Introduction

The "Appointments" feature is used to set and track scheduled appointments with your leads, team members, lenders, vendors, and external contacts. These appointments can be added by you manually, or they can be requested by the lead directly from your IDX website.

*IMPORTANT: Please note that before you can send an appointment invitation to a lead, you need to integrate your Google Calendar or Exchange Calendar (see Google Calendar Integration and Microsoft Outlook Calendar Integration). Chime uses the integrated calendar to send calendar invitations. If you have not integrated your calendar, the appointment will be created but the invitation will not be sent to the lead. 

 

Summary

• Create an Appointment via Lead Profile Page
• Create an Appointment via the Calendar
• Edit an Appointment
• Assigning Tasks to Others
• Showing Requests

 

Create an Appointment via Lead Profile Page

*Keep in mind that these appointments are external invitations to lead. If you do not want the lead to be aware of the event, create a Task instead.  The lead will be able to view the title and description of the appointment if you have integrated your calendar.

After integrating your calendar, to create an appointment manually go to a lead profile page, and click the "+" icon at the top right-hand corner of the "Appointments" section (under the Activities tab which is the default):

In the pop-up window, enter the description of the appointment

• If the appointment is created in Chime without a description, then the description of the appointment synced to Google/Outlook Calendar will be: "Lead Name - New Appointment"
• If the appointment is created in Chime with a description, then the description of the appointment synced to Google/Outlook Calendar is: "Lead Name - Description".

Select the Owner, this can be yourself or another Agent on your team:

Select the appointment participants. You may invite leads, agents, lenders, vendors, or external contacts:

Choose the start and end dates/times:

Enter the address where the appointment will take place in the location field. This is an optional field:

If you want to also be reminded of the appointment by call or text message. To schedule a reminder, select "by Call" or "by SMS" under the reminder options:

 

After clicking the save button, the newly-created appointment will display on the lead's profile page under the Appointment section, an email will be sent to the lead's primary email address only, and the event will also be synchronized to your integrated calendar:

Note: The concept of supporting the option to "Send" or "Don't Send" when saving an appointment is only for invitation emails & Chime internal notifications and doesn’t mean whether or not to control synching participants to the third-party calendars. In line with this, choosing "Don't Send" does not mean completely preventing any participant from knowing about the appointment, but simply choosing not to notify participants by email and notification. What’s more, any major calendar product will generate an invitation event on the participants’ calendar to notify the participants at least.

 

Create an Appointment via the Calendar

Appointments can also be created via the Calendar section of Chime. To do so, first, click on the Calendar page on the top menu bar:

 

Hover over the "+ Create" button on the top, and click "Add Appointment."

 

In the pop-up window, you must select a participant for the appointment by searching for their name, email, or phone. You must also assign an Owner. By default, the owner will be the user scheduling the appointment:

 

Click the save button, and the appointment will appear in your task list and be added to the calendar:

Edit an Appointment

Via a Lead Profile

Go to the lead's profile/detail page. The appointment will be listed on the right-side panel. Move your cursor to the appointment and click the "edit" icon:

 

Click "Save" after you have made any adjustments:

 

Via the Tasks Page

Go to the Task page. You can locate appointments by filtering with "Task Type" selecting "Appointment" and deselecting the others.

 

Click the whole row of one specific appointment and then you will notice an "Edit" icon in the top right:

 

Click "Save" after you make adjustments:

Note: Only the appointment creator can delete them. 

Appointment Settings

Appointment settings are accessed on the Left Side Panel, by clicking the gear icon:

Appointment reminder notifications can be sent to the participants either via Chime or via an integrated calendar. If you have integrated a third-party calendar, it will be available here:

By default, if the individual who scheduled the appointment is not an existing lead in the CRM, they will not be captured as a lead. Enable this setting to capture those individuals as leads:

Assigning Tasks to Others

When creating an appointment, you have the ability to set any other Agent as the Owner, even if they do not have access to see the lead (see Lead Privacy: Team Leads vs. Private Leads), but note that you cannot currently assign an appointment to a lender-type Chime account. Here is where you would assign the appointment to someone else:

When assigning an appointment to another user on the team, it will appear on their "Tasks" and on their integrated calendar, if they have it connected. The appointment will only show up on the task list or integrated calendar for the individual in the "Assign To" slot of the appointment. Currently, you can only add ONE owner per appointment. Keep in mind that if a calendar is integrated, it will also send the invite to the lead's email address.

 

Showing Requests

Showing requests are received in real-time based on when a lead schedules a tour from your IDX Website. The Chime CRM allows you to manage these requests to accept and add them to the calendar or take another appropriate action.

When a lead submits a showing request, you will receive notifications by email and by push notification on your web and mobile app.

*IMPORTANT: This is not like a "Calendly" feature that tracks your availability. The options to tour a property will not be blocked off if your calendar shows you as unavailable. This feature is simply meant as a CTA to get site visitors to engage and request more information.

 

Viewing All Showing Requests

You can view all showing requests received on the Tasks section by clicking on "Showing Request" on the left sidebar:

 

Clicking on the lead's name will take you to the lead's profile page where the request can also be accepted. 

 

To accept the showing request from the lead profile page, click on "+ Accept and Add Appointment" in the "Appointment" section:

 

To accept the showing request from the Tasks page, click on the row for the request, click on the "Action" drop-down menu, and then select "Accept"

 

Choose the details for the appointment (it does not have to be the exact same time that was requested, though it will default to that), and click "Save" to add to your appointments. As a reminder, this will also send an invite to the lead from your integrated calendar.

 

Questions?

If you have any questions regarding this topic or any others, please reach out to our Support Team via email at <support@chimeinc.com>, by phone at 1 (855) 981-7557, or by a chat with us through your Chime CRM.