Are you looking for new ways to streamline your appointment bookings and automate your business processes? An automated appointment scheduling form can be exactly what you need right now.
Businesses of all sizes are using automation to speed up processes and offer a better service overall. Online appointment forms can do much more than schedule Zoom meetings, a good form can help you receive payments online, and send automatic notifications to your clients and your team.
In this article, you’ll learn how to create the perfect scheduling form that syncs with your Google Calendar and Zoom Account. Plus some helpful tips on how appointment forms can boost your business, and best practices to add to your form.
What is Google Calendar
Google Calendar is an application by Google that allows you to set appointments and tasks due dates in your calendar, along with a reminder and the possibility to add the date and time and how you want to be reminded of.
It was first released in 2006 as part of the Google Workspace (previously known as G-Suite), and, in June 2021, Google announced that Workspace is now free for all Google users. So, what are you waiting for?
When you integrate Google Calendar with your MightyForms, you can automatically sync your availability so that your respondents can only see time slots that you are available.
This makes it much easier to schedule meetings, interviews, and even appointments and visits, regardless of what industry your business is in.
What is Zoom
Short answer: Zoom is an online meeting software.
Long (and more appropriate) answer: Zoom is an app that gained increased global brand recognition during 2020 when it was frequently used by businesses, institutions, and private users alike, to communicate remotely as in-person meetings became a health risk.
And let’s face it, our way of doing business and communicating with each other is forever changed. Now you can easily negotiate with clients miles away, even from different continents. Tell anyone from 30 years ago about how easy communications would be and they would call you insane.
Created in 2011 by Eric Yuan, Zoom is conquering the business world with its practicality and ease of use. No matter what kind of event you are organizing, from a staff meeting, a job interview, or hosting a webinar, - an online form integrated with Zoom is the perfect solution for you.
How you can schedule an appointment with your form
Do you have a booking form on your website? Maybe it is time to streamline your process and schedule an appointment with it by using the newest MightyForms feature - integration with Zoom for online meetings and Google Calendar for other types of scheduling.
To start you must connect to your MightyForms account. If you don’t have an account yet, don’t worry, you can try it for free.
Step 1: Create an appointment form
With MightyForms you can easily start building your forms from scratch or by selecting one of the templates. They are all fully customizable, meaning you can give it your business identity, making it easy for guests and clients to recognize your brand.
Add all the fields you need, like name and preferred method of contact. Add a comment section, in case your service or booking business demands a customized delivery. Let’s say you have a marketing agency, then in your booking form, you can let the prospect detail what kind of service they are looking for, helping you to be better prepared by the time the meeting is set.
And of course, the most important field in a booking form - the schedule field. You can easily find it on the sidebar of the builder dashboard.
| Protip: You can also discover how the visitor found your business with a dropdown type of question and invite them to sign up for your newsletter. Any opportunity to increase your email marketing ROI, am I right?
And finally, it is time to design your form. Add colors and fonts that address your brand, and add a relevant background image. Don’t forget about your logo, you can upload it to your form with the Image field.
Step 2: Set the Zoom or Google Calendar integration
Select the Schedule field in order to set all date and time parameters and any other detail about this field on its unique configuration located at the right side of your screen.
Once you have the Schedule field on your form, you’ll need to integrate it with Calendar or Zoom to make the field functional.
Now, clients and visitors can pick a day and time for a meeting or participate in your online event.
Step 3: Use Form automation tools
With your forms built, it is time to add some features and integrations that can make it automated, letting you have more time to perform other tasks.
Logic Rules
You can use logic rules for the most varied needs. The main use of this feature is to conduct the respondent through the form, showing the most appropriate question (or even a whole Step for Multi-step forms) depending on the previous answer.
Logic Rules are an excellent asset to automate task assignments, as well.
Custom email notifications can be sent to specific team members depending on what answer a respondent submitted.
This is very useful for larger teams, let’s say you work with several lawyers, then a client can select the professional they want and that will trigger a notification for that specific professional, speeding up the process.
Notifications
As pointed out in the previous topic, you can set an automatic notification for a specific team. But if you want, you can also send any form notification to you or any other team member by adding the email address in the Notification tab. You can even choose to receive or send notifications as SMS as well, and decide if it will be when a form is submitted or abandoned.
Success Message
Sending a success message to your client and prospect can help you delight them. A well-built thank you message can even convert the lead into a customer.
Success messages are part of the customer experience efforts you make to encourage loyalty and brand awareness. Add the lead’s name to the message to spark even more conversions.
You can even send a PDF copy to the lead, as a confirmation that the meeting or presence at the event has been confirmed.
Now, all that is left to do is share your form. Embedding it into your booking page is the most practical way, but you can always send the form link by email, like when you invite a candidate to a job interview.
How to invite others for your scheduled Zoom meeting
To invite people to your scheduled meeting you must first have a Zoom account and then sign in to Zoom Desktop Client. Then click on Meetings and select the one that you wish to invite others to participate. Copy the invitation link and paste it into any place you wish, like an email notification.
You can also send invitations through Zoom’s Web Portal.
See how easy and simple it is? Use your Zoom account with MightyForms to streamline your scheduling processes.
Why appointment Form Automation helps your business
Web forms are great to help you automate tasks, capture new leads, and track your business performance (like using customer satisfaction surveys to increase your business performance). And when the topic is about scheduling appointments and meetings, a booking form can help to make an appointment, avoid overbooking, and settle all the information the lead needs before the meeting. Not to mention you can have access to any data to perform a better task and impress your prospects for being well-prepared.
Your business saves time and gains more opportunities to delight prospects and clients, and you can have all meetings and appointments automatically organized into your Calendar. Keep track of any important appointment by building and using the perfect scheduling form.
Appointment Forms Best Practices
Scheduling appointments can be easy and practical, helping you with your data collection and to better perform tasks. But there are a few best practices that are important to make sure you have on your scheduling form if you want to delight and create brand loyalty to your business.
Notify guests
Send notifications to your team or to yourself so everyone can be better prepared for the meeting with the client. This can be made automatically when you build your form with MightyForms.
Allow rescheduling
When you allow the client to reschedule the appointment, you help them out and also show that your business understands that out-of-control things can happen to anyone.
Include contact details in the Confirmation Message
Send an automatic message to your client, with meeting details (like time and Zoom link) and also tell them how they can contact you (phone, email, live chat), in case they need more information, or if they need to reschedule the appointment.
Add relevant Meeting/Appointment details
If your meeting is in-person, be sure to add a Google Map with directions right in your online form. And remember to send the address to the client in your success message, or, if it is online, send the Zoom meeting link.
Along with the confirmation message link include some form information, like the client’s name, the time of the meeting, and, if it is the case, who from your team will be the one responsible to contact the client, so they can know with whom they will be talking to.
Send a PDF receipt
Your booking form can also work as a payment form, in cases where you charge by pre-set prices. Let’s say you’re a hairdresser, a mechanic, or you are in the medical care industry.
These are some examples where you can establish a price for each kind of service, give a real-time quotation, and allow the client to pay in the same form they are scheduling the service. And then, you can send them a PDF copy of their submission as a receipt both for the booking and for the payment.
5 Ways to Use an Appointment Form
As you can see your business can really benefit from a scheduling form, since it gathers any data you need from prospects, and automatically sets an appointment without overbooking. It is simple and smart.
So, why keep using an old-time paper calendar and a planner for your appointments and meetings? Bring your business to 2021 with powerful and automated forms, fully responsive, that will set and collect any relevant information you need to perform the task.
From a webinar to a medical appointment, you can use scheduling forms built exclusively for your business. Here are five ways you and your business can use a scheduling form:
Schedule a lead onboarding appointment
Do you have to visit your client in order to perform your business? Perhaps you run a cleaning business or a repair one. No matter your industry, you can keep all visits organized, without overbooking, by using a simple yet powerful scheduling form.
Create a form with fields like name, address, phone number, and let the client choose among available days the one that most suits them. No more phone calls and looking at your paper calendar. An online form can even collect the payment for the booked service if you want to.
A truly all-in-one form.
Schedule appointments
Dentists, hairdressers, psychologists, the list of professionals that demand a booking hour is huge. But the means to achieve it can be only one. With the right scheduling form, built with all the required fields, you can set any kind of appointment you need to perform your service. Ask for details for better preparation, and send an automatic confirmation with a thank you note. Remember, depending on your service offer, you can even allow the payment for it on the scheduling Zoom form, with a real-time quotation.
Schedule Zoom meetings
Sometimes you need to talk to your team, and with most of us working from home, it is understandable that your business meetings, both with staff and clients, are made through online software, such as Zoom.
Organize the meeting agenda and send it with the invitation. Build an online form asking for attendance confirmation from the participants. Keep track of your business and coordinate it from anywhere with online forms integrated with Google Calendar and Zoom.
Schedule Online Job Interviews
You may be interviewing people from a different state, or because of the pandemic moment, you can’t risk bringing in a lot of candidates to your business place (safety first). So, you add a job application form on your Work With Us page. If the candidate makes it to the next stage, you can send them a second form, where they can select an available date for the online interview. And just like that, they can have access to your invitation for the Zoom meeting.
Schedule Webinars and online classes
Free webinars are great to conquer more leads and convert them into new clients. On average, 2% - 5% of the attendees will become a client after a successful webinar. And you can invite all these prospects by sharing a scheduling form on your business social media profiles or embed it into your website. The same goes if you’re preparing a class for your students or a master class in order to attract more students to your school.
7 appointment form templates
Form templates are very handy when you need some inspiration or if you need to have a form settled yesterday. No rest for hustlers. For that, we have set aside 7 booking and scheduling templates that will most certainly help you build and customize your own form.
Online Interview Schedule
As mentioned on the previous topic, you can send a scheduling form to your applicants that made it through the CV screening stage. They can select one of the available days and times for the online interview, and you can ask for more details that can be approached during the conversation. This form template can help you since it has the most necessary fields. You can add your company logo and customize it with your branding, so the applicant can recognize you from the form.
Working Schedule
This template is a great example of how an automatic scheduling system can help you with your busy days. It doesn’t let two clients make an appointment at the same time. Let the client make some notes on what they need and expect from you, advancing your preparation so you can better serve them.
Beauty Salon Schedule
A simple and to-the-point form can be exactly what you need to help your clients make their appointment at your beauty shop. Let them choose the service, and you can even give a quotation by displaying the price for each type of service. This can help them choose what they want and even convince them to select more than one service. Cross-selling and upselling with your booking form. And if you have more than one professional working at the same time, let the client choose among them, and use logic rules to send a notification to the right professional. Organization is a key factor for business growth.
Customize this form template to attend to your needs as a dentist. Ask your patient which type of service he or she is booking so you can arrange your place for it. Define the time range between appointments, so no one keeps waiting for too long. Everything can be really organized so your clinic can receive great reviews.
Appointment Booking
Are you a freelancer or a solopreneur? Allow your prospects and clients to schedule a meeting with you so they can ask questions and explain their needs and how you can help them to perform their tasks.
Give your form your own design, creating brand awareness, by adding a logo, color scheme, typography, and a background image related to your business. All to make it easier to be recognized and to give a professional touch to your online scheduling form.
Zoom Meeting
Create a Zoom meeting with this ready-to-go form template. Add all participants of the meeting and send them a notification about when the meeting will be, along with the link for the Zoom room. Bring every participant onboard with a to-the-point scheduling form.
Do you work as a consultant? Perhaps you’re an engineer setting meetings with clients or a marketeer that needs more information to perform a task. No matter your industry, you’ll find that a perfect and branded scheduling form, with Zoom or Google Calendar integration that delivers a PDF copy to the respondent, is what you need to set any meeting and appointment.
As you can see, MightyForms not only has the perfect integration so you can streamline your intake process but also has the ready-to-go form template so you can customize and give your brand identity to it. Stop living in the past. Bring your business to the 21st century with online forms that schedule Zoom meetings and automatically set your calendar for you.
