YouCanBook.me

Absolutely a Life Saver!

Comments: 10/10 would recommend this. The benefits: you can utilize the free version for student bookings and still have a variety of features to choose from to customize their experience during bookings; you can control your calendar or sync it up to your work calendar so your available times already populate. It works so, so well with Google Calendar. We have had hundreds upon hundreds of bookings over the years in advising per advisor and we have never run into any issues or outages. I cannot speak enough about how knowledgeable their customer service staff are, either, they are just absolute gems.

Pros:

Don't even read this review- just test this out, it's AMAZING! I cannot speak highly enough about this product. I am part of the team which selected this as our booking tool to use, and we have utilized both the free and paid products. I need to say this up front: this company has hands down the BEST customer service team. I have never in my life experienced such great customer service from a booking site. The speed of replies in amazing- service is awesome. Our team utilizes this for students to book appointments with their academic advisors for academic plans, form signing, general inquiries, etc,. The ability to customise your booking features in insane to me. You can select available times, dates, booking length of time, and customize what your customer base sees when they search through your available dates calendar area for times, and once they book there are a variety of options to choose from. We have data that we do need for tracking as far as student ID numbers, appointment type, etc, and YouCanBook me lets us track that with ease, when previously we would have to go through digital calendars and HAND COUNT and track this data. This has saved us so much time and is such a wonderful and easy tool for our students to use too. One of the best features we have gotten feedback on is the appointment reminder via e-mail or text message. For students who use technology daily this is something they appreciate as it's a quick notification for them during their busy days.

Cons:

Nothing, the paid and free versions each have so many cool things to use! You can also request to test out feature of the paid version. Like I stated before, their customer service team is just so fantastic so anything you might run into they can assist with. Truly, this is a wonderful program that I will be using for years to come, it's just so easy to use and so great for bookings.

Good UX and Functionality from a Gradually Improving Company

Comments: Overall, it's a product that I am happy with. My clients are also happy with it. It was simple to start and I'm willing to chalk up my sole hiccup in that area to a growing company with a new product. Support has been great, and I would like to see the improvements continue. It's a great UI with a nice dashboard and admin experience, but in the future I'd appreciate a focus on hiding some of the "back end" style features in the booking customization section.

Pros:

The simplicity and elegance of administering it is my favorite part about the software. Setting up a form was a breeze, and managing the calendar and appointment system was very self-explanatory. No articles needed. Linking it to my other calendars was comparable to competing products. It also seems to offer a good user experience for my clients, from what they have told me. Regarding the company, customer support is very responsive, helpful, and they appear to be improving the software over time. I also appreciate that they have a robust free trial as it gave me a good understanding of what the product offered and to make sure I enjoyed the company's approach to improvement and support.

Cons:

Features wise, I feel like the booking process and customization of it could be a little more flexible. It was easy to set up, sure, but we are in an interesting time where customers and leads might be coming from all sorts of different places with lots of different contact preferences and I'd love to see it reflect that more. Also, it may sound minor, but the fields are given abbreviations in {BRACKETS} and such, whereas a product like Typeform just obscures that more "back end" style stuff. I didn't feel like this choice was particularly helpful in this case. Lastly, once everything is running it's great, but when I initially set up my calendars there were a few things that would show up wrong or get de-synchronized (edits on my dashboard don't show properly on the calendar). Support was very quick to help fix this and get it working again, but I thought I'd mention it as the possible caveat to the rest of the onboarding process being so easy.

YCBM Review

Pros:

Zoom Integration is easy. But if time zones change then it doesn't keep track with Zoom.

Cons:

Support. I started working with a chat bot and received very basic answers. When I was turned over to a specialist it took two hours before a response. The response was not helpful. People need to help people.

I would recommend

Comments: Great experience, ease of use and communication with clients.

Pros:

Ability to communicate with clients throughout the booking process, along with reminders.

Cons:

I would like if there was an update all to all the calendars if you would like to do so, so you don't have to update each individual calendar with certain changes.

Almost Perfect

Comments: For out purposes, it is almost perfect.

Pros:

When we looked at scheduling software, it had to be fool proof for the user and easy to set up for me, the administrator. The other great feature is to use different forms for different schedule types on the same calendar. For scheduling resources that has different scheduling requirements, it makes it easier to manage with different rules.

Cons:

There is no administrator role that can override defined restrictions. If I am on the phone with a client trying to reschedule a meeting, I should be able to override the rules and make the appointment. For example, one of our scheduling rules has a 4 hour minimum scheduling requirement. IF I want to allow someone to come in within two hours, I should be able to make that schedule without editing the scheduling rules, which is what I have to do now.