This entry was posted in Tips and Tricks, New Features, SimplifyThis News

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Have you thought about taking a deposit from your clients when they book an appointment? Are you seeing ‘no-shows’ and looking for ways to reduce it? Or do just want to feel more secure that the clients will show up at the scheduled time?  Requiring payments before confirming appointment may just be the right thing for you.

We have added this feature just a couple of days ago.  With this, now you can require your clients to put a deposit before they can confirm their appointment.  The appointment booking process remains as simple as it was earlier: select a service, a staff, a date, a time-slot, and confirm.  However, when you turn-on the pre-payment option, your client will be asked to make a deposit (via Paypal or credit cards, if you have enabled them).  If they fail to make the deposit, the appointment will be saved in a pending state, so that you can contact them directly and follow-up.

You can also decide the pre-payment amount; it could either be a fixed amount or a percentage of service fee.  A successful payment will automatically be recorded in client’s account.  To enable this feature, go to ‘Settings’ and then ‘Appointment Preferences’.

As always, we believe you’ll find this useful.  Feel free to drop us a note if you have any suggestion.

This entry was posted in Random Musings, Small Business

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According to the most recent AP-GfK poll, 78% of Americans report being happy.

Not to be cynical, but I find this statistic surprising. In the capitalist system we’re in, I wouldn’t think Americans are so overwhelmingly happy in light of our economic downturn.

I often talk with university students who dread the prospect of graduating because they have heard how bleak the unemployment rate is. I see reports on the news about the soaring job losses. Thinking about it sometimes bums me out too. Regardless, most are happy anyway.

Being the happy campers we are, 56% of Americans report approving Barack Obama’s handling of his job as president. And good news for all of us, now small business owners might have more to be happy for.

President Barack Obama recently called on Congress to utilize the repaid $30 billion of the Troubled Asset Relief Program funds (Wall Street bailout money) into a new program to help banks provide small businesses with the finances they need.

While this new plan has potential to help small businesses, it will be up to the banks to follow through and lend. While Obama is optimistic about this fiscal handling, not everybody is.

In a recent CNNmoney piece, Steve Gordon, a small manufacturer from Florida, grilled Obama during a town hall meeting by saying,

“I appreciate the pledge of $30 billion to small businesses. But lending it to the banks to lend to us is not the answer,” Gordon told the president. “You lent directly to the automakers, you lent directly to the banks — why can’t the government make [loans] available directly to us?”

Gordon makes a great point, and expresses what the majority of small business owners feel. They don’t matter like the big boys that Congress helps out directly. While this program has the potential to help the growth of small businesses, I would like to see a more heartfelt effort from the President and Congress. After all, in 2008 there were 29.6 million small businesses in the USA, according to the Office of Advocacy. That’s huge.

With just over half of the U.S. population working for small businesses, I wonder what effect this policy will have on Obama’s rating in the polls.

With the current data showing that the majority of us have remained happy individuals, even amongst recession and imperfect legislation, I would venture to guess that we will remain so.

 I know I will, but only if my bank approves my next SMB loan.

This entry was posted in New Features, SimplifyThis News

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Significant improvements in project billing in place now.  Well, we deployed these changes a few days ago. I just did not have a chance to write about them.

Let’s get straight to what these improvements mean and how you can use them.  First, now you can create projects with a fixed price  and bill your clients incrementally.  Simplifythis will track the invoiced amount and the remaining unbilled amount for these fixed price projects.  You can see the complete billing history for each of the projects -just select a project and click on ‘Summary’ to do so.

When you create a new project, you’ll notice 3 billing options: (i) Fixed price projects, (ii) Hourly billed projects, and (iii) Non-billable projects.  Select the billing option for the project.  For tracking purposes, we now have added a budget field for hourly projects also.  You can track the amount billed against the budget and see whether you would be able to stick to the budget or not.

This entry was posted in New Features, SimplifyThis News

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I know  - it has been a long time since our last post in the ‘New Features’ category.  Not that we were twiddling our thumbs; we were busy updating the underlying architecture so that we can incorporate your feature requirements more easily.  In the process, we did release a key feature-ability to customize your SimplifyThis page, which may have gone unnoticed by many of you.

The re-architecture  effort is finally paying off.  We are happy to announce the first major feature : ability to keep notes on contacts.  In brief, this will allow you to:

• - Take multiple notes on a contact.  As usual, select the contact and click on ‘Add Notes’.  To view all notes for a contact, just click on view notes.
• - Make a note actionable.  This is good to remind your self of  particular task that you need to do for a contact.  While creating or editing a note, select ‘Actionable’  and due date.  Once the task is complete, you can easily mark it as complete.
• - If you do not wish to view a note again, you can delete it.  If you think you may need it later, you can also hide it.

I know we don’t have the capability to search on notes, or to alert you when an actionable note approaches its due date. Be rest assured, we are working on it and will make it available very soon.

The idea of notes came from Brian at Empire Computer Services.  We sounded it off with several other users and everyone felt that this would be very useful.

Well, the list of new features does not end here.  We have also refreshed the look and feel of client facing pages with a sprinkle of new design, and the capability to choose multiple color schemes.  In addition, we have simplified the appointment booking process as well.  I’ll be writing about these two features in more detail separately.

This entry was posted in Random Musings, Small Business

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When it’s good, it can be really good.

The most rewarding customer interaction I’ve had was a week ago. I’ve been reaching out to new Simplifythis users personally (either by phone or through sincere e-mails). Usually I don’t receive a response, but one customer was thoughtful enough to give feedback.

The Simplifythis user told me about a usability issue he had with the software, specifically regarding dates on invoices. I told our developer, Sanjay. Within a couple minutes I was able to get back to the user and tell him we were going to be releasing a new version in the coming weeks, with that issue fixed.

And when it’s bad…

I just had a funny experience where I was the customer for an SAP training center. After months of calling and e-mailing with no response, I found I was mysteriously placed in an online training class. No credit card, no name, no information shared. How could this be?

I figured they’d catch their error and someone would finally get in touch with me. They did, and it wasn’t pretty:

…Our coordinator tried reaching you hell out of times on Mon and Tues and finally gave up as it just goes to your voice massage…

My eyes immediately went to the “hell.” I’m more thickheaded than most, so I didn’t take it personally and sent an e-mail with an explanation of what had happened. I wonder if he/she was frustrated, as this sentence alone has improper grammar and a spelling mistake. If the company had poised itself as a training facility with a certain candor to its messages, I wouldn’t have been so surprised.

The lesson I learned is that your reaction determines where a conversation or transaction is headed. Because I’ve been on both sides of the customer service “counter,” I kept my cool.  Unfortunately, this customer service rep didn’t.

 What’s your favorite customer-centric story with a positive outcome (i.e. you helped the customer successfully, or learned something from the experience)? Let us know!

This entry was posted in Random Musings

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$150.

That’s about how much my little sister collected in two hours from the neighborhood for her school band’s fundraiser. But this isn’t anything new. School fundraisers are about as American as apple pie…the very apple pies that schools sell at their fundraisers! In my band nerd days I sold such questionable items as:

• Engraved pens
• Cookie jars that doubled as piggy banks
• Wrapping paper
• Lollipops.

But my sister’s band sold something completely different. To find out what it was, tune in next time to our 41-part series on “1,438 Ways to Sell.”

(Just kidding)

My sister’s band sold: nothing. They went door-to-door with a manilla envelope asking for money to support the band that would march at a football game the neighbors may never even see. They didn’t provide a service, a good, or anything else business class says is necessary for a transaction to occur. And yet, a group of four high schoolers earned almost $75 an hour (in a recession!).

How? They made the neighbors feel good. Who wouldn’t feel nice giving five bucks to a sweet, adorable band nerd? Most of our businesses offer services and goods - a lot more than nothing. And it could be even more if we made our customers feel good.

So, how do you make your customers feel good?

This entry was posted in Small Business, SimplifyThis News

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We’re about to roll out a new level of retention efforts - specifically for our free trial customers. That means we’re letting people know we are here:

• For support, questions, comments, concerns, training, tips, conversations and anything to make your stay with Simplifythis a pleasant experience
  (so you can come back for more…)
• To learn from you so we can make Simplifythis better for future generations

If you are extending a free trial with your business, you might as well do a good job of welcoming your customers. Anyone can satisfy the first bullet’s requirements with a few helpful e-mails and a blog post. It’s the business-practice equivalent of, say, having a Web site. That’s the base-line that any growing smbiz should meet.

Institutionalizing the second bullet point is tough but if done, can show you where you need to focus to meet your customers’ expectations. If I sign-up for a free trial of a computer program I’ve never used, I expect to have my hand held at the beginning and (depending on the program) I expect to be able to let go after some time. Two basic requirements that the business many opportunities to help their customers.

Know what your customer will expect. Then use that knowledge to make something awesome (a la Bobby McFerrin, who took the expectations of his “customers” and…well, see for yourself).

This entry was posted in Small Business, SimplifyThis News

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How do you do it? I was racking my brain trying to think of the perfect, targeted, most helpful and least annoying method…but then I though, “Why don’t I have the readers do my work for me?”

Well, I should ask this question in context.

We offer a free, 30-day trial for our Easy-Bill and Easy-Book products. This is standard procedure for many smbiz. Without big-name brand recognition, we want to try it before we buy it and a free trial is a great way to strut your stuff. But what happens after those 30 days? What happens during those 30 days?

A quick walk around the Internet reveals a 1 percent trial-to-purchase conversion rate - the arbitrary industry average for software. Unless the product is outrageously priced, 1 percent can be disheartening.

Some firms are pretty tactful. I signed up for a free trial at an e-mail marketing site and I received a non-automated phone call the next day (talk about one-on-one customer service)! Other smbiz send regular e-mail updates with “What other people are saying about our product” and “How to…” tips. The key seems to be beginning a conversation as a first step. But how much is too much?

For example, I signed up to receive some e-mail information about classes at the University of Phoenix. This company has certainly ramped up its advertising and moved closer to the front of our minds in general. I received the information, but for some reason, they call me at least three times a day. I haven’t answered my phone since the first time, just to see how long they’ll keep up their customer retention strategy

So how do you keep your customers from leaving after that trial period? E-mails? Surveys? Demos? Phone-calls? Those deceiving letters in the mail that looks like someone handwrote the address in beautiful cursive, but it’s really junk mail? Let us know!

This entry was posted in Tips and Tricks, SimplifyThis News

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Simplifythis has two online products:

1. Easy-Bill. Simple, easy-to-use and professional online invoicing for your smbiz
2. Easy-Book. User-friendly scheduling and booking app for your customers

These two tools are perfect for smbiz such as spas, body shops and independent contractors (don’t worry, this blog post isn’t just a shameless plug…I’ll make my point soon). As chief marketer, it’s obvious I need to reach out to ST’s potential customers. Social media is supposed to help businesses connect with their customers but there are thousands of these smbiz! If I want to reach a large audience, looks like I’ll have to send an e-mail to as many smbiz as I can. So here’s my to-do list:

• Build a massive, random list of potential smbiz
• Draft a concise e-mail that describes ST’s products
• Hire an e-mail marketing firm to make it look snazzy
• Click “send” and hope for the best

What do you think? After discussing, ST’s founder thought this strategy had a low ROI potential and a huge potential for wasting time.

Many firms and people get gung-ho about the to-do list without thinking about aligning actions with strategy. Each bullet point in the list above is easy to complete. Why, any brain-dead moron could do it (i.e. yours truly)! But taking a step back and thinking critically - that’s the hard part. Trial and error is useful but spending more time thinking can save time, money and a few trials. In our case, implementing - and tracking results of - an e-mail marketing campaign can be expensive and time-consuming.

So ST has a different to-do list. Rather than targeting a bunch of end users impersonally via mass e-mail, we compiled a small list of web designers whom we will approach for partnerships. As an ST partner, web designers include our products in their portfolio of services at no cost. In short, ST partners have more services to offer to their clients (and receive commission when they sell our products) and we get a multiplier effect since their clients can also become our clients.

Lesson? Get excited about strategy before getting excited about the easy stuff. And now for the plug

Do you know of any Web site designers who would be interested in becoming an ST partner? If so, let them know (http://tinyurl.com/STpartner)!

This entry was posted in Small Business

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“Okay, have to write a blog post…about what? Thinking…thinking…all right. It’s been about 30 seconds. I guess I’ll check my Google Reader and see what else is going through the Blogvine. Opening new tab…logging in to Gmail because I’m not yet in the habit of going to Google Reader independently. Oh look! New e-mails! There’s a Facebook event invitation…a spam message requesting $2,500 from a friend’s e-mail account that has obviously been hacked…and unsolicited information from the Libertarian Party of Texas(??). As long as I’m thinking about politics, I better read the latest Newser headlines (even though I checked nearly 15 minutes ago…and 15 minutes before that). A story about the Taliban…a German ‘Borat’…25 Car Tunes for the whole family…Hillary Clinton’s diplomatic strategy…”

I won’t continue because I’m sure you’re familiar with Online Aggressive Tangent Syndrome (O.A.T.S.). One moment I’m motivated and excited to write a useful blog entry for our readers, and suddenly I’m staring at Hillary Clinton’s face. Not only am I at the wrong destination, but I’ve already forgotten the path I took to get there. Many social media marketers suffer from O.A.T.S. - our plates are full and we regularly tread the dangerous line between working intelligently and simply being “plugged in” to the Internet.

However, O.A.T.S. can be a pleasant surprise once in a while. This morning I was baffled by Seth Godin’s illustrative example of how I stink at math. I misunderstood the question (I guess I stink at English, too) and immediately wanted an answer, causing me to have an O.A.T.S. relapse. Seth posted links to user explanations regarding his mpg usage problem, and after clicking the Charlie link, I was well on my way towards Hillary Clinton’s face.

Thankfully, Charlie was smart. After providing his viewers with what we wanted (a solution and explanation to Seth Godin’s math problem), he provided us with what we needed - a cure!

For social media marketers, entrepreneurs and anyone who is susceptible to O.A.T.S., Charlie is working on Monotask - a self-imposed online equivalent of parental channel controls on TV. I can’t wait to try out the beta. You can sign up for an e-mail reminder that lets you know when Monotask launches or you can follow @charliepark on Twitter. Are you aware of any similar, positively restrictive Internet/work management applications? If so, let us know.

It’s ironic - had I not been clicking through the Internet and away from my work, I never would have stumbled on this potential cure. But until the beta is available, we’ll all have to rely on our willpower to stay focused.

Disclaimer: This post in no way endorses Hillary Clinton, social media marketing or the Internet.