Monday, February 8, 2016

FlexBooker - #1 Rated Scheduling and Online Booking Software 2016 (for two years straight now!)

Woot! We're # 1!

Huge news, yet again we've been voted the best scheduling and online booking solution - this is the second year running we've achieved this honor!

Check out the reivew at http://scheduling-software-review.toptenreviews.com/

We are so thrilled, and want to thank our customers for helping us shape us.

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

GIVE CUSTOMERS WHAT THEY REALLY WANT WITH METRICS

FACT: Investing in pricey analytics tools and software is just not in the budget for

many small businesses.

FACT: FlexBooker can be used for more than accepting online bookings and client

management; it offers insights, too!

Knowledge is power.

The more you know about your customers’ habits and preferences, the better you

can target them with the offers they want and will really respond to!

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FlexBooker’s built-in client management features empowers you to increase

efficiency and boost profits by keeping track of critical metrics by answering

questions including:

--Which customers book the most?

--Which services are booked the most?

--What's my busiest appointment type?

--Who is my most productive employee?

FlexBooker’s metrics answer all of these questions, and more plus, download live

client reports to sync with your e-mail marketing platform to drive repeat

business—with messages and offers that are tailored to your audience!

Tuesday, December 23, 2014

Happy Holidays

To all our customers, and to everyone who relies on FlexBooker to accept and manage their online bookings and schedules, we want to wish you the happiest of holidays from our team to yours.

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Context is King: Knowing Thy Customer for Smarter Biz

Data is power. FlexBooker helps businesses put data to work.


One critical activity entrepreneurs, start-ups and small business owners often underestimate is the importance of measuring.

The only way to improve future results is to be able to gauge and learn from past performance, so analytics should not be overlooked! Big Data is a major buzz word for good reason. 

New technology is equipping businesses with valuable insight on consumer behavioral and
transactional patterns and preferences.

Did you know FlexBooker’s built-in reporting and metrics collects and analyzes information that can help you do business smarter, more effectively and with the potential for greater profit?

What's your busiest appointment type? 

Who is the most productive employee? 

Which customers book the most—and when? 

FlexBooker answers these questions and empowers you to put that data to work to drive repeat business.

Quality, organized information on your client base, their habits and preferences allows you to make better business decisions, conduct more precise and personalized marketing, up-sell and more.

Example: As personal fitness regimens continue to skyrocket in popularity, personal trainers are using FlexBooker to measure their customer engagement. FlexBooker assigns each of their clients a score based on their current attendance records and automatically compares that with the previous month. This allows trainers to identify top performing client—and also who they may need to offer extra motivation to.

Boost your business today with the power of automation.

Monday, October 6, 2014

Time is Money: Are You Safeguarding Your Most Valuable Asset?

3 common ways businesses are losing productivity—and the bottom line.

It’s been said that time is our most valuable commodity, as it’s the one thing in life we can never get back.

In business especially, where time translates to earnings, taking proactive measures to protect your time and maximize your productivity is mandatory.

Here are three common mistakes businesses make that may be costing them—in more ways than one and tips on how to ensure your time is honored when customers don’t hold up their end of the deal.

1. YOU DON’T REQUIRE A DEPOSIT


Requiring customers to make a deposit to secure an appointment for a service—even a small one—is a sign of solid intent on the part of the customer and an insurance policy for you. 

Service deposits separate serious clientele from those who may be indecisive, and as clients who make a deposit become ‘invested in’ your service, it also minimizes the chance of no-shows and lost revenue.

When appointments are honored, it is often standard to apply clients’ deposits to their overall balance.

2. YOU DON’T HAVE A NO-SHOW FEE


One or two missed appointments a week mean five to ten missed opportunities a month.

They add up. And they can seriously affect your bottom line.

Similar to service deposits, instituting a no-show fee policy is a great way to commit clients to the time and service they reserved and receive compensation in the case of a default. We like to think of no-show fees as being an approach of greater faith and optimism—as it assumes clients will keep their appointments and only ‘penalizes’ or requires a payment in the case they do not.

With a no-show fee, instead of charging a customer up front to reserve your time, when a reservation is missed you can recoup a portion of the scheduled service fee from a credit card preauthorization required to complete booking.

From medical practices to hair salons, service providers across industries have started protecting their businesses from missed appointments and last-minute cancellations by charging these fees—often the only way to earn back even a fraction of lost revenue.

3. YOU’RE DISORGANIZED


Are you still accepting and keeping track of appointments and managing your schedule offline?

If so, you’re missing out!

An online, automated schedule management solution like FlexBooker saves time, eliminates the hassle of tracking cancellations and reschedules and even briefs you daily as to what’s on your agenda for the work day. 

FlexBooker is also works for you as a great customer service tool that: sends out automated SMS and email reminders to reduce no-shows; enables customers to modify or cancel bookings by themselves; allows you to easily cancel and/or reschedule an appointment and alert all affected customers.

Thursday, May 15, 2014

5 Ways Your Business Can Save With Online Booking

Online booking systems are becoming more and more ubiquitous nowadays, from booking flights and hotels, to reservations at restaurants. But they can be used to help all kinds of businesses discover what people in these industries have already discerned: online booking for your business can save both time and money.

Here are some of the ways we've seen FlexBooker used by many different business types to save:


  1. No more back and forth with your customers. You know the drill - your customer calls you to schedule an appointment but you're servicing another customer, so they leave you a message asking for an appointment at a certain time. When you check your messages you find that the time is already booked (without an online booking system, how would they know?) so you call them back, leave another message. Eventually you get a hold of each other and go back and forth with them getting a time that works for both of you. In all, this can take quite a while for just a single customer. Multiply this each time it happens, which can be many times a week, and you realize quickly that your business is wasting hours every week dealing with a situation that can be cut to zero by online booking. By making your schedule available online for booking, and using a system that reflects your schedule in real-time, you save potentially hundreds of hours a year. That's a huge saving!
  2. Reduced no-shows. No matter what type of business you run, no-shows are awful. They leave a gap in your schedule where you should be earning revenue, but are instead left idle and unproductive. A good online booking system will cut no-shows dramatically for you with features such as email and SMS text message reminders for your customers that are sent out automatically for you. Your booking system should also allow you to take no-show fee authorizations, meaning your customer enters a credit card to book but is not necessarily charged, and then give you the power to charge a no-show fee to the customer if they miss their appointment.
  3. Improve website to customer conversions. People are looking for your website to be more and more functional these days. If they are visiting your website looking for a service, and can actually book that service (getting a confirmed accurate appointment time without having to call you or wait for an answer to an email) they are far more likely to actually book. This dramatically improves the conversion for your website. After all that's the whole point of your website when it comes down to it.
  4. Special events drive more business. We all know that special events drive both interest and customers to our business. Your online booking system should be able to handle both your open schedule for normal services and also allow you to publish special events (at special days and times, with their own attendance and payment rules) directly on your website booking widget. This way customers interested in you will see your special events, and be able to book right from your website, too.
  5. Coordinate your staff. If you have multiple staff members at your business, coordinating holidays, breaks, and shared resources is time consuming. If a staff member goes on vacation, what do you do with their existing customers? The result is lots of phone calls to clients with existing bookings trying to reorganize or reschedule with other staff members. An online booking system that handles these changes automatically for you not only saves you lots of time (there's no repeat back and forth yet again from point # 1), but also saves your reputation by keeping your customers happier.
An online booking system that really works for your business can be invaulable, and save your business many hours a week in time, which amounts to truly meaningful cost savings. It can also improve your reputation with your customers. It's a winning combination all around.

FlexBooker is reinventing the way customers make appointments at businesses in the service sector. Built on the idea that accepting online bookings should be as painless as possible, FlexBooker is designed to fit seamlessly into existing business practices by using ubiquitous technologies, such as email and SMS, to drive customer engagement. This means that customers can be up and running accepting online bookings in less than 15 minutes, as opposed to the industry norm of hours or even days. FlexBooker customers span a wide range of industries, from photographers to personal trainers. More information can be found at http://www.flexbooker.com.



Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Helping businesses accept booking from customers in other timezones

It's time for yet another FlexBooker improvement! As we strive to create the perfect online booking solution for you, we are continuously releasing improved and new features throughout the app.

Today we've released automated timezone translation. What does that mean for you? Well, if you have customers who book appointments with your business from other parts of the country (or even the world) then when they book online using your FlexBooker widget the times they see will automatically be in their timezone. When they get confirmation messages, or reminder or wait list emails and text messages, they will reference the time in your customers timezone.

But for you, when using the FlexBooker management site, all the times will still be in your timezone.

We think this will be a great improvement for our business customers who serve clients in different timezones, especially for their customers, all without introducing any extra steps or headaches for you.