New Web Service Helps Small Biz Fill Canceled Appointments

For hair stylists, fitness trainers, yoga instructors, and other small businesses that depend on appointments to make a living, a cancellation often means lost revenue. Schedulicity, an online scheduling company, is helping subscribers beat this problem by providing a way to fill those empty timeslots.

The company recently introduced a new feature, called Pop-Up Offers, that advertises last-minute openings on Facebook, Twitter and Schedulicity's own website. The idea: Give clients the chance to offer discounts to people willing to step in and take advantage of those appointments.

If you've been burned by Groupon and think this sounds way too familiar, there's good news here: Businesses set their own discounts, and Schedulicity doesn't take a cut. The feature is included in Schedulicity's regular subscription fee of $19 a month for a single user and $39 a month for multiple users.

Schedulicity subscribers cannot advertise timeslots via Pop-Up Offers more than 48 hours in advance. David Galvan, president of Schedulicity, said the company understands that time is money for its customers, and filling cancelled appointments contributes to their bottom line.

"We look at appointments that are about to expire as perishable assets," Galvan stated.

While helping Schedulicity customers, Pop-Up Offers should also drive more traffic to the company's website. Non-subscribers today can use the site to search for plumbers, masseuses, and other service providers that use Schedulicity to make appointments online. Customers can also make appointments through small-business subscribers' Facebook pages.

In the first two days after launching Pop-Up Offers last week at the DEMO tech conference in Silicon Valley, more than 1,000 subscribers signed up, Galvan said. The redemption rate has been roughly 20 percent.

Founded two years ago, Schedulicity says it takes appointment scheduling to the cloud to make the process faster and easier for customers and service providers. The Bozeman, Mont.-based company has handled more than 6 million appointments to date for customers in 1,900 cities in the United States and Canada. The company also provides mobile applications for accessing schedules on a BlackBerry, Apple iPhone or iPad, or Android-based smartphone.

The 20-employee company is "not quite profitable," Galvan said. While its funding comes from angel investors today, the company says it will soon announce its first major round of venture-capital funding.