In the next few days, we’re bringing our new Calendar on-line and so we’d thought we let everyone know what to expect.

The new platform is flexible, fast and stable. You’ll see immediate improvements in both performance and responsiveness.

We’ve completely updated both our Calendar UI and how the Calendar interacts with the backend.  New streamlined views make transitions between daily, weekly, monthly and lists seamless.

Some of the new Calendar features:

Dashboard

With the new Dashboard, you get a snapshot of your business that gives a real time view into how well your business and your promotions are doing.

Appointments

A quick view of how many appointments you have today, how many are pending and how many if any have been cancelled. Forward the calendar and see the data for tomorrow. Open the week or month view and see everything for the periods selected.

Availability

Measuring availability within a specific period of time lets you see how well are you doing at filling your appointment book. Forward the calendar to next month and forecast the openings. How busy were you last week? Click back and compare!

Clients

Since new clients drive our business, how about measuring how many new clients added over a specific period of time? Filter by date range and get a realistic view of your companies growth!

Services

Now you can count the number of times a specific service has been booked. Have visibility when running a promotion to know the redemption’s or just look to see what services are booked the most.

Revenue

How’d you like to know how much revenue your business generated today, this week or this month? As appointments are booked and performed, we automatically count up all the revenue booked for your services.

QuickView

Quick view shows the details of the appointment, lets you check-in, cancel, reschedule and otherwise communicate directly with the client from anywhere in the APP.

We’ve also added a promotion section where you can explore marketing options to help grow your business.

If all this wasn’t enough, the new calendar is also iPad and tablet compatible.

There is no changes in what you do. Since the software is hosted in the cloud, the build will take place overnight and automatically update your account when you log in. We expect the new Calendar to go live this week and will have engineers standing by to troubleshoot and fix any unforeseen bugs.

As always, we encourage and look forward to hearing your feedback. So please don’t be shy, this is your Calendar and we want to make it the best experience possible.

Wishing you Scheduling Success!

The Setster Team

Hey LivingSocial, KGB, ReachLocal and every other local marketing company, listen up, YOU’RE KILLING US!

Don’t get me wrong, and don’t take my word for it, read the headlines. The industry is in trouble. While I appreciate the business you bring in, let me tell you our pain.

First; about us. Ours is a local business and I am our marketing ninja. I use FourSquare to make offers at check-ins, Yelp for reviews, local directories that list my services within specialized directories and daily deals / coupons that are published across the net. I have mailing lists, send out SMS specials and otherwise investigate and deploy every single angle to market our business. The point of all this activity is to get new customers through the door, up-sell those clients and turn them into repeat business.

Here is the disconnect: For all the effort that is put into reaching out to get new clients, you are doing a miserable job at helping us complete the last mile of the transaction where you have been touching the client; and handing them off to us to perform our amazing service. Here is a list of things that would really help:

• Book the service right when they buy the promotion. The longer it takes someone to book, the more likely they will never use our services. Not ideal in growing a business. The only way for us to keep this client long term is to see them and provide great service.

• Optimize my calendar to book promotional clients during less busy times. I want to run the promotion, but want to make sure it’s not taking times that I can normally book with no problem. The service should fit within my calendar at times I can afford to service less profitable clients.

• Automate the booking process into my calendar. Whenever there is a promotion, it completely disrupts my front office. With each appointment comes data entry onto our calendar, managing reminders, cancelations and rescheduling. We need to manage the influx of new clients.

• Tell me how well I am doing. Give me feedback on not just how well the campaign did in sales, but in booked appointments, up-sells, and additional revenues. If this is part of my overall marketing strategy, I should be able to measure the total overall results.

There is a solution but frankly I’m surprised that the innovation which usually happens with smaller market players this time happened first at the top. GroupOn’s visionary purchase of OpenCal is poised to address the mishandling of merchant deal scheduling from within their client base.  How about yours? What are you doing to compete?

The alternative to buying or building a scheduling platform is Setster. Setster is a full featured SaaS scheduling application just like the one GroupOn bought, with one small but significant difference: Setster’s API architecture is open and designed for any local marketing company to be able to create accounts for their customers on the fly. Setster’s scheduling API works across all marketing channels. By adding a booking feature inside mobile apps, directories, daily deal, group and promotional coupons, your end users now book directly from your offering.

Close the loop between your service merchants and buyers. Increase customer satisfaction and repeat business. Measure performance and show real results that give you a competitive advantage. Available as a co-branded or white label solution, Download the Industry API white paper and sign up for the private beta today at http://setster.com/developers and contact us at info@setster.com for a demo.

In these rough and tumble times, finding creative solutions to business problems is almost a must.  A great idea flow can give a company wings, just as a lack of ideas can send a business hurtling head first into the ground.  The best way to get the ideas flowing is to turn to your team.  But how do you get your teams idea machine energized?  Here are a few tips to get the creative juices flowing.

Open Up the Table

The first step in getting good ideas from your team is to simply ask for them.  Make it known that you are looking for and expect great ideas, and your team will start mulling things over.

Creativity can be Taught

Contrary to popular belief,  creativity is a skill that can be taught, at least to an extent.  Educate your team on how to brainstorm effectively.  Think of the ways in which you come up with ideas, and share your process with them.

Apply those Teachings

Now that you’ve taught your team how to brainstorm creative solutions to problems, you need to give them opportunities to flex their newfound creative muscle.  Practice makes perfect. Throw problems at them that you usually would handle yourself, so that they can gain confidence in their creativity.

Acknowledge Creativity

Once your team starts actually applying your teaching, you need to acknowledge creativity when it is shown.  This applies not just to major successes, but also to any significant creative effort made by one of your team.  They may not come up with the most brilliant ideas right out of the gate, but letting them know they are on the right track will help them hone their skills and increase the validity of their output.

Lead By Example

Don’t just sit on your butt and wait for your team to come up with great ideas.  Get involved in the process!  The best way to motivate a teams creativity is to actively engage in coming up with ideas along with them.  It is called a team after all, and you are their leader.  So take the lead and start spit-balling.  You’ll be surprised at how quickly your team members will follow suit.

At Setster, we have an entire team dedicated to coming up with ways to make online scheduling better.  That’s all they do, all day.  So come take a look at the  amazing results that a team in creative sync can produce!

Figure Out What you are Trying to Accomplish

What are you trying to get the customer to do as a result of this email campaign?  Coming up with a clear and concise game plan beforehand is a step that is often overlooked by many marketers.  But without a directive, your pitch is bound to lack focus and effectiveness. Are you trying to get someone to schedule an appointment for a certain service, or trying to raise awareness of your business as a whole? Figure out your specific intentions before moving forward, so that your customers will understand them and be able to take action.

Don’t Be Pushy

Allow your customer to learn about your service before asking them to buy.  Rushing them into buying your product or service may have the negative consequence of scaring them away. Let them get to know your business, to grow comfortable with it.  Your marketing email should be should be an introduction, a hook.  Think about the way you make your purchasing decisions.  You probably see something your interested in, then do some research to see if what’s being offered is a good fit for you.  The goal should be to get customers to go to a landing page where they can find out more, not to get them to buy right then and there.  If your product or service has value, people will be willing to follow through and pay for it.

Make the Process a Smooth One

The most important component of an effective marketing email is that you get the message across.  But the inconsistencies across the plethora of platforms and devices customers utilize these days can be a hindrance to this task.  A clever image that shows up on one device, such as a laptop, may fail to show up on an iphone due to incompatibility.  To solve this issue, try to use text based links as much as possible to ensure that every customer gets the point and is able to take action.

Make Sure It Makes Sense

Now that you’ve covered all your bases, it’s time to take a look at your email as a whole. Give your call to action a final once over, making sure that if you were someone who knew nothing about your product, that you would understand it.  This will give you an objective view make it easy to accurately evaluate your campaign’s potential impact.

We as consumers are very forward minded by nature. The majority of our focus is allocated towards what is to come. Which makes sense.  With all the the fanfare and excitement that surround the arrival of the new and exotic, some older, less flashy offerings might inevitably be overshadowed.  So as a service provider, what do you do with an old service that you know still has relevance and worth, yet is becoming increasingly under-appreciated and under-utilized by your existing clients? By rebranding and reintroducing a service to your customers, you might be able to reverse this trend and restore its potential.

Jeremy Lin seems to be the person who is on the tips of everyone’s tongues lately, whether you watch basketball or not. The out-of-nowhere superstar is a hot topic right now, and everyone wants a piece of him. So how do you drum up a simaler buzz for your small business? Here are a few tips to make your customers get excited about your service.

Keep Your Eye on the Ball

What is the most helpful part of your service? What makes your service one that customers cannot live without? How can you help them? Take some time to evaluate your strengths as a business, and work on improving and centralizing your business around them. Use services such as Google Alerts to find out what people are saying and like about your service and make sure to highlight these things.

Jeremy Lin is a player that makes everyone on his team better. So think of yourself as a member of your clients team. Ask yourself what can you do to make their lives better, to elevate their lives so that they too can get the win.

Be Consistent

If he just had one magical game and then stopped performing, nobody would be talking about Jeremy Lin. Performing well night after night, visit after visit, is what will make your business stand out. New York trusts Lin right now, and your goal as a business is not only to make an impression, but to strengthen that impression over time. Offering consistent spectacular service will help you build a relationship with your clients that will in turn generate buzz.

Be the Master of the Assist

Jeremy Lin is a point guard’s point guard. His play makes it easy for his teammates to score, because he always puts the ball in the right hands. Your business should also be adept at this. By letting your clients book their appointments online, you make it easy for them to schedule appointments when it feels right. With online scheduling, everything is organized and precise, and everyone is ensured to be at the right place at the right time. And that my friends, is a winning combination.

Your customers are your life blood, the grease that keeps your business from grinding to a halt. Therefore, your number one concern should be keeping them happy, and great customer service goes a long way to that extent.  Email being an important element of customer service, here are a few tips on how to properly support and interact with your customers via email.

Get Back to Your Customers Quickly

Responding quickly to your costumers email makes you seem professional and shows them that you take their issue seriously. That being said, if you find a customers email insulting or it incites you in some other negative way, it’s probably a good idea to take a little breather so that you can give them a calm and measured response. You don’t have to love every single complaint, but as a business you should not make it personal.  Always try to be as kind and courteous as possible.

Answer as Clearly as Possible.

Answer their questions fully, covering every issue that they raise.  Try to be as short and to the point as possible without sacrificing necessary content.  A good way to do this is to give step-by-step instructions using numbers or bullet points. Hold their hand through whatever process needed.  Make their experience as easy and painless as possible, and they will thank you for it.

End the body of the email by expressing your joy at having them as a customer and let them know that you are always their in case they run into any more problems or have concerns.  A little extra effort on your part can only make your customer happier with you.

End Your Email Professionally

Ending your business email with peace, later, or deuces is a major no no (with a few exceptions).  Sincerely or regards are always phrases a safe play and sound professional and respectful, which is how I’m guessing you as a business would like to come across.

Finally, the number one thing you can do to provide the ultimate in customer support is to have a link in your signature line to your online scheduling page that allows them to book time with you immediately.

Watch Out for Grammar Mistakes

This one is pretty obvious.  Proofread the email.  Make sure there are no glaring grammar mistakes.  Some more common ones include using “your” instead of “you’re’  and “their” instead of “they’re”. Proofread please, it makes things a world better.

It can happen to any business.  At any time.  It will more than likely happen to your business at some point   Something will go wrong.  It could your servers crashing, or your power going out, or your dentist’s chair breaking.  In any case, it pays (literally) to be prepared.  Here are a few tips on how ready your business for whatever storm may come its way.

Keep a Key Under the Rug

Backup everything important, including customer lists, employee data, and vital equitment.  Keep it someplace safe that is not your primary location.  You may also want to take a look at backing up your data online for a reasonable subscription fee.

Make Sure Your Covered

If you don’t have insurance for your property, it would probably be a good idea to look into what policies would suit your business. Property insurance reimburses you for the cost of any damages to your equipment or buildings.  You should also check out business interruption insurance, which will help you whether the storm if your business has to shut down temporarily due to unforeseen events.

Come up with a Plan B

What if one of your main vendors shuts down?  Do you have a plan to keep your business up and running in that event?  Look into to other possible places to get the supplies you need in case of a shortage.  It’s also a good idea have all your employees emergency numbers so you can immediately inform them of any developments.

Have a Way to Reach Your Customers

If something happens that disrupts your business, and you have to cancel appointments, you should have a way to notify your customers.  Using Setster, all you have to do is cancel a certain time slot, and Setster will automatically notify your customers by email, saving you time and stress, and keeping your customers informed.

Also check out sba.gov, as they have a few tools that may assist you in creating a disaster plan that is right for you.

Its a New Year.  Your re-evaluating, reflecting, and devising your plan to make 2012 a year to remember (for the right reasons of course).  So there’s no better time than now to check in with your existing customers and see what they have been up to. Whether its a sit down, a phone call, or maybe just a few emails back-and-forth, its important to allot a time to show appreciation to those who have appreciated you.

Here are a few tips to help you make the most out of these little reunions:

Get Feedback

Your customers are the most important judge of your service, because they are the ones that pay your bills.  So ask questions; have your customer tell you what aspects of your service they think you are kicking ass at, and where they think your failing miserably.  If you get all A’s, good for you.  If your review is a mixed bag, you’ll get an idea of what you need to improve on.  The customer will appreciate that they were given time to voice their issues, and probably feel a little more invested in your service.

What’s New?

Just like you would with a friend, find out how your customer has been doing since you last saw each other.  Ask them if there is anything you can do (within the perimeters of your business) to better assist them.  After you have have a good grasp on whats going on with them, inform your customer about any new developments in your business, new products, services ect.  Your customer will feel like your on their team, and you’ll have valuable information you can use to better cater to their needs.

Offer Them Special Promotions

Show your customer you value their loyalty by offering them nifty perks. For instance, you could offer them a discount if they book certain services online.  This will make your customer feel all warm inside, and show them that you are continually making an effort to keep their business.

Follow Up

Make sure to schedule a follow up meeting to discuss progress any new developments or improvements that were put into gear as a result of the meeting.  This will keep the customer involved and thinking about your service.

Let your customer help you.  They’ll thank you for it:)