How To Simplify Therapy Client Scheduling With Calendly

Recently I was tasked with helping a mental health counselor in charlotte simplify their therapy client scheduling to create a more streamlined approach to booking new & existing clients and scheduling assessments. Currently she manages this manually through Google Calendar. While Google Calendar isn’t a very complex calendar app to create and manage your day to day, and while there are online therapist-focused tools that include scheduling, today we’re going to talk about the impressive and extremely easy to use scheduling tool called Calendly.

Therapy Client Scheduling Made Easy

Meet Calendly. Calendly is an appointment scheduling tool that makes therapy client scheduling easy for therapy clients to find a time slot on your calendar and book an appointment without the need to communicate with you, saving you loads of time and minimizing your client relations workload.

Here’s what we learned when working with Calendly.

First, and foremost they offer a free version that does almost everything you need to easily schedule clients and update calendars on the fly. I felt this is one of the most important benefits because everywhere therapist’s turn they are being charged for services like therapist directories and applications that really aren’t all the great. At least with it being free there is no pressure to try it and no financial commitments to make.

Secondly, the user interface and user experience is extremely smooth. Nothing in life is foolproof or mistake-proof but Calendly’s scheduling flow is extremely easy to follow and clients can schedule an appointment with you in under 2 minutes.

Lastly, It’s automated. I mean… it’s AUTOMATED. No more emails, texts, or calls to navigate your calendar with a client. They get to see when you’re free, choose a day and time slot, enter some basic info, and submit. Here’s where it gets even better. The therapy client scheduling appointments are automatically added to their calendar and your calendar. They receive email and text notifications of their appointment and as it gets closer to the appointment time they’re sent reminders. Helping you avoid no shows.

Here’s a nice bonus…. for a few extra dollars per month you can integrate payment gateways like Stripe and collect payments before an appointment will be approved and schedule. For example: if you offer private pay therapy and you want to minimize no shows, minimize missed payments or stop chasing down payments after a therapy session, Calendly fixes this by blocking confirmations without payment.

Benefits of Therapy Client Scheduling With Calendly

Below is a short list I thought were some of the best features

• Practice account creation takes 2 minutes
• Scheduling with you takes 45 seconds
• Add your photo and branding
• Manage availability from your own calendar
• Create multiple work schedules
• Create different appointment types and times
• Appointment buffering allows breaks before and after time slots
• Set special appointments that only book certain days.
• Apply conditional logic depending on types
• Collect payments to confirm appointments
• Send autoresponder & reminder emails and texts
• Embed on your website
• Works seamlessly on mobile devices

I opted to support this therapist with the premium version as she does mainly private pay clients now and wanted a way to collect payments faster, easier, and automatically so she could lighten her workload. After using both the free and professional versions, the free works just as good for most therapist needs.