Resource booking software has enabled businesses to automate the process of scheduling, managing and allocating resources efficiently.
Depending on the type and complexity of resources being managed, choosing the right resource booking tool can help businesses save time, increase productivity, and deliver a quality customer experience. It is important that the resource scheduling software you pick can be customized to fit your business’s unique scheduling needs.
CozyCal is a lightweight and beautifully designed resource booking tool that can be integrated seamlessly with any website to book resources. It is built to support businesses that run co-working spaces and meeting room bookings as well as studio rentals.
Creating a streamlined resource booking system on your website empowers your clients to easily schedule rooms, make payments and receive automated reminders online at their convenience.
Let’s dive into how to create an efficient resource booking flow in CozyCal.
How to set up a streamlined resource booking system
Step 1. Add resources to your booking page
Within CozyCal, you can add multiple resources under the same account. All resources can be managed by one admin or they can be assigned to specific team members. When resources are booked, confirmation emails are sent to notify team members assigned with the resources.
Step 2. Add availability and pricing with flexibility
There are two types of resource scheduling that you can set up.
1. Create individual event types for each resource. If customers are allowed to book resources for varying lengths of time, a folder can be created for the resource, and within the folder event types with different event durations can be added to support flexible scheduling.
Offering online payment options allow customers to pay online in advance. By integrating with Stripe, you can accept payments, share discount coupons and send digital receipts for resource booking.
2. Add resources to a shared event type that supports round-robin booking. This option is ideal if you want to take into account all resources’ availabilities and auto-assign scheduled sessions to evenly distribute bookings among all resources.
When it comes to adding resource availability, there are two scheduling options to give you the maximum flexibility in controlling the resource schedule.
- Add regular working hours: resources can display availability that repeats on a weekly basis (e.g., Monday to Friday, 9am-5pm).
- Add specific dates and times: you can set a time range during which specific dates and times can be repeated (e.g., Monday at 6pm, repeats from July 01 - July 31).
💡 Quick tip: When there are multiple resources on your booking page, you can quickly apply the current event type’s availability to other resources or event types to save time.
Step 3. Customize intake form
Setting up intake forms is an essential step of the resource booking flow as you can collect key client information when they schedule.
After selecting a resource, date and time slot, customers will land on the intake form where they need to answer pre-set questions to schedule the session.
CozyCal allows you to customize intake forms by adding mandatory or optional intake form fields including short answer, paragraph, checkbox, drop-down and date to collect client information in a flexible manner.
Through Zapier integration, intake form answers automatically to a third-party app such as Google spreadsheet and Airtable for data analysis, or to MailChimp or ActiveCampaign for email newsletter campaigns.
For example, you can add short-answer questions asking the number of people attending the event at the booked space, or add a checkbox to make sure booking clients read and acknowledge the cancelation policy.
Step 4. Send automatic email notifications
Sending email reminders to customers prior to scheduled events can reduce no-shows and discourage cancellations.
While each type of email notifications including confirmation, reminder, cancellation and rescheduling emails comes with default templates, they can be edited to share further information with booked clients.
To better integrate business branding in the resource booking process, CozyCal supports sending white-label emails directly from your business’s email address. Booked clients can email you directly for questions which minimize friction in communication.
Step 5. Manage resource bookings as the admin
As the admin, you can get a bird’s eye view of all bookings by filtering resources on the main calendar.
Clicking on booked events on the calendar reveals details such as customer’s contact, intake form answers, payment information, and email notifications status.
Rescheduling and canceling booked events can be done easily on the calendar, while you are given the opportunity to send personalized rescheduling or cancellation emails to better inform clients of any changes.
You can connect with Google calendar or Outlook calendar to sync availability across multiple calendars in real-time to avoid double-bookings.
Additional set-up to power up resource booking
Enable event requests to screen bookings
By enabling event requests, you can review booking clients’ intake form answers first and then decide to decline or approve the booking requests.
Clients will receive an event pending email first to inform them that the host has successfully received the booking request. You as the host will receive an email informing you an event request is pending and waits for your decision.
Setting up event requests is useful in helping you screen booking guests and have full control over who gets to use your resources.
Package booking to book multiple sessions at once
Package booking gives you the flexibility to create packages that allow clients to book multiple resource sessions at a full price or a discounted rate. Since clients need to pre-pay for the package in advance, you can receive payments in advance to secure the revenue.
A unique package link is shared with both the booking clients and you so that you can track package details such as the number of redeemable events or the amount remaining, expiry date and redemption code.
Click here to find out more about how package booking works.
How to effectively get more bookings
Now your resource booking system is set up and ready to go. Here are some ideas on how you can get more bookings from customers from different channels.
1. Three ways to embed resource booking on your website
Embedding your resource booking page on your website is the most effective way to get bookings from both visiting guests and clients.
There are three ways that you can embed a booking page on your website. You can pick any one of them, or use all of them.
- In-frame embed: In-frame embed is the most straightforward way to display your booking page. Leads and clients see your calendar as an integrated part of the website without clicking on any buttons or text.
- Floating button: Your booking page shows up as a pop-up modal when someone clicks on the floating button, which hovers on your website. Clients are not being redirected to another page, and they can complete the scheduling flow without leaving your website. The floating button’s image, color, text, and position (bottom left or right) can be customized to match your branding.
- Custom button pop-up: You have the flexibility of adding the booking page’s URL to custom text, button or image where you see to be the most appropriate spots to entice bookings.
2. Share your booking page in emails
Emails can be an effective channel to generate more bookings.
Whether it is in welcome emails or follow-up emails, you can incorporate your booking page’s link as part of your email message and email signature to encourage more bookings.
3. Share booking page on social media platforms
If social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or LinkedIn are where you frequently engage with clients, you can publicly post the booking page link to get more bookings.
Get started with creating your own resource booking flow
Building a streamlined resource booking system will save time and money, and improves your customer’s user experience in the long run.
Implementing an easy-to-use and effective resource booking software solution gives your team the flexibility to control and manage resource scheduling with ease.
Are you ready to set up your resource booking system? Sign up for a free 10-day trial today! If you want to see team scheduling in CozyCal in live mode, book a demo here and I will be happy to show you around.
