The Future of Scheduling: Bots

When Tim Ferris evangelized the use of Virtual Assistants in his now-famous book - The 4-hour Work Week - he must have at least quintupled the number of people outside the C-suite with personal assistants managing their every meeting and errand.

I’ve met junior executives who personally hired VAs; while their bosses were doing all their own scheduling, expense claims and other forms of administrative work!

And now, a new wave of platforms aims to give everyone the personal assistant they need … at a fraction of the cost.

I’m talking about Bots — AI-bots that integrate with our calendars (because they’ve finally all gone online); and our emails… to correspond with clients, coworkers and friends… as if there was a real human being comparing our schedules and setting a date, time and venue.

Three services have caught my attention. And because they seem so human-like, I shall name them, instead of the companies that built them: Amy, Clara and Evie.

Consider this article a primer. Version 1.0, if you may. I’ve not used any of these bots. Instead, I’ve been used. While I once had fair exchange of time with those who were scheduling meetings with me, it is now my time — in exchange for someone else’s algorithm and monthly subscription.

So — while I cannot yet provide a review of the bots as a tool in my arsenal of productivity software, I can present you my considerations.

I believe the five most important considerations in your selection of a scheduling assistant service are:

1. Time Return on Monetary Investment
2. Impact on Overall Productivity
3. Impact on Relationships
4. The Paradox of AI-Assisted Scheduling
5. Degree of Personalization & Customization for Brands (and ‘Personal Branding’)

This article will briefly discuss the first consideration: Time Return on Monetary Investment. And an accompanying table will compare the last (fifth) consideration: your bot, and your brand.

Here’s how the three services stack up for ‘Unlimited Meetings’:

• X.ai (Amy): $39/month (all prices in USD)
• ClaraLabs.com (Clara): $499/month
• Mimetic.ai (Evie): $25/month (Doesn’t offer custom-domain)

I’ve created a simple comparison table that compares the 3 broad categories:

1. Pricing & Simple Assessment of Value
2. Branded / Personalization Features
3. User Experience

Have a look — and please feel free to contribute by commenting. I’ll credit your input if I include it in a final analysis.

Are they worth it?

Let’s assume it takes you an average of 10 minutes to set up a meeting (yes, it can take that much time to discuss, set, confirm and remind). That’s 6 meetings per hour.

Let’s assume that you have an average of 2 meetings every day of the month (including your personal appointments and social engagements). That’s 60 appointments per month.

That means, with these numbers, a scheduling bot-assistant will save you 10 hours a month.

Let’s assume you work at an hourly rate of ‘H’. Your return will be:

• (10 x H)/39 — for Amy
• (10 x H)/499 — for Clara
• (10 x H)/25 — for Evie

Let’s assume an executive with a net $10k salary on 160 hours of work per month. That’s time worth $62.50/hour.

With one of these Scheduling Assistants, they can save $625/month in “scheduling time”. They get a return of 25x, 16x and (only) 1.25x on their investment in subscriptions to Amy, Clara and Evie respectively.

Clara has another, distinct $199/month plan for a limit of 60 meetings. (Assuming you use only half — 30 meetings — it’ll cost $6.60/meeting. If you make way more than $40/hour, go for it!)

Based on the simple comparison, I’ll state my proposition:

1. If you earn at least $5,000/month, it’s a no-brainer — go for at least one of the bots.
2. If absolute cost is a consideration, Drop Clara — it’s significantly more expensive than Amy and Evie. (I’d like to examine why Clara charges significantly more.)
3. Then compare the User Experience for both Amy and Evie.
4. If there are no notable differences, drop Evie, and go for Amy. Because Amy raised A LOT more money than Evie; and will likely be able to significantly improve on the User Experience and sophistication of its engine. Case in point — Amy offers a ‘custom-domain’ feature today, while Evie doesn’t.

(Crunchbase shows that X.ai raised $34.3 Million; while preliminary research shows that Clara Labs and Mimetic.ai raised very significantly less; and this service could be a winner-takes-all type category.)

This is a simplistic analysis based on a simple price comparison; and on the assumption that it takes an average of 10 minutes to set up each meeting, and to manage potential changes.

Perhaps the real point of this analysis is — Scheduling Bot-Assistants are an excellent way to save time, and get more of your life back for yourself or for more important work.

BUT… it can’t be that simple, can it? There are other costs and considerations; broadly categorized under:

1. Impact on Relationships — how will your colleague, client, friend… and mother-in-law feel about chatting with a bot, just to get some time with you.
2. Impact on Overall Productivity — how will not having to work on one type of (painfully administrative) tasks, impact your life? I’m guessing it would help significantly.
3. The Paradox of Automated/AI-Assisted Scheduling — would we eventually accept and propose more meetings, than are actually necessary — just because it’s so easy to do so. Would the meetings be poorly scheduled because the bots are not (yet) capable of reading our minds, and grouping calendar events intuitively.
4. Degree of Personalization & Customization for Brands (and ‘Personal Branding’) — look at the fancy options that Amy, Clara and Evie provide — custom domains (except Evie for now), custom email signatures, custom names, etc. They all influence your ‘personal brand’; or how you present yourself professionally (to clients and business associates); and if you’re deploying this for your business — they influence your brand.

But more of that in a follow-up article… For now, I’m gonna sign up for one of those bots!

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