Customize your scheduling environment: A guide to Cal.com 's booking questions

Cal.com is a scheduling infrastructure system that everyone can use. Our unlimited free account is great for individuals and projects, and brands in startup mode. However, we also have team and enterprise-level accounts that offer everything from white labeling to HIPAA-compliant scheduling options. As a product, cal.com is focused on ensuring that our users have the tools they need to spend less time arranging meetings and more time connecting about what matters. To do that, we've built a flexible, scalable, customizable, and robust platform. Many of our most useful features can be found in individual event-level settings. We set things up like this so that people can effortlessly customize their booking options to reflect the needs of their business. With this in mind, today, we will examine booking questions, specifically what they are and how you can use them to simplify appointment booking.

What are booking questions?

Cal.com's booking questions are a simple and versatile feature that can easily enhance your scheduling environment. We encounter booking questions all the time. They're the fields you fill out whenever you use a booking form. Booking questions typically require your email address, name, and phone number. However, you don't have to limit booking questions to only those fields. You can use booking questions to create specialized event types for your industry. For example, you could use booking questions to create a teleconferencing session specifically for GitHub PR reviews. However, you could use booking questions in other settings as well. We have examples of different booking questions and their uses below.

Booking questions for animal shelters

Let's say, for example, that you run an animal rescue or shelter. You could use Cal.com to manage both the adoption and surrender process.

When creating an event type for adoption screenings, you could include the following booking questions:

• How many pets are there already in the household?

• Have you ever owned a pet before?

• Why do you want a pet?

When using booking questions as part of facilitating surrenders (especially those that involve pickups), you could include the following questions:

• Are you terminating ownership for behavior-related reasons?

• Are you terminating ownership for medical-related reasons?

• Are you terminating ownership for housing-related reasons?

Using booking questions within the animal rescue industry can simplify things by reducing the back and forth that's regularly part of gathering information. Creating an event type specifically for surrenders is useful when dealing with large-scale surrenders, such as those related to hoarding situations. In addition, it can also help to facilitate surrenders if your organization offers pickups in cases where the former owner is housebound or has limited mobility.

Booking questions for Personal Chefs

Booking questions can also prove helpful for Personal Chefs; they provide you with crucial client information at the time of booking. As a Personal Chef or Caterer, you could include the following booking questions:

• Do you have any dietary restrictions or allergies?

• What's your favorite style of cuisine?

• Do you consider yourself food adventurous?

By asking these booking questions, personal Chefs and Caterers can tailor their consultation process based on client needs and preferences, ultimately providing a better dining experience.

Booking questions for Physiotherapists

Booking questions are also an excellent way for Physiotherapists to gain more insight into their patients' experience with physiotherapy. This can be useful when preparing for the first session. As a Physiotherapist, here are a few questions that you might want to include as part of your booking form:

• Is this your first experience with physiotherapy?

• Do you have any injuries causing you pain, or are you concerned about other than the one you booked this appointment for?

• How do you feel about exercise? Be honest.

By asking these booking questions when the appointment is being made, you can save time and simplify the process of preparing for your new client.

Booking questions for Photographers

As a Photographer, a lot of your job is related to communication. Your images communicate emotions, values, ideals, hopes, and wishes that people have about themselves, other individuals, or inanimate objects. With that in mind, here are a few questions you might find helpful:

• What type of images do you love?

• Do you have a favorite style of photography?

• Could you share a link to an image that inspires you?

Using booking questions is an easy way for you to learn more about your client before the first meeting.

How to customize your booking questions

Editing your event's booking questions is a fairly straightforward process. If you want to change the order of your questions, that can be accomplished by hovering over the question and clicking either the up or down arrow that appears. However, if you want to change the label or input type of the question or add new questions, check out the instructions below.

How to edit the default booking questions

1. Sign in to your Cal.com account.

2. Select an event or create a new one.

3. Once you are in your event-level settings, go to the advanced tab.

4. Scroll down to the area named booking questions.

5. Once you're here, you can edit the default questions to customize them.

6. This can be done by clicking the edit button on the right-hand side of the question.

7. Once you do this, you can customize the input type, the identifier, the label, the placeholder, and whether or not it's required.

8. Click the add button at the bottom of the pop-up once you've made your desired changes.

9. Finally, click the save button in the upper right-hand corner of your event settings page.

How to add additional booking questions

1. Sign in to your Cal.com account.

2. Select an event or create a new one.

3. Once you are in your event-level settings, go to the advanced tab.

4. Scroll down to the area named booking questions.

5. You'll notice a plus symbol at the bottom of the section named booking questions.

6. Click the plus symbol to add a question.

7. Select the input type for your question.

8. Type in the identifier, and label, and add some placeholder text.

9. If this were a section for a name, the placeholder text would be "John Smith."

10. Specify whether the section is required or not.

11. A required section is a section that the booker will have to fill out no matter what to continue with the booking.

12. If you state that the section is not required, it is optional.

13. Click the add button at the bottom of the pop-up window.

14. Finally, click the save button in the upper right-hand corner of the page.

Adding and customizing your event's booking questions is a straightforward process. This is an excellent way to tailor your scheduling environment to meet your needs and ensure that the booker provides you with essential information when booking. This is just one of many customizable features that Cal.com provides to simplify scheduling so you can gain the most from your time. Happy scheduling!

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