Setup meetings through the Book a meeting step

Pre-requisites: You will need to have ‘Write’ permissions to the Conversations tab to configure the Book a meeting step. Your agents will need to connect their Google Calendar or Microsoft Calendar with Insent to schedule meetings through the  Book a meeting step .

Insent offers you the ability to book meetings in a bot conversation or share a calendar as an agent in a human-first exchange.

At the end of this article, you will learn how to set up the Book a meeting step in the Conversation flow tab.

How the Book a meeting step empowers your team:

1. It helps you book meetings through bot-only conversations even when no one is around.
2. You can share the calendar of an individual or a team with a visitor through the Book a meeting step without an appointment scheduling tool.
3. You can also share the calendars of multiple individuals and teams in the form of a ‘composite’ calendar in the same calendar step.
4. Your agents can stay on top of their meetings through their Google and Microsoft calendars that they use every day.

Note

Agents need to have an active calendar connection to schedule meetings with visitors through the Book a meeting step.

Note

Insent offers the ability to set up a Google Calendar or Microsoft Calendar connection to schedule meetings with your visitors. Learn more in the related articles.

Set up the Book a meeting step.

The Book a meeting step provides your organization the capability to share a calendar in a chatbot conversation. It empowers a visitor to book a meeting with SDRs in your organization through the chatbot interface.

Here’s how you configure a Book a meeting step in the Conversation flow:

1. Select the 'Add new step' button and choose the Book a meeting step
2. Give your meeting a name. All meetings should have a name by default.
3. Setup how long you would like your agents to connect with your prospects. You can choose slots from 15 minutes to 120 minutes long.
4. Choose which agents you would like to set up appointments for from the list of agents who have integrated their calendars with Insent. You can also include teams that you would like to route conversations to. Routing rules apply to the agents you add to this list.
5. Finally, if you would like to collect additional information while booking a meeting, Enable the 'Ask additional data' Advanced option. You can update any default or custom Insent fields through this step.
6. Save the conversation and make it live to set up appointments with your prospects!

Setting up the Book a meeting step.

Slot duration in the Book a meeting step

The default slot duration in a Book a meeting step is 30 minutes. The maximum slot length is 120 minutes long.

When two users have a shared free slot, prioritization rules apply for calendar scheduling.

Calendar slot assignment

You can schedule meetings with agents or with teams through the Book a meeting step.

In case multiple agents and teams are added to a calendar step, all of the users added to the calendar step are combined and calendar slot assignment is performed based on the Round Robin Algorithm.

Visitors are shown calendar-booking slots based on the availability settings (Meetings → Availability) configured by agents added to the calendar booking step. 

To learn more about the Calendar slot assignment in the Book a meeting step, please refer to this FAQ.

How does the calendar booking step work?

The round-robin algorithm considers the availability of all agents in the routing step. When a visitor books a slot, the booking is assigned to available agents in the order in which they have been added to the Insent platform.

Note: During calendar slot assignment, a slot is assigned in round-robin from the pool of agents available in a specific time slot. The round-robin algorithm optimizes for the availability of slots for the visitor.

Tip: Sharing an agent’s calendar in the Book a meeting step will display the agent’s available slots as configured in their Meetings → Availability settings.

An example describing the round-robin algorithm

Consider the scenario where a book a meeting step contains two agents (Lucy & Zack) and the NA Sales team (Susan & Ben).

Lucy, Zack, Susan, and Ben have their availability settings configured and have a few overlapping slots where they are all available.

The order in which agents have been invited to Insent:

1. Lucy (First)
2. Zack (Second)
3. Susan (Third)
4. Ben (Fourth)

The round-robin algorithm for calendar slot assignment to agents will take place as follows:

• The first visitor booking a slot will be assigned to Lucy
• The second visitor booking a slot will be assigned to Zack
• The third visitor booking a slot will be assigned to Susan
• The fourth visitor booking a slot will be assigned to Ben

The round-robin algorithm considers agents in the calendar step in the order that they are added to the Insent platform. 

Scheduling meetings for the Account or Contact Owner

You can book meetings for the Salesforce Account Owner and the Salesforce Contact Owner for a known prospect (this requires an active Salesforce integration)

You can book meetings for the HubSpot Account Owner or the HubSpot Contact Owner for a known prospect (this requires an active HubSpot integration).

Note:  

The calendar slots of the Account or the Contact Owner are shown only if the Salesforce or HubSpot Account/Contact Owner is included in a book a meeting step and are identified by Insent.

The Account owner/Contact owner should be invited to Insent and have an active calendar integration (Google/Microsoft calendar)

The order of priority for scheduling meetings for an Account Owner or a Contact Owner is based on the order specified in the ‘Book a meeting’ step. You can arrange the Contact Owner or the Account Owner in your desired order of priority.

If an Account or Contact Owner is identified for a visitor, only Account/Contact Owner’s calendar availability is shown in the ‘Book a meeting’ step.

Availability slots of agents in the calendar step will be shown only if the Account or Contact Owner is not identified for a prospect.

Adding additional fields to a Book a meeting step 

You can capture other useful information such as Phone number/Company Information by adding a field to the calendar step. This is available in the Advanced options tab and called 'Ask additional data'. Presently, Insent supports a maximum of 1 additional field in a calendar step. 

Email field

• An email field is added by default as an additional field to a meeting request.
• It is populated with visitor information if previously collected.
• It is a mandatory field and must be filled for a meeting to be set up.
• A visitor can edit the pre-filled email field if they choose to provide an alternate email. 

Note: Adding an additional field other than the default email field is optional.

Add the 'Ask additional data' Advanced option to capture useful data.

To view the list of default fields in Insent, please refer to the appendix section of the field mapping article. You can also save user information to custom Insent fields. 

Email confirmation sent when a meeting is booked

An email confirmation is sent to both the agent and the visitor when a calendar meeting is booked. 

Confirmation email sent to the agent who receives a calendar booking

Meeting invitation sent to a visitor who books a meeting

The calendar meeting will contain information on the meeting date and time along with additional information such as the zoom meeting link, alternative contact information, etc shared in the 'Include Additional Details' setting in the Meetings -> Settings tab.

Record booked meetings in Salesforce as an activity

Note: You will need an active Salesforce integration with the correct permissions to record booked meetings in Salesforce as an Activity.

Insent enables customers with an active Salesforce integration to record booked meetings in Salesforce as an Activity. This is supported for both the Salesforce Contact and Salesforce Lead records.

The calendar meeting is assigned as an upcoming and overdue event. The time slot that the meeting is booked for is recorded in Salesforce in the Start and End times of the event. The event also contains information on the location information where the meeting was booked and the calendar description (the additional details shared in (Meetings -> Settings)

The event will be assigned the same name as the name of the meeting in the 'Book a meeting' step.

Salesforce Event Assignment

• The Salesforce Activity is assigned to the agent on whose calendar a meeting is booked if they are a valid Salesforce user.
• If the agent who is assigned the calendar meeting is not present on Salesforce, the Salesforce event is assigned to the Salesforce Admin who set up the Insent Salesforce integration.  

Note: If a visitor cancels a calendar meeting, then the associated Salesforce Activity will be removed from the Lead/Contact profile on Salesforce.

To understand how Salesforce event creation works please read our technical reference on Salesforce event creation.

Quick Recap:

1. Share a calendar in a chat conversation by setting up a Book a meeting step in the Conversations flow tab.
2. Add an 'Ask for additional data' Advanced option to a Book a meeting step to collect any other required information.