effortlessly manage their schedule by accessing details of upcoming meetings and reviewing records of past events. This includes participant information, scheduled times, and meeting durations.
Pricing:
- Free: yes
- Basic: $49/user/month (annual billing)
- Professional: $79/user/month annually
- Organization: $119/user/month (min. 3 users) annually
7. Acuity Scheduling
Acuity Scheduling is a cloud-based appointment management tool that simplifies the booking process for both individuals and businesses. It is particularly popular among service-oriented professionals such as therapists, consultants, coaches, and small business owners.
Key Features:
- Personalized Scheduling Options: Tailor your availability by defining specific working hours and designating time for breaks, ensuring your schedule aligns perfectly with your needs.
- Event Creation: Organize a variety of meeting types, including one-on-one sessions, group classes, and workshops, each with customizable durations, rules, and pricing to fit your unique requirements.
- Seamless Payment Integrations: Acuity Scheduling supports integration with major payment gateways like PayPal, Stripe, and Square, enabling you to easily collect payments or deposits at the time of booking.
Pricing:
- Emerging: $16/month annually (or $20 monthly)
- Growing: $27/month annually (or $34 monthly)
- Powerhouse: $49/month annually (or $61 monthly)
8. Microsoft Bookings
Microsoft Bookings is a meeting automation platform offered by Microsoft as part of its productivity suite, Microsoft 365 (formerly known as Office 365).
It is designed to help businesses and organizations, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, manage their meeting scheduling and customer bookings more efficiently.
Key features:
- Personalized booking page. You can create a personalized booking page with their branding, logo, and services, making it easy for customers to schedule meetings.
- Integrations. It seamlessly integrates with other Microsoft 365 applications, such as Outlook, Teams, and SharePoint, for better collaboration and communication.
- Accessibility. Microsoft Bookings is accessible via web browsers and has a mobile app, allowing businesses and customers to schedule and manage meetings on the go.
Pricing:
- Business Basic: $6/user/month
- Business Standard: $12.50/user/month
- Business Premium: $19.80/user/month (or $22 in some regions)
- Apps for Business: $8.25/user/month
9. Doodle
Doodle is an online appointment scheduling tool that helps people plan and organize their schedules and meetings. It allows users to collaborate when setting up appointments and can be used on computers and mobile devices.
Key features:
- Customize booking page. Doodle allows you to customize the booking page on your website for a better booking experience.
- Personalized meeting links. You can add the meeting link to your email signature so people can schedule meetings right from their email.
- Define meeting types. It allows you to define meeting types, such as demo calls or technical consultation calls. This helps avoid confusion when you have different teams in your organization.
Pricing:
- Free: basic scheduling
- Pro: $6.95–$14.95/user/month (annual vs monthly)
- Team: $8.95–$19.95/user/month (annual vs monthly; min. 2 users)
- Enterprise: custom pricing for 20+ users
10. BookIt
BookIt, by LeanData, is a sales scheduling tool that helps companies improve the process of managing meetings and distributing leads to the right sales rep, ultimately enhancing the experience of booking a meeting.
Key features:
- Set availability. BookIt allows users to set their availability preferences, such as defining specific hours and days when they are open for booking a meeting.
- Routing rules. It allows you to set up rules and criteria for routing leads to the most suitable team member. It can consider factors like geography, product knowledge, communication skills, etc.
- Integrations. It integrates with popular tools such as Salesforce, HubSpot, Microsoft Outlook Calendar, Google Calendar, and Google Analytics.
Pricing:
- Free: Basic scheduling features
- Pro: $6.95–$14.95/user/month (depending on annual or monthly billing)
- Team: $8.95–$19.95/user/month (depending on annual or monthly billing; minimum 2 users)
- Enterprise: Custom pricing for 20+ users
How To Choose the Right Meeting Automation Platform?
Having seen the top 10 meeting automation platforms, you might be wondering, "How do I choose the right tool for my team?"
Here are the 5 key factors to consider when selecting the right tool for your needs:
1. Customization:
Look for a platform that lets you personalize your meeting booking page and forms. This feature allows you to add your logo, brand colors, and custom questions to gather essential information from clients.
2. Time Zone Support:
If you interact with prospects across various time zones, ensure the software automatically handles time zone conversions. This functionality helps avoid scheduling conflicts and ensures meetings are booked at the correct times for all participants.
3. Automated Reminders:
The tool should be capable of sending automated reminders or notifications to both you and your clients. For example, it can send reminders before meetings to keep everyone informed and on schedule.
4. Integrations:
Choose the software that seamlessly integrates with the tools and systems you already use, such as your email, CRM, or other essential applications. This integration streamlines the scheduling process and enhances overall efficiency.
5. Scheduling Flexibility:
Opt for a tool that allows you to customize your scheduling process. It should enable you to set specific meeting lengths, incorporate buffer times between meetings, and tailor availability based on your business requirements.
If you need a tool which has all these features in it, your search ends here.
SchedX is an AI inbound SDR that talks to your website visitors and leads instantly, automating meeting scheduling and routing. It helps you organize, plan, and allocate every incoming lead, ensuring no opportunity is missed. All in minutes.
Book a demo now to see how SchedX can streamline your scheduling process and help you book more meetings!
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