Assign high-volume meetings more efficiently with Round Robin scheduling

Teams everywhere — especially sales teams — handle a high volume of meetings every day. Think of discovery calls between salespeople and prospects, initial screens with job candidates, and tech support sessions initiated by customers. Because these meetings don’t need specialized expertise, they often can be handled by almost any team member. 

But assigning these meetings manually can bog teams down. You need to check which team member is available to take the meeting, which takes a lot of back-and-forth communication. And you can’t waste time making a new connection, especially if your team helps build revenue. Research shows that 82% of people with sales questions expect a reply within 10 minutes, and up to 50% of sales go to the company who answers first. 

Connect with customers faster using Round Robin scheduling

A Round Robin Event Type lets you offer more availability to customers while managing your team’s workload more effectively. It automatically distributes new meetings to team members, saving you the time of manually assigning them.

I love the round robin feature! It allows me with several teammates to create a wider range of availability for phone interviews. Candidates can schedule time across multiple calendars!"

G2 user review, December 28, 2021

Round Robin scheduling lets your team book meetings faster and more efficiently, and the process is completely seamless for your meeting invitees. They simply choose their preferred meeting time and the Calendly app does the rest behind the scenes. 

Round Robin in action: a sales cycle example

How can Round Robin scheduling help your team? Let’s look at an example of a purchasing manager choosing a new solution. She’s conducted research, weighed options, and wants to get more detailed information from sales reps. She visits the websites of her final options and fills out their contact forms.

Fortunately, one of the companies she’s considering uses Calendly’s team scheduling features. While the solution’s competitors are busy reviewing and assigning leads, the purchasing manager is immediately taken to a scheduling page with available times to talk with the sales team. She chooses the most convenient time slot, and the Round Robin Event Type automatically books a meeting with the next available sales rep. 

Later that day, the purchasing manager and a sales development representative (SDR) are discussing how the solution can meet the manager’s needs. The company has moved a new prospect to the qualification stage in just a few hours — automatically.

How Round Robin scheduling works

When a new meeting request comes in via a Round Robin Event Type, Calendly examines the availability of every team member connected to that event. The app then assigns the meeting based on the customizable Round Robin event logic. Because assignments are automated, team members no longer have to spend time emailing back and forth with invitees to confirm meeting times. This process reduces the gap between when meeting requests arrive and when team members can follow up, increasing your responsiveness.

There are two ways to set up Round Robin automated meeting assignments:

Optimize for availability

Optimizing for availability provides an excellent customer experience by offering maximum availability to meeting invitees and reducing wait times. The open time slots represent the pooled availability of all team members assigned to the Event Type. Once the invitee selects a time slot, Calendly assigns the meeting to the next available team member.

But what if an invitee selects a time slot when more than one person is available? Calendly lets you prioritize which team member takes the meeting. This feature helps you automate team management and provide timely responses while achieving different team goals:

• Direct meetings to someone who needs more opportunities to meet their monthly goal.

• Help a new team member gain experience or build a customer portfolio.

• Make reps with specific industry knowledge available for certain meetings.

• Improve engagement by directing inquiries to team members who speak a preferred language.

Controlling team member priorities is simple. Just fill in the stars next to their names while editing the Event Type. And if multiple team members have the same priority status, the meeting is assigned to the person who’s gone the longest without a scheduled meeting.

You can set a team member’s priority by filling in the star next to their name while editing the Round Robin Event Type.

Optimize for equal distribution

Optimizing for equal distribution spreads meetings evenly among team members. Calendly monitors how many meetings are assigned to each person. If someone has been assigned significantly more meetings than the rest of the team, they won’t be assigned any more meetings until their teammates catch up.

Optimize Round Robin events for equal distribution to spread meetings evenly within your team.

Equal distribution still offers a great customer experience, while automatically balancing workloads between the members of your team. When meeting assignments are spread out evenly, everyone has equal opportunities to connect with customers. You also help avoid burnout by making sure no team member is overloaded with assignments.

We feel confident that when a lead comes in, it goes reliably to different team members. Calendly’s Round Robin features saves a lot of headaches, especially when assigning which appointment goes to whom.

Donald Kelly

Founder

The Sales Evangelist

Under either setting, team managers no longer have to spend valuable time manually assigning incoming meeting requests. And if priorities shift after a meeting is booked, admins have the flexibility to change meeting assignments between team members without changing the time selected by the person who requested the meeting. 

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Add automations to Round Robin for more efficiencies

You can add other Calendly features to Round Robin Event Types to automate more processes and make your teams even more efficient:

• Invitee questions: You can use additional customizable questions in the Round Robin Event Type to collect information from invitees prior to booking a meeting. The questions give team members more details about what the invitee would like to discuss.

• Salesforce integration: Calendly’s Salesforce integration automatically updates your CRM with the meeting information and makes the details accessible to everyone on the team.

• Routing Forms: Not every meeting request your company receives is the right fit for your team. Routing Forms let you use screening questions before they can schedule.

Get started with Round Robin

It’s easy to set up a Round Robin team Event Type. For more details, visit our Help Center. Or, if you’re more of a hands-on type, go to your Event Type page in Calendly to create a Round Robin meeting of your own and start exploring what it can do.

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