In this globalized work era, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic, remote work has become an integral part of our daily lives.
With team members and prospects spread across different continents, coordinating meetings has become more crucial—and more challenging—than ever before. The diversity of time zones, coupled with varying working hours, makes it difficult to find a convenient time for everyone.
Managing time zones manually is an option, but it falls short as it's easy to make mistakes like confusing A.M. for P.M. Imagine losing a promising prospect because of one scheduling mishap. This will not only waste your time but also lead to frustration, missed opportunities, and lost revenue.
So how do you turn this chaotic juggling act into a seamless, stress-free process?
Enter: Meeting time zone planner.
In this blog, we’ll discuss what a meeting time zone planner is, explore its benefits, and explain how you can effortlessly coordinate meetings, reduce no-shows, and improve conversions.
What Is a Meeting Time Zone Planner?
A meeting time zone planner is a tool designed to facilitate the scheduling of meetings across different time zones. It enables users to view multiple time zones simultaneously and find mutually convenient times for all participants.
For example:
Imagine you’re based in New York, and you need to set up a meeting with your team members in London and Tokyo.
Using a meeting time zone planner, you simply input the meeting locations. The tool instantly shows you that 9:00 A.M. in New York is 2:00 P.M. in London and 10:00 P.M. in Tokyo.
You can then find the most convenient time that works for all participants so everyone can join without hassle.
These tools come with features like automatic time zone conversion, calendar integration, and more, ensuring that meetings are scheduled accurately and efficiently without the need for manual calculations.
3 Challenges in Manually Coordinating Different Time Zones
Coordinating meetings that span multiple time zones presents a range of challenges, each of which significantly impacts your productivity and efficiency. In fact, 10% of remote workers say they struggle to collaborate with their remote teams in different time zones, according to Buffer.
Here are 3 key challenges while coordinating meetings for teams or customers located in different time zones:
1. Time zone confusion
With the world divided into 24 time zones, each with its own local time, manually tracking different time zones can be incredibly confusing. Here’s how:
- You’ve got to get familiar with acronyms like UTC, GMT, and CST to convert meeting times accurately and communicate the same to your meeting attendees.
- You must be aware of multiple time zones in a single country. Large countries, like the United States and Russia, span multiple time zones, making it difficult to keep track of the correct local times for all participants.
- You must be aware of Daylight Saving Time (DST). Not all regions observe DST, and those that do may start and end it on different dates. For example, in the U.S., Arizona does not observe DST, while most other states, like New York and California, do, causing time differences within the country.
2. Scheduling Error
Miscalculated time zone differences can result in double bookings, no-shows, delays, or cancellations. These errors not only waste time but can also damage your professional reputation and business growth.
3. Decreased Productivity
Managing multiple time zones manually requires significant effort and time. This includes tracking prospects’ time zones, making adjustments for DST, and handling cancellations or rescheduling changes.
When your team is bogged down in scheduling tasks, it drains their energy, affecting their productivity and morale. This inefficiency can hinder your overall business performance and growth, making it harder to stay competitive in the market.
Benefits of Using a Meeting Time Zone Planner Tool
A meeting time zone planner is essential if you want to enhance booking efficiency, reduce errors, increase booking rates, streamline follow-ups, and simplify rescheduling.
Let’s delve deeper into how exactly a meeting time zone planner tool helps you:
1. Instant Booking
The meeting time zone planner allows instant booking by providing prospects with a quick and hassle-free way to secure meetings. This eliminates the need for phone calls or email exchanges to coordinate time zones with multiple people.
When prospects visit your booking page, the meeting time zone planner tool automatically detects their time zone and displays the available time slots. Prospects can choose the one that works for them. That’s it—the meeting’s confirmed.
2. Avoid Scheduling Conflicts
A meeting time zone planner tool helps ensure that meetings are scheduled accurately. It eliminates the risk of human error in calculating time differences, preventing common scheduling mishaps such as double bookings or missed appointments.
Additionally, it integrates with your CRM to update accurate information (names, dates, and times) and avoid outdated details.
3. Increased Booking Rates
The easier it is for prospects to book a meeting, the more likely they are to follow through. By simplifying the booking process with the tool, you remove potential obstacles that could cause them to reconsider or delay.
Meeting planner software offers round-the-clock availability, allowing prospects to schedule meetings at any time, even outside of your business hours. This flexibility can significantly increase the number of meetings booked, as prospects are not restricted to contacting you during specific hours.
4. Streamlined Follow-Ups
The meeting time zone planner streamlines follow-ups for you by automating and organizing the process.
It can send personalized automated reminders and follow-up emails to clients, ensuring they don't forget about scheduled appointments. This consistent outreach keeps your prospects engaged and reduces the chances of a no-show or last-minute cancellations.
5. Hassle-Free Rescheduling
If a prospect needs to reschedule, the meeting time zone planner makes it easy. It instantly displays the next available slots by matching the availability of all meeting participants in their respective time zones.
Your prospects can choose a new time that works for them without the back-and-forth of emails or calls, leading to higher satisfaction and better meeting retention.
The schedule changes are instantly reflected in your calendar as well, ensuring that you’re always aware of the current schedule and can adjust your plans accordingly.
So, if you’re looking for a meeting time zone planner tool, look no further.
Schedule IQ is your one-stop solution for all your scheduling needs.
How Does Schedule IQ Work as an Effective Meeting Time Zone Planner?
Schedule IQ by Klenty is a scheduling automation platform tailored to help sales teams, customer success teams, and businesses schedule meetings more efficiently.
Its scheduling automation capabilities help you manage schedules and distribute leads effortlessly, ensuring you don't miss any opportunities to boost revenue.
Schedule IQ offers a wide range of features that address the complexities of scheduling meetings with prospects or team members scattered across the globe.
Let’s dive deeper into how it ensures a hassle-free meeting scheduling process:
- Time Zone Support. Schedule IQ’s time zone conversion feature automatically detects your prospects' time zones to ensure that meetings are scheduled at the correct times, regardless of their locations. This helps you avoid the back-and-forth of emails, phone calls, and human error of miscalculating time differences.
- IP-based routing: Schedule IQ uses your prospect’s IP address to identify geographical location. This feature is essential for sales teams working in different time zones to cater to leads from specific geographies.
Apart from this, Schedule IQ offers 3 other types of lead routing techniques:
- Form-based routing: You can assign leads based on their answers to questions like company size, tech stack, and more.
- Owner-based routing: Schedule IQ detects when accounts with existing relationships sign up, and sends the account to the owner in CRM
- CRM-based routing: Based on CRM insights into an account/lead, you can assign leads to the right sales rep.
- Seamless calendar integration. Connect your Google or Outlook calendar to Schedule IQ to let prospects book a meeting during your available hours.
- Drag-and-drop routing builder. Create complex routing workflows with ease. Schedule IQ is the only lead routing platform with a workflow builder that lets you quickly visualize, review, and edit your routing strategy. This helps you check if leads are routed to the right rep handling different time zones.
- Automated reminders: The tool automatically sends meeting reminders to your prospects, reducing no-shows. This frees you from the hassle of manually following up with prospects, enabling you to focus more on engaging prospects.
Book a demo now to see how Schedule IQ enables you to book more meetings across time zones without breaking a sweat!
FAQs
What is the software for planning meetings in different time zones?
How to schedule a meeting across time zones?
It streamlines your entire booking process by automating various scheduling tasks, such as manually calculating time zones and sending reminders. The tool helps you book meetings instantly, avoid scheduling conflicts, streamline follow-ups, and improve your overall scheduling process.