How To Make Friends & Organize Meetings: Lightning Scheduler

Meet the Salesforce Product for Managing Appointments

“How to Make Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie has timeless appeal. This guide for building human connections is one of the best-selling books ever.

A likely reason is that connecting with people is the basis of good business. Across many industries, there can be no sale without a successful meeting first.

Today’s meetings are scheduled online. But just because we’re more likely to get automated email confirmations than personal notes doesn’t mean organizing appointments can be overlooked. Salesforce’s Lightning Scheduler paves the way to great human connections. This product supports appointment scheduling for users, whether over phone, video or even for face-to-face meetings.

If some of your customer queries fall through the cracks despite a team of dedicated agents on standby, it might be time to consider this tool. Lightning Scheduler checks availability and bandwidth automatically, minimizing missed connections. Your team will be happy to stop checking Google Calendar or Outlook manually.

Read on for an in-depth look at Lightning Scheduler and what it can do for you:

It’s All About Human Connection

As Dale Carnegie teaches, a warm smile is beneficial for both the giver and the receiver. Similarly, Lightning Scheduler works well from the agent and prospect perspective.

At an insurance carrier, the sales team contacts prospects on the phone daily. If an individual seems interested but isn’t available right away, agents can use Lightning Scheduler to block out time when it’s most convenient for the prospect.

On the other hand, a prospect can go straight to the carrier website to request a consultation. If the carrier has set up Lightning Scheduler, the self-scheduling process happens seamlessly and all parties receive a confirmation. Later, the prospect can also modify or cancel the appointment.

Far-Reaching Benefits

Some tools offer benefits with far-reaching effects; just as applying the principles in “How to Make Friends and Influence People” can affect a reader’s personal and professional life, Lightning Scheduler impacts many aspects of connecting with customers.

This Salesforce product works for both inbound and outbound scheduling. The benefits really start to compound when your team defines parameters within the tool:

• Anonymous scheduling. New guests to the website can also self-schedule appointments. Salesforce captures their information and creates new leads. These prospects can share data such as location, desired products and more. You could say this tool is a good listener.

• Service territories. Businesses with multiple locations or branches can define each one as a service territory. Then, sales agents in each territory can be further classified as service resources. Salesforce provides immediate visibility into their availability.

• Time settings. Each branch has its own set hours of operation. Further, the standard appointment length can be defined ahead of time. Agents’ calendars can even be blocked some time before the start of an appointment and after its end.

• Work types. Appointments can be specific to different topics or tasks. For instance, a discussion topic might be a specific service offered by the company. Different meeting tasks are items like signing contracts and submitting documentation.

• Skills. Each salesperson can have a defined skill level. For instance, a licence to sell insurance in a particular state is a skill. Then, leads can be assigned based on these criteria so each prospect is matched with the right agent.

• Scheduling policies. A scheduling policy is the logic through which Salesforce books appointments. Your team can define both the specific skills and the level of skill required for a primary service resource accepting branch appointments.

Each of these parameters can be customized based on the unique needs of your company.

You Can’t Always Get What You Want

Just because charming orators remember people’s names and avoid arguments doesn’t mean they’ll get everything they want. Even these time-tested techniques have limitations.

Similarly, Lightning Scheduler can also fall short.

First, this tool can’t optimize for parameters like distance to customer, multiple people in the same appointment and rescheduling. Agents can reschedule meetings, but they must do so manually. If sales agents aren’t vigilant, these limitations can end in missed connections.

A lack of accounting for distance can lead to friction. Just picture a hardware workshop. The service resources in this scenario are technicians who visit customers’ homes to service the AC or solar panels. Understandably, management wants to assign the technician closest to the customer’s house. This functionality is available in a separate Salesforce product, Field Service.

Second, Lightning Scheduler doesn’t support the concept of round-robin assignment. When a prospect is making an appointment selection, the product only displays ten service resources at a time. Since other licensed agents don’t come up as an option, these excluded team members are at a loss for earning commissions. This breaks the principle of making others feel important.

Larger sales teams should keep these complications in mind.

The Principles in Action

Out-of-the-box, Lightning Scheduler comes with a handful of ‘flows’ or capabilities:

• Outbound & inbound guest appointment
• Inbound appointment cancellation
• Appointment modifications
• Options to modify outbound appointments
• Community portal

Some teams customize to go beyond this set of options. For inbound scheduling, the various data points captured from prospects can be customized. Same for the process of iterating through different service resources with different skills.

Of course, custom builds call for a savvy partner, unless your team has strong in-house developers with enough spare time. Choose a partner that takes the principle of genuine interest in your business to heart.

Some Things Never Change

Meetings still matter in the modern age, even if they may take place over video chat. Lightning Scheduler is a product crafted specifically for making timely connections with customers. As long as you understand the benefits, limitations and options for customization, your team can stand the test of time.

It’s okay to be a little intimidated setting up this tool for the first time. Or maybe you already have Lightning Scheduler but you crave some nifty customizations. Either way, we’re happy to help.

We always follow the #1 rule of not criticizing, condemning or complaining.

After that, it’s up to you to get your prospects saying yes during appointments!