Calendly: A New VineSpring Integration

With virtual tastings, curbside pickups, and social distancing being the new normal, having an easy way to schedule appointments is needed more than ever. Calendly is a great way for your customers to schedule a time to meet with you (virtually or in-person) and it is now integrated with the VineSpring platform.

VineSpring’s integration with Calendly automatically creates a customer account in VineSpring and appends appointment details to the new (or existing) account. This streamlines the in-person checkout process by putting the customer information at your fingertips.

Here are some ideas on how you can use Calendly today:

Schedule Virtual Tastings

Offering virtual tasting appointments to your customers is easy with Calendly. Simply create an event named “Virtual Tasting” and connect it to your personal calendar to ensure availability. No more double entry—appointments are entered directly into your calendar with all the details.

If you are working as a team, connect Calendly to a shared calendar instead and distribute appointments to team members based on availability. The options are simple and straightforward—set your availability and Calendly handles the rest. See more features here. 

Once set up, Calendly offers a hosted web page you can send to customers to pick and confirm a time for the appointment. You also have the option to embed the scheduling options directly into your website, email, or other communication you send to your customers.

Virtual tastings don’t have to be for just groups of people—you can use Calendly to schedule private tastings too. Modus Operandi Cellars in Napa, California is doing this by allowing customers to purchase a pack of wine and then they can schedule a virtual tasting with the winemaker, Jason Moore.

Curbside & Porch Pick-ups

As restrictions are lifted and new rules are put into place regarding how many people can visit a business at one time, scheduling times with customers who would like to pick up their purchase is a necessity. Calendly is built for just this kind of task. Create an event type called “Pick up” and specify how often and how far apart you would like people to schedule.

We’ve seen some wineries use Calendly to schedule “Porch Pick-ups” at the vineyard. In one example, appointments can be scheduled every hour with a 30-minute “buffer” to ensure time in between to clean, sanitize, and prepare for the next group. If multiple team members are working the same day, Calendly assigns each appointment accordingly, ensuring each team member knows who they are meeting and when.

In-Person Experiences

In addition to curbside and porch pickups, Calendly can be used to make reservations for in-person experiences such as a seated tasting and tour of the vineyard. This provides a simple, straightforward way to enable customers to schedule reservations with you and your team for any type of event.

Accepting payment for the reservation is also easily accomplished by setting up a redirect to your website. Once the reservation is made, the redirect lands the customer on a purchase page where they can select options and checkout. The credit card and other order information is stored in VineSpring.

Calendly provides simple, straightforward scheduling features to help you thrive in this new normal. Try it out today by signing up for a 14-day free trial 

As always, reach out to VineSpring Support with any questions. Here’s to staying healthy!