Calendly is your hub for scheduling meetings professionally and efficiently, eliminating the hassle of back-and-forth emails so you can get back to work.
We use Calendly to help streamline our client experience. It gives out clients the option to serve themselves when booking appointments. The Calendly links appear on our website and are used in email templates.
Whilst sending a link to the client is not the first option we wish to present (we’d prefer to suggest a time rather than hand off to a link), it’s a useful addition and saves us time.
When a client schedules their appointment via Calendly, they automatically receive an email confirmation, an email reminder, and an SMS reminder.
Appointments that we schedule directly with a client must be entered into Calendly via the ‘Scheduled by office’ links. This ensures those clients get the automated notifications too.
Meeting types
For each meeting type there may be up to three versions of the meeting, these are:
- Public – This is available via our website for anyone to book. This is useful for new business client appointments.
- Shared – This is provided to clients via email only. This is useful for self-service options for existing clients that would not be appropriate for public use (eg: A review meeting).
- Scheduled by office – This is for the booking of appointments by staff for other staff. These have the lowest possible restrictions (ie: no inbuilt buffers or notice periods) and are used instead of Outlook as it automates confirmations and reminders (both SMS and email). These links don’t have the ‘Cancel & Reschedule’ option, just in case a client decided to reschedule for 7:00am tomorrow. 😉
Links
Below are two examples of meeting links. Note that office use only meetings are differentiated with “internal” at the end and that the “xxx” would include the staff member’s account name.
| Adviser | Client friendly link | Office use only link |
| 15 minute meeting | https://calendly.com/xxx/15-minute-meeting | https://calendly.com/xxx/15-minute-meeting-internal |
| Discovery meeting | https://calendly.com/xxx/discovery-meeting | https://calendly.com/xxx/discovery-meeting-internal |
Handy tip – We recommend updating your browser settings to add Calendly.com to “Sites that can never use cookies”. For Chrome, you can update this here: chrome://settings/cookies
FAQs
What if the time is blocked out in the adviser’s calendar, but we still want to book that time regardless?
For the office use only links, these have no limit on when they may be scheduled. They are only limited by the calendar availability of the user.
This might be an issue if an adviser is marked unavailable for a time you know they are willing to move (eg: They have time booked out for writing file notes, but a high-value client who is hard to get can only be available at that same time. An adviser is marked as working from home, but the client is happy to meet by phone.)
If the user is busy at the time you are scheduling for something that can be moved, you should:
- Agree to the time with the client;
- Edit the calendar item to ensure the time is free;
- Refresh the Calendly link; and
- Schedule the appointment in Calendly.
What if a client needs to reschedule a ‘Scheduled by Office’ event type?
Unfortunately, you will need to log into Calendly to do this manually. Hopefully, it won’t happen often enough to be frustrating. The ‘Cancel & Reschedule’ option isn’t available on the Scheduled by Office event types because of their unrestricted availability. We don’t want clients to be able to book themselves outside of office hours, or at their own homes, without first discussing it with you.
As a simple workaround, we suggest that when you book appointments on a client’s behalf, use the client-facing meeting when scheduling for a time during standard hours, ensuring clients have access to cancel and reschedule meetings. If you adopt this method, you would only use the scheduled by office meetings when booking meetings outside of standard hours.
How can advisers remove Calendly branding and add a profile picture?
We recommend asking each adviser to upload a profile picture and remove Calendly branding. This adds a personal and professional element to their booking page. To do this, advisers can follow the steps below.
- Login to Calendly.
- Select “account” in the top right.
- Select “account settings”.
- In “profile”, select “upload picture” and then scroll to select “save changes”.
- In “branding”, untick “Calendly branding” and select “save changes”.