YouCanBook.me

What do you like best?

I will be honest, I was hesitant to get on board with you can book me when I first started my position back in January. I work across 2 offices and the other office I work in uses a different scheduling program. I was nervous about having two programs trying to communicate with my outlook calendar and was worried I would have issues. That has not at all been the case, it has been so simple and easy. I haven't had any issues! I like how easy it is to share you can book me with my students and how simple it is for them to use. When booking systems are too complicated, students tend not to schedule appointments. I work with a vulnerable population of students, so meetings are crucial. I believe the ease of using you can book me helps more students meet with me. I also appreciate how easy it is to manage the system and modify my calendar, look up student info, etc. Lastly, I like the ability to sync my work calendar with you can book me to avoid double bookings. The most helpful thing is that I can set everything up once and not have to do a lot of maintenance. I work in an offfice with a high volume of student appointments and find myself with out a lot of time to work on administrative tasks. The ability to set my YCBM up in the beginning of the semester and not have to mess with it is really helpful and valuable because it saves me time and lets me be more present with students and have more availbility for them. I like the service a lot, it makes my job easier and saves myself and our office assistant a lot of time by allowing students to easily book their own appointments. I like that you can indicate if a student did not show up within you can book me. I like that my colleagues and I each have our own individual accounts. It makes things more organized and allows more control over our schedules. I also like this feature because I like being able to customize the messages being sent out to students. The system I use for the other office I work in does not allow this and all of our messages are the same, it also allows for very little customization of the messages - I like that with you can book me you can really tailor what you want your messages to say and include important information pertient to my students. I like that we can pick our color/appeareance and that it matches our school colors. I like that the details of the booking are synced to my calendar and that I do not have to go into you can book me you see the details. In the other system I use this is not the case and I have to sign into the seperate account to see the details of my appointment. It is so nice having it all on my calendar, which is always open anyways. Overall it is a great product that is well worth the money we spend to use it.

What do you dislike?

I have only been using you can book me for one semester, so I thankfully have not yet run into any issues. My colleagues have been using for quite a while now and appreciate that because our students were already used to using it when we went to all virtual last spring. Many offices struggled to get their students to use online booking/scheduling systems, but are students were well versed with you can book me and this allowed our office to make a more seamless transition to an online learning environment. One recommendation I would make is more training, maybe some webinars or articles/a newsletter that is sent out regularly to help administrators better utilize the tool. I just recently (after using for a few months) had time to play around in my settings and found a lot of things that I was unaware of. If these had maybe been highlighted or if there was a new user training I possibly could have taken advantage of them earlier on. This does not diminish my experience with the product in any way, it possibly could have made it even better though. One thing that would be nice to have in you can book me is a tracking system. It would be nice if when you indicate whether or not a student completed their appointment you could then to be able to take brief notes within you can book me on the appointment. We have to use an additional system to take notes, but it would be nice to have it all in one place.

What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

As mentioned, our office sees a better rate of student scheduled appointments which is helping our retention and impact. We also have seen a better show rate by students. I believe this can be attributed to the increased accountability they feel when booking their own appointment. You can book me has helped us maintain our appointment volume through online learning. You can book me has also allowed us to ensure that all needed information is collected when an appointment is made, sometimes when a student worker or admin assistant makes an appointment important details are not included in the booking and we are therefore not able to adequetly prepare for our appointments. You can book me has erased this issue and allows us to be better prepared and more efficient for student appointments. We no longer have to train as many people on how to make appointments. We also do not need as many student workers, which has saved us money. For the student workers we do employ, we are able to give them higher level work because they are not spending as much time answering phone calls to set up student appointments. Overall, you can book me has allowed us to become a more efficient office.