Allow for Pre & Post Meeting Buffer Time To Be Different
With Calendly, you have the ability to set pre-meeting & post-meeting buffer time so that the amount of buffer time before a specific meeting type can be more or less than after that specific meeting type.
This is a very useful feature that Hubspot does not seem to have. Here is an example of how it is useful: when you have specific meeting types that always require prep work, having more buffer time before the call is very helpful. Or if you have a meeting type that always requires a lot of extra work right after the call (say for follow up purposes or creating multiple tasks) having extra buffer type after these meetings is also very useful.
I'm updating this post to "Not currently planned" because we do not have plans to have this done by the end of the year. I believe I've spoken with a few folks here, and I'll continue to follow this thread, as this is something that is likely to be reviewed by our development team in the coming weeks.
In Calendly, I can specify a separate amount of time for pre- and post-meeting buffer.
I set it to 15 minutes buffer AFTER, but no buffer before, for all my meetings, as this is what works best for me.
In Hubspot meetings, I am only allowed to set 15 minutes before AND after (the same amount), but this is too much buffer for me, as it means I have to have 30 minute total buffer for every call. But i don't want my meetings to be at weird times (anything other than :00, :15, :30 or :45), which would happen if i set 5- or 10-minute buffers in Hubspot.
For example, if I set 10-minute buffers in HS i would end up with meetings at 3:10 and 4:25 etc, and I don't want that.
Can you make it possible to set pre- and post-buffer times for meetings to allow for my use case of the Meetings?
I just noticed this today as well. If I set any buffer for after a meeting, it means no one else can schedule a meeting on the hour or half hour the rest of the day. HubSpot needs to be smart enought to know I can set a meeting at 10:30am if there is a meeting at from 9-10. Now the only option would be 10:15, 10:45..... if this was for my 30 minute meeting link with a 15 minute buffer. This is a huge inconvenience.
With Calendly, I hade separate meetigns for clients in different cities. For each of these meeting types, I could define a custom buffer time, allowing to factor in traveling times back and forth. This was a huge time saver.
Why not let clients define the buffer times manually, like the time blocks for the meeting? That way everyone could use the buffer times in way the would best fit their needs and it would make the Meeting feature in HubSpot so much more powerful!
I'm updating this post to "Not currently planned" because we do not have plans to have this done by the end of the year. I believe I've spoken with a few folks here, and I'll continue to follow this thread, as this is something that is likely to be reviewed by our development team in the coming weeks.
Although I'm not sure about having different buffer times depending on the meeting, one thing @bleeboxcast mentionned is very annoying to me : you can't set fixed options for meetings hours.
In my case, I want meetings to start on 10:00, 10:30, 11:00, 11:00 and so on (any hour that is like hh:00 or hh:30).
Let's say I have a meeting ending on 10:15. If I have no buffer time, then the available bookings are 10:15, 10:45, 11:15, etc. This is what I don't want to happen.
If I set buffer time to 15', then it works for the previous example but not for a meenting ending on 10:00 (again, result is 10:15, 10:45, 11:15...).
There is currently no automatic way to have meetings starting on specific hours like something o'clock or half past something.
If you currently encounter this problem, the best workaround is to manually set a 15 minutes "filler" event in your calendar, to get back on half hour possibilities. This, for every event not finishing on hh:00 or hh:30.
As someone who typically has a fair amount of follow-up after meetings (30-60 minutes), but just needs about 10 - 15 minutes of prep time before meetings, I'd love to set different buffer times for before and after.
The meeting buffer time function in Hubspot is severly flawed in how this was built. Here are the issues that make this a fairly useless tool for businesses with sales processes that are more nuanced or require more flexibility...
#1 - We cannot set a separate buffer for before OR after a meeting ... we are forced to set the same length of time before AND after a meeting, which significantly limits the amount of meetings our sales reps can have on their calendar. Every other major scheduling software offers this flexiblity of setting buffers either before or after a meeting, or both.
#2 - Even more maddening is that if you have a buffer set for one meeting type/calendar and a lead schedules a meeting for another meeting type/calendar, Hubspot will allow that person to set the meeting right up against the meeting with the buffer, essentailly ignoring the buffer. This is ridiculous. Calendly, Acuity, and practially every other appointment scheduling software WILL NOT allow a person to set a meeting that ignores the buffer of another meeting type/calendar. I was told that I need to set buffers for ALL MY MEETING TYPES/CALENDARS in order for a buffer to be applied to any one of them. This needs to be addressed so that the buffer time for a particular meeting type/calendar is acknowledged by any other meeting type/calendar. Otherwise, the buffer feature is pretty much useless.
Not having the ability to buffer pre and post meetings when managing a sales team on a round robin booking calendar is incredibly frustrating. For every 15 minute call my team member needs 30 mins of admin/buffer time AFTER their call but when I adjust the buffer to 30 minutes it significantly reduces the total amount of calls the team member can do in one day as it over buffers (pre and post). There should be a way to dictate the specific start times OR have bespoke pre and post meeting buffer times.
Is there any intention to add this feature? This would be hugely beneficial for our team who is struggling with carving out work for admin time through setting a buffer time and limiting their availability too much for the clients.
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