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.

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 product can meet the manager’s needs. The company has moved a new prospect to the qualification stage in just a few hours — automatically.

Need more scheduling flexibility? You can add hosts who will always attend the meeting alongside Round Robin assignees. For example, speed up scheduling product demos by adding two hosts: (1) the prospect’s assigned sales rep and (2) the next available member of your sales engineering team. Easily get the right combination of teammates together for onboarding calls, renewal conversations, and more.

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.

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.

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 at 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. 

E-book: How high-performing teams achieve even more with scheduling automation

Whether it's sales revenue, recruiting pipeline, or customer retention, learn how scheduling automation can help your team save time and hit your goals.

Get the e-book

Qualify and book leads from your website

What if you don’t want to let just anyone book a meeting with your team? With Calendly Routing, show scheduling pages only to leads who meet your qualifications, like prospects from specific industries or companies of a certain size. With Routing, you can qualify leads through marketing forms in Marketo, HubSpot, Pardot, or build new forms in Calendly.

Once a qualified lead fills out your website form, instantly route them to the right booking page based on their responses.

For example, you might have separate Round Robin booking pages for your enterprise sales team and mid-market reps. Your enterprise team handles leads from companies with over 1,000 employees. A lead marks their company size as 1,000+, so Calendly automatically routes them to your enterprise sales team page. They book with the next available sales rep based on your customized Round Robin event logic.

If you integrate with Salesforce, Calendly can match known leads or existing customers directly to their account owner’s booking page — skipping the Round Robin entirely. A behind-the-scenes Salesforce ownership lookup means no one has to spend valuable time manually reassigning leads.

Users on the Teams plan and above can route with Calendly, HubSpot, Marketo, or Pardot forms. Routing by Salesforce ownership is only available on Enterprise plans.

Learn more about Calendly Routing and start closing more deals, faster.

Get started with Round Robin

Round Robin scheduling features are available to users on the Teams plan and above. If you're on a free or Standard plan, upgrade today to start using Round Robin scheduling!

For more details on setting up a Round Robin event, visit our Help Center. Or, if you’re more of a hands-on type, head to your Calendly homepage to create your first Round Robin.