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How to book appointments through your website

RICHARD WEINER
Technology for Lawyers

Published: June 3, 2016

There are several apps that will allow you to book appointments through your website. This would be particularly useful for smaller or solo offices, maybe without full-time secretarial help, that may rely on voicemail for a lot of your client communication (nothing wrong with that, but phone tag via voicemail can be very frustrating for people who want to talk to you, like certain legal journalists, and potential clients).

The Lawyerist has created a list of four helpful calendaring apps.

There is also a caveat: just asking someone to schedule around your calendar may seem a little off-putting to some potential clients who really are probably not that interested in being your scheduler. So, they suggest adding some kind of softening language to the app’s link, like “let me know what works best for you.”

The article doesn’t list Google Calendar, which just announced real-time multi-user calendaring capability.

First up is TimeBridge (http://www.timebridge.com), which syncs all of your Google calendar, iCal, Outlook, etc. calendars and events. It is free, so it may not have all of the features or slick UI you want. But it is free, if I didn’t mention that. It is constructed primarily for group meetings, and features audio conferencing, email and text appointment reminders, and even directions and the weather.

Calendly (https://calendly.com) is super-simple and easy to use, but it currently only works with Google Calendar. Basically, it makes the fairly difficult task of making appointments with Google Calendar and one-clicks them. Basic functionality is free; pay more, get more.

SetMore (http://www.setmore.com) also only works with Google Calendar. Free for up to 20 users, $25 a month otherwise. Comes with code to embed the app on your website (rather than as a click-through button), integrates with Facebook, sends text or email messages, and acts as a low-function CRM.

Doodle (http://doodle.com) creates its own scheduling page, and has successively higher functionality within a tiered pricing system. Lets you create your own branded page, so that your calendar is unique to your office. $40-70/year.

There are some apps that are working with AI concepts to schedule meetings. One recommended to be is x.ai (https://x.ai; still in beta). It creates a sort of AI administrative assistant that communicates automatically with everyone via email. Yes, they are taking over.


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