Be sure to take advantage of all the shortcuts built into your Full Slate account. There are many time-savings ways to book appointments, add clients, accept new appointments and otherwise move around your schedule. Below are few examples…please be sure to try them out!

Home tab. From the Home tab, you can quickly accept new appointments made by clients by clicking on the ‘number’ of appointments you have to accept. You can also see the details of a particular appointment by clicking on the ‘date’ associated with that appointment. And you can quickly access a client’s record by simply clicking on the client’s ‘name’.

Schedule tab. Any time you are scheduling or reviewing an appointment on the Schedule tab, you can either add a new client by clicking on ‘New client’ or review the client record of an existing client by clicking on ‘Details’ next to the client field.

Clients tab. When a client calls to book an appointment, you may find yourself reviewing their client record before booking the appointment. If so, no problem. While you are in the client record, just click on the ‘Book Now’ button to link over to the Schedule tab where you can book the appointment. Also, you’ll see any upcoming appointments on each client record; to view the details for an appointment, simply click on it and you’ll be linked to the appointment on the Schedule tab.

When your clients self-book appointments online, it saves time and adds convenience for you and your clients. Odds are that most of your clients want to book online, so you simply need to tell them it’s available…and keep reminding them since old habits (like picking up the phone to make an appointment) can be hard to break. We asked some of our customers how they encourage their clients to book appointments online and heard some great ideas. Many of our customers are seeing two-thirds or more of their appointments booked by clients online. By using some or all of the following tactics, maybe you can too:

Email Invitation. Of course, a quick way to tell all your clients at once is to send them an email. You can either use the built-in invitation email template on the Clients tab or use your standard email program (just be sure to put your clients’ email addresses in the ‘bcc’ field so they don’t see all your clients’ email addresses!). Be sure to include a ‘booking button’ or link to your Full Slate landing page.

During an Appointment. There’s no better way to tell your clients than face-to-face. You’ll probably have their full attention and you can explain all the great benefits (they can see all the times that are available, they won’t play phone tag, they can book an appointment in the middle of the night).

Voicemail Greeting. Put it right on your voicemail greeting! Your client is probably calling to book an appointment anyway, so it’s a great time to redirect them online. Your clients will get their appointment booked and you won’t have to listen through as many voicemail messages.

Email Signature. Add an invitation, along with a link, to your email signature so your clients see it every time they get an email from you.

Business Cards. Of course, put it on your business cards, flyers and any other marketing collaterals you have.

Front Door. Put it on your front door, at the front desk, or wherever you think clients are likely to see it.

When Clients Call. Some of our customers have even told us they sometimes point clients to the online schedule when the client calls to book an appointment. This may work best when you are not near a computer, but your client is. Regardless, you’ll want to use your judgment regarding when this is appropriate and when it is not, so as not to cause your clients to feel unnecessarily burdened. In any event, you can always take the appointment by phone and suggest your online schedule as an option for next time.

There are many features in Full Slate that ensure you stay in control of your schedule and properly manage your client relationships. Accurately defining each staff member’s ‘role’ is a powerful “control” feature that is often overlooked. When you set up staff members in your Full Slate account, you can define each one as either an Administrator, a Schedule manager, or an Employee. Because each role has different rights within your account, as detailed below, it is important to properly set each staff member’s role when you set them up or if their responsibilities change within your business.

Administrator. Administrators have access to everything, including booking options, message templates, marketing tools, services and staff, and billing information. The business owner is typically the administrator, but other staff members can also be made administrators to share responsibility for maintaining your company’s account.

Schedule manager. Schedule managers can access everybody’s calendar and schedule appointments for anyone. This role is appropriate for a receptionist or front office coordinator. Schedule managers are not able to create or change message templates, marketing tools, company details or billing information.

Employee. Employees can view their own schedule and make their own appointments. They cannot see other peoples’ schedule, a full list of clients, message templates, marketing tools, company details or billing information.

We designed Full Slate to be easy-to-use for everyone. Most of us are not Web developers and when we use an online application, we want it to be simple and intuitive so we can accomplish our tasks as quickly as possible. For example, when you enter or edit information about your business on Full Slate, you get a simple, yet powerful WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) interface so you can easily customize your client booking pages and instantly see what it will look like.

But we also snuck in a neat little feature for those of you who know your way around HTML code. Everywhere you can customize the pages your clients see when they book an appointment–such as a description of your business, descriptions of each service you offer, and any messages to your clients before they book–you can switch to the HTML editor mode. In this mode, you can see and modify the actual HTML code for that webpage. Just click the button highlighted in the picture below.

So if you want to use just the right color, position your text a certain way or otherwise customize your booking pages to your liking–and you know what you are doing in HTML–try the HTML editor!

A while back we discussed the power of communicating with your clients via email and highlighted some ways to strengthen your client relationships. You probably want those communications to reflect your personality and style, which is really easy to do by creating your own email templates.

Under Messages on the Clients tab, you can either customize one of the standard email templates or build your own from scratch. Be sure to add your own “voice” to the message and use the WYSIWYG features, such as font, bold and color, to add a little flourish. And, most importantly, use the standard placeholders with the proper brackets–“{” and “}”–so you can use the template for any and all clients, over and over again. Please check out the Help documentation, which provides many more details, and don’t hesitate to contact us with questions.

It’s summertime…going on vacation anytime soon? Come on, hopefully you’re at least taking a 3-day weekend?

If you plan to take some time off, it is super easy to block out time on your schedule so clients will not see availability on the days you are out. Simply go to your availability painter under Staff on the Company tab. Click the ‘Unavailable Once’ button and then paint the hours or days that you will be gone.

That’s it. Now go enjoy that well-deserved time off…

In the same way a shopping mall is anchored by its large clothing stores, a neighborhood is anchored by its small, locally-owned businesses. Here’s an excerpt from a column by Verlyn Klinkenborg in today’s NYTimes that captures this sentiment nicely:

This looks like a scene that has been rehearsed many times — a haircut and a manicure on a quiet Tuesday afternoon. But it is much more important, a spontaneous moment of confidentiality and divulgence. The facing mirrors gather the scene up and cast it back and forth, lessening it in scale with each reflection all the way out to infinity, which is somehow still in the same shop on 43rd Street.

Read the whole column here.

A question we sometimes hear from customers is “If I let clients book appointments online, will I be able to maintain control of my schedule?” We believe it is critical that you keep a firm grip on your most valuable asset–your time–while garnering the benefits of online scheduling. That’s why we designed many ways for you to stay in control of your schedule with Full Slate:

• Accept/Decline.  You can choose to accept or decline each appointment booked online before it is ever placed on your schedule. And if you choose to decline it, we make it easy to send an email notification to the person who made the booking.

• Set Availability. For each provider in your business, you establish which hours are available for booking and clients cannot book appointments outside of that availability.

• Require Advance Notice. You can choose how much advance notice to require for appointments booked online by clients. For example, you can choose to limit clients from booking appointments during the current day.

• Require Client Contact Info. You can require a client, before they book an appointment, to provide their phone number, email address or both. And you can verify that the email address is real. This allows you to reach out to the client before you accept the appointment or to make changes prior to the service date as necessary.

• New Appointment Notifications. You can choose to be notified of new appointments booked online. You can choose to be immediately notified by email or by text message on your mobile phone, or you can choose to simply receive an email message at the end of the day.

So worry not; there are many ways you can customize your Full Slate experience and stay in control of your schedule.

There’s an old adage in marketing: it’s a lot cheaper to keep customers than to get new ones.   Email is about as cheap as it gets, and can be an extremely effective way to drive repeat business.

Nearly every small business owner aspires to build a loyal clientele.  Staying in touch and sending your clients timely, relevant and personalized communications by email is one way to do that.

Here’s three ideas for using Full Slate’s built-in email messaging capabilities to strengthen your relationships with clients:

• Thank you. Send a quick note a few days after an appointment thanking your client for their business.  If you’ve already set up their next visit, confirm the date and time.  If not, take this opportunity to encourage the client to book their next appointment online.  This kind of personal touch can go a long way toward turning a first-time customer into a long-term patron.

• Come again. Follow up with clients you haven’t seen in a while.  Let them know what services they’re due for and link to available appointment times. You may even consider a special offer that expires soon to motivate clients to respond quickly.

• Share the savings. Reward your best customers with occasional discounts, and let them pass it on to a friend.  Word of mouth referrals are a great way to generate new business, and forwarding email makes it easy to spread the word.  So turn your current clients into evangelists.

Beata Marcus didn’t have time to think about building a website. She was too busy renovating her new space, assembling the grooming tables, and hanging the lighted sign over the front door. She knew she wanted to have a website for Bark in Style, her new pet grooming business in the Wallingford neighborhood of Seattle, but wasn’t sure when she would get to it given all her other priorities.

Beata decided to use Full Slate to manage her schedule and provide her customers the ability to book appointments online. Although it only took her a few minutes to get set up on Full Slate, she received much more than an online schedule…she established a broad internet presence to drive new customers to her business.

Here’s a sample of what she achieved already:

Basic Website.  With Full Slate, Beata immediately gained a web presence with her customized basic website at barkinstyle.fullslate.com. Not only can she invite her customers to go there to book online appointments, but she can also advertise her business anywhere on the internet and point visitors to her basic website.

Directory Submissions.  As a new business, Bark in Style was nowhere to be found on search engine results or internet yellow pages. Through her Full Slate account, Beata’s business was submitted to over 50 search engines and online directories, including Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask, AOL, Yellowpages.com, Superpages.com, Yelp and CitySearch. Now anyone searching anywhere online for pet groomers in Wallingford can find Beata’s new business.

Google Adwords.  Beata ran a geo-targeted Google Adwords program so that Bark in Style would be presented to people searching online for pet groomers in Wallingford. The ad pointed prospective customers to her basic Full Slate website where they could immediately book an appointment based on her real-time availability.

Craigslist Classified Ad.  Beata also posted a free classified ad on Craigslist and included a customized HTML “Book now!” button that pointed prospective customers directly to her basic Full Slate website.

New businesses like Beata’s have a million things to do to get off the ground. If you are launching a new service business, while you work on the new renovations, new furnishings, new business cards and new signage, Full Slate can go a long way to help you with a new web presence…and new customers.