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Which online scheduling works better for your clients--Schedulicity or GenBook?

I am curious to see how many therapists are utilizing online booking companies to enhance their businesses! Have you used these companies or another one? Have you had a good or bad experience? Most importantly, how do your clients like the "convenience" of booking appointments themselves?

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Permalink Reply by Marc Woodward on March 23, 2011 at 4:26pm

Hi Philip.

Thanks very much for your honest and balanced feedback. Genbook's Customer Care is organized to be multi-layered. We provide an in-App Support page with links to our extensive Support Blog, which cover all of the features and functionality of Genbook. In addition, we have a library of Tutorial Videos embedded in the blog, but also found here: http://www.youtube.com/genbooksupport. Many users seem to prefer the self-help style of support so we put as much info online as possible. We also include links on each page in the App that are specific to the content and settings on that page. If you can't find the answer you are looking for or need more specialized assistance, you can always reach our Customer Care Team by emailing us from within the Genbook App. The link can be found on the Support Tab below the Support Topics ("Send us a Support Message"). We generally reply within 24 hours and usually much faster given we cover multiple timezones. We encourage users to use email as we can easily track the conversation, quickly identify your account and previous questions, and ensure the same Customer Care Team member replies through to completion. We do provide outbound telephone support as well. Just email Customer Care and request a call. (though we do still encourage you to follow the process above for the best result).

 

At Genbook, we are constantly improving our processes and our application based on Customer Feedback. So ALL feedback is most welcome and appreciated.

 

Thanks for using Genbook!

Sincerely,

Marc

Marc Woodward

VP Marketing & Business Development

Genbook.com 

Philip Whitmore said:

I have a small clinic with 8 massage therapists and we have used Genbooks for about a year and a half. The pros are that our customers do not have to have passwords, etc. They do not need to log in to set an appointment. I have never heard a negative remark about our online scheduling and I hear over and over how easy it is. I also like the collection of reviews that are posted on the web and that we can use in our marketing. That's a wonderful feature. For the most part I am very happy with Genbook. However, they have terrible customer service. There is no way to call them or chat online. In order to comment or ask a question you have to go through the Q&A page, navigate around until you find a place to make a comment and then hope that someone sees it, understands it, and responds in a helpful way. This does not always happen and has caused me much frustration. I would switch just for this reason if I found another site as easy to use but I haven't found that yet.

 

-Philip Whitmore

Director, Siskiyou Massage Clinic

Ashland, Oregon

Permalink Reply by Philip Whitmore on March 23, 2011 at 6:45pm

Marc, since you replied to me via this thread, I will respond through it as well. Perhaps some folks may find it helpful. Originally, when I was setting up Genbooks and I was new to it I did find the tutorials helpful. I did like that I could find my answers within genbooks. For the most part it was easy to set up and easy to find helpful instructions. My frustrations have come from when I have encountered "bugs" that were making it impossible for me to have some of my therapists available in the calendar and when I was trying to figure out how to sync genbooks to my iCal calendar. In the first instance I could not find anything in your tutorials about what to do and I could not call anyone for support. I emailed and waited for a response. I think that someone eventually called me (while this has happened and I appreciate the call, it has happened while I am in meetings or assisting a client and I don't have time to go into the problem at that time, but I also can't get a call back number from the caller...) Your tech support gave me a way around the scheduling problem. However, it has happened since and the way around did not work anymore. In this case I chose to adjust the therapists schedule to what Genbooks was allowing, rather than go through the trouble to try to reach someone again within Genbooks. This was obviously way less than ideal. In the case of trying to sync the calendar to iCal, I sent an email through Genbook as you suggested. When I received an answer in the next day or two, it was from a fellow that had never heard of iCal. So, I had to send another email explaining that I have a Mac and that is what they call their calendar and that I had seen that Genbooks claims to sync with it but I couldn't figure it out. What could have been a phone call turned into several weeks of trying to communicate clearly with someone through email and being called at times that I was unavailable. 

I'm not asking for any thing to change. I pay $34/month for the service, I don't know how that compares to other services. Perhaps if you had better customer service it would raise your prices. I think that I would rather keep it as it is than pay more. As I said before, I am very happy with all of the feedback I have gotten from our customers. Our clients love it. We have hundreds of folks using it and I have never heard a negative comment. And ultimately that is what is important to me. It is very easy for us to use on this end of it as well. I am just a guy that likes to talk to people directly when there is an issue or a question. The fact that I am having this conversation with you on a third party website says a lot about the communication between your company and your clients I would say...


Marc Woodward said:

Hi Philip.

Thanks very much for your honest and balanced feedback. Genbook's Customer Care is organized to be multi-layered. We provide an in-App Support page with links to our extensive Support Blog, which cover all of the features and functionality of Genbook. In addition, we have a library of Tutorial Videos embedded in the blog, but also found here: http://www.youtube.com/genbooksupport. Many users seem to prefer the self-help style of support so we put as much info online as possible. We also include links on each page in the App that are specific to the content and settings on that page. If you can't find the answer you are looking for or need more specialized assistance, you can always reach our Customer Care Team by emailing us from within the Genbook App. The link can be found on the Support Tab below the Support Topics ("Send us a Support Message"). We generally reply within 24 hours and usually much faster given we cover multiple timezones. We encourage users to use email as we can easily track the conversation, quickly identify your account and previous questions, and ensure the same Customer Care Team member replies through to completion. We do provide outbound telephone support as well. Just email Customer Care and request a call. (though we do still encourage you to follow the process above for the best result).

 

At Genbook, we are constantly improving our processes and our application based on Customer Feedback. So ALL feedback is most welcome and appreciated.

 

Thanks for using Genbook!

Sincerely,

Marc

Marc Woodward

VP Marketing & Business Development

Genbook.com 

Philip Whitmore said:

I have a small clinic with 8 massage therapists and we have used Genbooks for about a year and a half. The pros are that our customers do not have to have passwords, etc. They do not need to log in to set an appointment. I have never heard a negative remark about our online scheduling and I hear over and over how easy it is. I also like the collection of reviews that are posted on the web and that we can use in our marketing. That's a wonderful feature. For the most part I am very happy with Genbook. However, they have terrible customer service. There is no way to call them or chat online. In order to comment or ask a question you have to go through the Q&A page, navigate around until you find a place to make a comment and then hope that someone sees it, understands it, and responds in a helpful way. This does not always happen and has caused me much frustration. I would switch just for this reason if I found another site as easy to use but I haven't found that yet.

 

-Philip Whitmore

Director, Siskiyou Massage Clinic

Ashland, Oregon

Permalink Reply by Dan Perez on March 25, 2011 at 11:39am

Hi,

I use Genbook for my chiropractic and massage appointments.   Its functionality is clean and simple.  No technical errors thus far.  The only glitch I've noticed so far is that setting up two locations under one account requires some finagling, and you have to use different names for yourself, and different service item descriptions, but it's not that big of a problem.  For example, use John Smith CMT in location A, and J. Smith CMT in location B; and 60 min massage and 60 minute massage.

I made some video tutorials on how to use GenBook on my consulting blog.  If anyone is interested, here's the link:

http://www.chiropracticrescueplan.com/online-scheduling-2/genbook-a...

Permalink Reply by Dan Perez on March 25, 2011 at 11:43am
Another thing I forgot to mention about Genbook is that, if you have a light schedule and don't want your clients to know you aren't that busy, you have to click the Block button on each time slot on your schedule that you want to block out.  Otherwise, people will see a whole lot of open appointments to choose from, which may be a turn off (kind of like seeing an empty restaurant on Saturday night).
Permalink Reply by Linda Little on March 25, 2011 at 1:06pm
I use Clickbook. My clients love the ease and simplicity and I love the cost... nothing!
Permalink Reply by Marc Woodward on March 25, 2011 at 9:38pm

Hi Dan,

There are easier ways to extend both "Blocks" and "Offline Masks," rather than clicking on every 30 minutes on each day. Check out these videos: http://www.youtube.com/genbooksupport#p/u/11/CeyfhG_p4zg and http://www.youtube.com/genbooksupport#p/u/15/2lwES8pRvOA.

-Marc Woodward, VP Marketing & Biz Dev, Genbook

Dan Perez said:

Another thing I forgot to mention about Genbook is that, if you have a light schedule and don't want your clients to know you aren't that busy, you have to click the Block button on each time slot on your schedule that you want to block out.  Otherwise, people will see a whole lot of open appointments to choose from, which may be a turn off (kind of like seeing an empty restaurant on Saturday night).
Permalink Reply by Marc Woodward on March 25, 2011 at 9:39pm
Great stuff, Dan! Have sent you an email. - Marc

Dan Perez said:

Hi,

I use Genbook for my chiropractic and massage appointments.   Its functionality is clean and simple.  No technical errors thus far.  The only glitch I've noticed so far is that setting up two locations under one account requires some finagling, and you have to use different names for yourself, and different service item descriptions, but it's not that big of a problem.  For example, use John Smith CMT in location A, and J. Smith CMT in location B; and 60 min massage and 60 minute massage.

I made some video tutorials on how to use GenBook on my consulting blog.  If anyone is interested, here's the link:

http://www.chiropracticrescueplan.com/online-scheduling-2/genbook-a...

Permalink Reply by Bridget Turnbach on March 26, 2011 at 6:27am

If you are a mobile service provider check out www.mobileschedulingco.com

 

Permalink Reply by Nancy Henson on March 26, 2011 at 8:44am
Michael I am currently on the trial version of Schedulicity and I am having difficulty making an online promotion.  It took me TWO hours to configure everything and the Description and Price would not save on the promotion and also I did not see it presented as a popup promotion when I went to schedulicity.com and sign in as a potential new client.  I ended up losing my data because it was off the top of my head and spent another 30 minutes making a promotion on Facebook.  Is this something limited to actual subscription?  If so, maybe access should not be allowed? 

Michael Wilson said:

Hi

My name is Michael Wilson and I'm the Director of New Media for Schedulicity.  I just wanted to reach out and offer to answer any questions or help in any way, if necessary.  I also wanted to send along a pic of what your clients receive when they schedule with you through Schedulicity.

They get their own home page where they can see and manage all their upcoming appointments with your business; as well as:

1)  Cancel and Reschedule with you as long as their outside of the cancellation parameters that you select

2)  Add their appointments to their Google, iCal or Outlook calendars if they organize their life that way

3)  A google map to your business, in case they've never been.

4)  The ability to recommend your business to all their friends on Facebook (HUGE) with a link that will take their friends to your online scheduling page; and

5)  The ability to rebook from a past appointment by just clicking on the 'Book again' link.

 

Just wanted to make sure you knew what your clients would be seeing/getting.  

 

Please let me know if I can help.

 

Kindest regards,

 

Michael Wilson

Permalink Reply by Michael Wilson on March 26, 2011 at 9:00am

Nancy

Apologies for your frustration.  I'll have someone from our support staff contact you immediately and they'll be able to answer any and all questions you may have.  Hope that helps.

 

Michael

Permalink Reply by Amy - LMT & Licensed Esthetician on March 26, 2011 at 9:01am
Anyone that is using ClickBook is there a way to put the Book IT button on your facebook page?
Permalink Reply by Ayeshah on March 26, 2011 at 10:07am

Wow I have looked at all of the services mentioned in this blog. Sifting isn't easy. It doesn't seem easy to find features, pricing and customer service all in one. 

Appointment-Plus is the most expensive I've seen, they boast of fortune 500 customers so why charge us little guys so heftily, they start at $39 double the avg starting price of $19.95 offered almost everywhere else.

Clickbooks is free but it doesn't support paid bookings.

Mobileschedulingco charges a subscription fee and a booking fee. I DON"T THINK THAT IS FAIR.

I could not readily identify customizable reservation/scheduling features at Mobileschedulingco, Schedulicity or GenBooks such as ablilty to offer pricing variations e.g.: group or coded promo discounts, gift certs. etc.

I went with Webreserv, but I have to tell you their customer sevice is as bad if not worse than what was reported for GenBooks. Maybe one of their reps will read this and realize just how important that is. But so far they most closely match my customer's & my needs.

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