How QuitCarbon employees each save 4.1 hours/week with AI meeting automation

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QuitCarbon is an award-winning startup helping millions of US homeowners make the switch from fossil fuel to clean, electric energy. QuitCarbon’s expert team guides customers through every step — from personalized home assessments to getting connected with trusted contractors — making the switch to cost-effective, safe, and sustainable appliances easy.  

QuitCarbon challenges

Founded in 2022 by Cooper Marcus (“Chief Quitter” and CEO) QuitCarbon is an ENERGY STAR partner focused on making the transition to cleaner energy more accessible and affordable for homeowners. With funding from the US Department of Energy and local governments like the City of San Francisco, Cooper and the QuitCarbon team are accelerating their electrification efforts to hit US emissions targets and climate goals across the country. 

As CEO, Cooper spends a majority of his time in meetings, interacting with clients, government agencies, non-profits, and internal team members. At the same time, he is also responsible for managing operations across the entire organization – making time management extremely crucial to fulfilling his mission at QuitCarbon.

“My industry is characterized by a lot of government and non-profit interest, and programs for purposes of climate and energy justice helping folks move off fossil fuels. And I tend to work a lot. It's not unusual for me to still be in front of the computer 12 hours later.”

Prior to Reclaim, Cooper and the QuitCarbon were challenged with managing their demanding schedules. Juggling numerous meetings ranging from client consultations to team syncs and industry webinars, along with all the independent work that needed to be done each week – just managing the calendar was a constant time sink. 

"Before Reclaim, I used to spend 20-30 minutes a day just shuffling events around to make everything fit. I was moving things around, communicating with people and asking if they could move things around, and none of that was actually productive. It was just the work to do the work – which made it especially bothersome.”

The QuitCarbon team needed to optimize their scheduling process to stop losing time every week. As a fast-paced growing startup, each team member was carrying a significant workload where every minute counted. Without time to focus on high-impact activities – they wouldn’t be able to develop and implement the innovative solutions with their clients and partners to make real emissions impact as a company. 

How Reclaim helps QuitCarbon automate their internal & external meeting scheduling  

• Automates meeting scheduling with clients and partners via high-priority scheduling links
• Auto-schedules recurring meetings across the team to ensure touch points aren't missed
• Prevents burnout with AI-scheduled decompression breaks after meetings

As a proud calendar-driven individual, Cooper was among the first 30 users to ever sign up at Reclaim in 2019. When he founded QuitCarbon three years later, he recognized how automated scheduling could enhance not just his personal productivity but also benefit his growing team.

Reclaim is a smart calendar app that uses AI-powered features to help teams automatically schedule meetings, tasks, habits, and breaks around their existing calendar events. The QuitCarbon team have adopted new Reclaim features as they have been released over the years including major launches like Smart 1:1s back in 2021, Scheduling Links in 2022, and (most recently) Smart Meetings in 2024. 

By automating workweek scheduling and planning with Reclaim, Cooper ensured that every team member could contribute their best work without getting bogged down by the back-and-forth admin work of scheduling their calendars. 

“We're in the business of helping folks move their homes off of fossil fuels. And part of how we do that is by talking with them. And to have those calls, we need to be available. And to be available, we need to be flexible.”

Cooper and the QuitCarbon team found AI-driven Scheduling Links to be a complete game changer at Reclaim. It completely transformed how they were able to share their availability with clients and other important contacts. As a small team with more work than time, they have to be ruthless about prioritizing which meetings they take and when, But with intelligent priority settings for events via Reclaim, the team was able to offer up more availability for important meetings over lower-priority events they would happily reschedule.

The QuitCarbon team no longer needed to coordinate times back-and-forth over email, or clear a bunch of events off their calendar to share a Calendly link. And when lower-priority events are rescheduled over, Reclaim automatically moves those to the next best time to ensure they stay on the calendar without any effort required by the user. 

“I really enjoy using different Scheduling Links with different priorities. When I want to be as accommodating as possible, I use the high-priority link because it will show them the most availability and Reclaim will move things around on my calendar to accommodate the times they book. Other times it's folks who I only want to meet with if I could fit it in, and I'll send them the regular-priority link so it puts the meetings in times where it's not going to move other events around.”

The QuitCarbon sales team is also switching to Reclaim’s latest release of Round Robin links to book time across a pool of team members so they can maximize availability and balance their meeting load. 

But the team also needs to prioritize time for their internal team meetings to continue mentorship and development, stay aligned on sprint planning, and keep up with project reviews. For these important recurring meetings, the QuitCarbon team has been able to auto-schedule their internal meetings at the best time for all attendees so these important meetings don’t slip through the cracks.

“Smart Meetings are really terrific. We use them for regular check-ins while allowing the team to have more flexibility for their other meetings. This allows all of us to be a little more available to our colleagues and to the outside world, and be sure that we'll meet on a regular basis without having to do the management. It's just brilliant.”

When conflicts come up, Smart Meetings automatically reschedule to accommodate everyone’s availability, so important touch points don’t get pushed to the backburner even on busy weeks.

Balancing so many meetings on the calendar every week, the QuitCarbon team also prevents meeting fatigue and burnout using Buffer Time. This allows them to automatically defend breaks on the calendar after their meeting events.  

“Having buffer time after meetings helps me focus during meetings and be prepared for the next one”, says Ted Tilles, a Clean Energy Coaches at QuitCarbon.  

While meetings are critical to the work of the team, these breaks help avoid days of back-to-back calls that can leave employees exhausted – ensuring everyone has the time they need to reset, review notes, and prepare for the next meeting.

QuitCarbon results

• Employees save 3.7 hours/week booking an average 34.8 calls using priority links
• Employees save an average 0.5 hours/week auto-scheduling internal recurring meetings 
• Employees prevent 15.8 more back-to-back meetings/week with smart meeting breaks

Reclaim has been an integral part of QuitCarbon’s time management solution since 2019, and is deployed across the company to help employees maximize their productivity and improve collaboration across the team.

Today, team members using Reclaim Scheduling Links book an average of 34.8 weekly calls, saving 3.7 hours that would have been spent manually coordinating meeting times every week (estimating a conservative 5-minute time cost to schedule and/or reschedule). 

Reclaim’s advanced booking links have created a direct sales impact by giving them the power to get more meetings booked with homeowners every week. And the ability to offer up maximum availability with Scheduling Links hasn’t just increased the number of meetings the team can manage in a week, it’s also also improved the booking experience for their customers and partners by giving them more scheduling options so they can book sooner and more convenient times.

“Being available to serve our customers is critical to our business model, because those calls with our online clients are what actually leads to folks deciding to move their homes off of fossil fuels. Reclaim solves that for us in a brilliant way.”

And with the ability to create a range of priority links for different kinds of meetings, the QuitCarbon team is able to prioritize the important calls that help propel the business forward, while managing less urgent ones without disruption to the other events. 

“I really like being able to distinguish those two scenarios [critical vs. less urgent meetings]. It’s a huge win and a major differentiator with tools that are just booking links. There are so many, I've used them before. I switched from Calendly long ago and have never missed it.”

But fitting in more client meetings doesn’t mean sacrificing collaborative time with their team either. Across the company, Reclaim automatically schedules 13 Smart Meetings at the best time for everyone around their scheduling preferences, ensuring that one-on-ones, project updates, and planning sessions are seamlessly integrated into their calendar around other events. 

“Reclaim really allows me and the team to maximize our flexibility while minimizing our management overhead – making sure we have the time set aside to do the things we must.”

This gives the team the time they need to connect and collaborate, while reducing the administrative burden that eats up so much of their time every week. With Smart Meetings, QuitCarbon can optimize their meeting workflow, prevent scheduling conflicts, and maintain a balanced workload – all while ensuring that each internal meeting is thoughtfully placed to maximize productivity and collaboration.

And by incorporating Decompression Time around their heavy meeting schedule, QuitCarbon can help protect employee wellness and productivity in the long run. This feature enables employees to automatically schedule an average of 15.8 AI breaks every week after calls. These break times allow team members to reset, review notes, and prepare for their next call – maximizing the value they get from each session with customers.

Breaks play a crucial part in maintaining long-term employee wellbeing. Regularly scheduled breaks prevent burnout, a common challenge in fast-paced environments. Using Reclaim, QuitCarbon employees have reported a 33% improvement in their work-life balance on average. 

As Quit Carbon continues to scale, Reclaim’s automation and smart scheduling features provide a solution that can adapt to a growing customer-base and a larger team. And with Reclaim handling the scheduling intricacies, the team can focus on their core mission of promoting clean energy homes for a greener future.