What is a meeting queue? How to create a meeting queue?

Modified on Sun, 4 Aug at 9:54 PM

TABLE OF CONTENTS

What is a meeting queue?
Benefits of using meeting queues
What is the difference between a meeting queue and a meeting template?
How does a meeting queue work?
How to create a meeting queue
How to edit a meeting queue
How to delete a meeting queue

NOTE: This feature is available only to users on the 'Advanced' subscription plan.

Pre-requisite 

You must have created an organization in Leadmonk to make use of Inbound Router features.
You must have created a Team and a Meeting template in Leadmonk before creating a meeting queue.

Below diagram shows the relationship between inbound router and other objects.

What is a meeting queue?

Meeting queues streamline the process of managing and distributing inbound meeting requests. They allow you to define qualification criteria and meeting distribution rules to ensure efficient lead routing and scheduling.

Qualification Criteria:

Meeting queues act as a filter for incoming requests. You can define specific criteria to determine if a lead qualifies for a meeting. If a lead doesn't meet the criteria:

Automated Response: A polite popup message can be displayed, thanking the lead for their interest and informing them that you'll respond shortly. This message can be customized with a generic response like "Thank you: We have received your message and will respond to you as soon as possible."
Landing Page Redirect: Alternatively, you can redirect the lead to a specific landing page with additional information or a contact form.

Meeting Distribution:

Once a lead qualifies for a meeting, meeting queues can automatically route and assign them to the most suitable sales representative based on various distribution methods:

Round Robin: Meetings are assigned sequentially to available sales reps, ensuring a fair workload distribution.
Account-Based: Leads are routed to reps specializing in their specific account type or industry.
Territory-Based: Leads are assigned to reps responsible for their geographical location.

Distribution Rules:

Meeting queues also offer flexibility in assigning qualified leads using any of the below meeting algorithms.

Round robin - Prioritize Availability: Meetings are routed to reps with the most open slots in their calendars.
Round robin - Weighted Average: Meetings are assigned based on a pre-defined weight assigned to each rep, considering factors like experience or performance.
Multi-host: Meetings are assigned to multiple hosts.
Allocate based on ownership: Leadmonk allows you to automatically assign meetings to the account owner if a contact/company (HubSpot) or contact/account/lead (Salesforce) is already owned. This can be useful for routing returning leads or leads from companies that you already have a relationship with.

By leveraging meeting queues, you can efficiently manage inbound meeting requests, ensure qualified leads reach the right sales rep, and optimize your sales team's scheduling process.

What is the difference between a meeting queue and a meeting template?

Meeting queues are typically used to distribute meetings to team members, while meeting templates are typically used to create meetings with a specific purpose.

How does a meeting queue work?

Meeting queue efficiently manages and distributes inbound meeting requests. Meeting queue acts as a centralized hub for incoming leads, allowing businesses to qualify potential customers and assign them to appropriate sales rep based on predefined criteria and rules. By automating lead routing and scheduling, meeting queues improve sales team productivity and enhance the overall customer experience. To effectively route meeting requests, at least one meeting queue must be created for each inbound router.

Below are the various conditions available in Leadmonk to setup qualifying rules. Depending on the form parameter type, subset of these conditions are available to setup the rules (e.g.: domain conditions are relevant for email form parameter. Whereas >, <, >=, <= are relevant for number form parameter).

Check the help page to know how to filter form submissions with disposable or free email domains.

Check this page to know how to make use of value lists in Queue rules.

Available Assignment algorithms in meeting queues

1. Weighted Round Robin Algorithm
This algorithm focuses on fairness and skill-based allocation. Each team member is assigned a weight based on factors like experience, expertise, and performance. The algorithm then distributes appointments based on a weighted average, ensuring that each team member receives a proportional share of appointments based on their assigned weight. This promotes fairness and prevents situations where high-performing individuals are overburdened. Check this page to know how to setup this queue.

2. Multiple hosts

The multiple hosts algorithm (Collective or Multi-host scheduling) is used to pool team members’ availability. The corresponding collective/multi-host booking page shows appointment slots only when all team members (all hosts) are available. If any host is not available when the other hosts are, that time slot will not be shown as available. When an invitee schedules a meeting, all team members are added to the calendar meeting invite.

This meeting queue algorithm is recommended when an invitee needs to book time with several of your team members at one time. For example, this meeting queue would be great when a sales manager wants to schedule a product demo session with a client and wants to involve a pre-sales executive and a product manager from his team.

3. Optimize for team members availability

This algorithm helps to allocate leads using round robing meeting template on team member's availability basis. Here Round robin meeting template pools the availability of all team members assigned to the meeting Type and shows the unique open slots. This optimizing for availability logic offers maximum availability to appointment invitees and reduces wait times. When a new appointment request comes in via a Round Robin event type, Leadmonk checks the availability of every team member connected to that event type and assigns the appointment based on the Round Robin logic. Because assignments are automated, team members no longer have to spend time messaging/emailing back and forth with invitees to confirm appointment times. This scheduling automation reduces the gap between when appointment requests arrive and when team members follow up and improves your team's responsiveness.

4. Allocate based on ownership

Leadmonk allows you to automatically assign meetings to the account owner if a contact/company (HubSpot) or contact/account/lead (Salesforce) is already owned. This can be useful for routing returning leads or leads from companies that you already have a relationship with.

5. Custom actions

Define lead qualification rules and actions for incoming leads, such as displaying thank-you messages, redirecting to external URLs, or redirecting them to an existing team meeting type.

How does the meeting queue work

The Meeting Queue works like this: If Qualifying rules are met, then Routing actions are performed.

When someone submits a meeting request form, the system checks it against the rules you set in the "Rules" section.
If the meeting request matches those rules, the system then performs the actions you defined in the "Assign meetign to" section.
While assigned meeting queues to any router (inbound / campaign / handoff), assign them in the order they have to be processed. Because meeting queues are processed in the sequence they are placed in the router. and once a queue is processed successfully, further queues processing of inbound lead stops.

How to create a meeting queue

To create a meeting queue, you will need to:

1. Go to the Router=>Meeting Queues page.

2. Click the +Create new button.

Enter the router name. Then click Edit in the "Rules" section to specify the qualifying rules.

You can setup qualifying rules based on form fields or CRM fields as shown below. CRM fields based rules is relevant if the corresponding lead/customer exists in your CRM. But for new lead/prospect, setup rules based on form fields only.

4. If you choose Allocate based on ownership algortihm, check the below help pages to know how to setup this type of queue.

HubSpot
Salesforce

5. If you choose Optimize for team members availability or Custom actions assignment algorithms, check this step.

Go to the tab "Qualifying rules".
- A qualifying rule is a condition that must be met in order for a meeting to be assigned to the queue. For example, you could create a qualifying rule that specifies that only meetings with a certain region/industry can be assigned to this queue.
- If you want to qualify all incoming leads to this queue as qualified, then enable "Qualify all" switch. Then you don't have to define any qualification rules for this queue.
- If you want to specify qualifying rules to pass inbound lead to this queue, then specify qualifying rules for theis queue by clicking on the button "+ Add rule". This is possible only if the "Qualify all" switch is not on.

Qualifying rules to be specified only for the properties specified in the inbound router form.

Below are sample queue rules to skip processing form submissions with non-work email addresses. Rules can be defined for a form field or a combination of fields as shown below.

6. If you choose Custom actions assignment algorithm, check this step

You can set any of the below 3 options as router actions if qualifying rules are met.

7. If you choose Optimize for team members availability assignment algorithm, check this step

Select the meeting template field: Select the meeting template relevant for this router.
Select team field: Select the team that will be responsible for handling meetings in the queue.
Allocate to field: Choose how you want to allocate meetings to team members:

Choose "Distribute to all team members" option to consider all members of the team in the queue.
Choose "Select manually" option, if you want to select subset of members from the team.

Used by tab shows the list of inbound routers where this queue is used. This can be helpful if you need to know which routers are using a particular queue.

How to edit a meeting queue

To edit a meeting queue, you will need to:

Go to the Router > Meeting Queues page.
Click the name of the queue that you want to edit.
Make the desired changes to the queue.
Click the Save button.

The changes that you make to the queue will be reflected automatically in all active inbound routers.

How to delete a meeting queue

To delete a meeting queue, you will need to:

Go to the Router > Meeting Queues page.
Find the queue that you want to delete.
Click the Delete button mentioned on that queue (as shown below).
A confirmation dialog will appear. Click the Yes button to delete the queue.

NOTE: The queue will be deleted only if it is not used in any inbound routers. If the queue is used in any inbound routers, you will not be able to delete it.