The Problem

Has this ever happened to you? You thought you were clear in your emails or text messages with a friend or colleague or client about the date and time for an upcoming meeting or a call (or the dates and times that you were offering for a future meeting), only to discover that they came away from that conversation with a very different understanding than you.

Here is my advice for writing clearer scheduling emails. Even if you use an online calendar scheduling system, this advice applies to the follow-up messages you may send.

Dates

• Always include the day of the week: Use “Monday August 31” instead of just “August 31.” This adds another dimension to the information, which might help them spot a conflict or spark confidence in their availability.
• Consider abbreviating: “Mon Aug 31.” This saves your time typing and their time reading.
• Avoid relative dates: Use “Today, Mon Aug 31” or “Tomorrow, Tue Sep 1” instead of just “Today” or “Tonight” or “Tomorrow” or “Next Week on Tuesday.” This avoids major confusion if they don’t read your message until days after you’ve sent it.
• Avoid implied dates: Use “This coming Thu Sep 3” or “Next Week on Thu Sep 10” instead of the ambiguous phrase “Next Thursday.”

Times

• Always include AM or PM to be clear. It might be obvious to me (since I’m a night owl) that when I write “I’ll call you at 5” I actually mean 5pm, but the other person may not know or remember that.
• If you’re confirming or offering a start time, just write a single time.
• If you’re confirming the start and end, write “2pm to 3pm” or “2pm for an hour.”
• If you’re offering a range, either write “between 2pm and 6pm” or “I can start as early as 2pm, I’ll need to wrap up by 6pm” to avoid the impression that you can start at 6pm.
• Include the time zone if the other person is not in yours, or if they travel a lot. Even better, list all times in both their and your time zones: “Mon Aug 31, 11am PT / 2pm ET.” See “Where to go from here” below for an excellent time zone resource.
• If you’re uncertain of the time you’ll be available, mention that, e.g.: “...depending on how my day goes. I will call (or text) you by (time) to let you know.”
• If you might be available earlier or running late, promise that you will let them know as soon as you can: “I’ll call you when I’m heading your way” or “I’ll text you when my meeting finally ends.”

Confirming

Sometimes when you offer one or many times, the other person may reply to you with their preferred choice (sometimes days or weeks later) and then assume that it’s still available and the discussion is done. To avoid that problem, I suggest phrases like:

• Use this text in your message above list of dates and times you’re offering: “Please look over the following dates and choose a specific starting time that works for you, and then wait for me to confirm, in case something in my schedule changed before I saw your reply.”
• Or, use this text below your list of dates and times: “Please let me know what date and starting time above would work for you, and then wait for me to confirm, in case something changed in my schedule before I saw your reply.”
• After they reply with their choice, reinforce that approach by replying back promptly with either “Confirmed, I’ll call you at 5pm ET on Mon Aug 31” (i.e., repeat the details) or “Sorry, that time was taken, here are your new choices.”
• If the appointment is more than 5-10 days from now, send another message a day or two beforehand (or on the same day if appropriate) to confirm again. Each Sunday I like to confirm all of the upcoming appointments for that week.

Additional advice

• When scheduling a phone call, ask: “Which number should I dial?” or “Shall I call you on your -1234 cell?” especially if you haven’t called them recently.
• When confirming a phone call, be clear who will call and on which number: “I will call you on your -1234 cell” or “Please call me on my -5678 landline.”
• For a Zoom meeting, include or repeat not only the meeting link but also the meeting ID and passcode.
• I also recommend mentioning a fall-back plan: “If we get disconnected, I will call you on your -5678 office line.” That avoids both of you calling each other and ending up in each other’s voicemail.
• For an in-person meeting, include: “I’ll see you in person at (location) on (date) at (time).”
• Proofread your message carefully before sending, to avoid creating any confusion, e.g., day vs. date mismatches, wrong time zone calculations, etc.
• If you need to schedule separate appointments with multiple people, you could wait for the first person to respond before offering an updated list to the next one, or you could send the same list of choices to multiple people at once to save time, and then deal with any conflicts as they arise.
• If you duplicated a scheduling message in order to offer the same times to someone else, be sure to update both the “To:” field and the body to have the new person’s correct name.
• If the other person doesn’t respond, don’t let your effort to schedule with them fall by the wayside. Right after sending your list of dates and times, add them to your own list of “People to schedule” with an entry like: “Mary Smith: on 8/29 I sent choices through 9/15.” Hopefully, that will remind you to contact her again, e.g., after 9/15. Similarly, if you do hear back from Mary and she does schedule a time, remove her from that follow-up list.

Where to go from here

As always, if any of my advice seems too difficult to follow, I recommend that you find someone you know and trust who can help you.

• http://www.WorldTimeBuddy.com - An excellent, graphically-oriented time zone conversion website
• google: write appointment offer email
• google: write appointment confirmation email