FlexBooker: Online Bookings Made Easy
Service professionals want to spend their time providing services, not managing appointments. Their customers want to be able to schedule services through mobile apps from anywhere at any time.
FlexBooker’s highly flexible scheduling software meets the needs of both.
The company’s scalable SaaS appointment platform fits virtually any business that schedules classes, facilities, or services with customers. Syncing employee calendars and customer follow-up, including confirmations and reminders, is automatic. From local Main Street salons and gyms to international brands, FlexBooker helps thousands of locations and millions of end-users effectively manage appointments in a simple, cost-effective way.
“If you are a hairstylist, for example,” said FlexBooker co-founder Andrew Ford, “the first thing you care about is filling your chair. You want to be constantly cutting hair from the moment you walk into the shop until you leave. Your customers want to schedule, change, or cancel their appointments online.”
Features that are powerful for personal services increase efficiency and customer satisfaction for large and small companies across a wide range of industries. For small businesses that don’t have a website, FlexBooker provides a customizable landing page that customers can use from email, Facebook, or Instagram.
“FlexBooker is a life saver! A small business owner has many things to worry about when it comes to managing their business. Having clients book their own appointment online is one less task I need to do during business hours and on my days off.”
Olha Seniw, Owner, Olha Seniw Photography
FlexBooker customers include corporate-owned and franchised locations. H&R Block Canada uses FlexBooker to collect and manage appointments. GoDaddy schedules website consultations and technical support. Chipotle allows job candidates to schedule themselves for interview events.
“The pandemic gave us an opportunity to help in lots of new and unexpected spaces,” Ford said. “It opened up new markets in retail. We never anticipated having a retail footprint, yet one of our biggest customers is Bunnings Warehouse in Australia. Since they went into lockdown, a couple of hundred locations found us; we have no idea how. has All their customers have to do drive up and collect their purchases. They built us into their order flow. We make about 30,000 bookings a day through that one client alone. If you had told me a warehouse in Australia would have using our system, I would have said you were crazy.”
For Customers, FlexBooker Delivers Features and Ease of Use
Most customers want to book online, primarily through smartphones. The scheduling application must be intuitive and responsive on mobile devices and laptops and require as few clicks as possible. FlexBooker works on any device, so service providers’ customers can make reservations at home or on the go.
“We provide functionality that other systems don’t have,” Ford said. “Our fully automated waitlist function allows a customer to put themselves on a waitlist when their massage therapist or hairdresser is full up. FlexBooker recognizes when space opens up and will send an email and text message to confirm the appointment.”
With credit card authorization as part of the booking workflow, FlexBooker makes automatic payment easy. Service providers can take the full amount at the booking time, making the on-premise payment experience touchless. With FlexBooker, they can automatically set up no show fees, a growing trend in the personal services industry.
Although the FlexBooker process for setting up and managing appointments is elegantly simple, this platform’s power doesn’t stop there. Comprehensive dashboard reporting provides robust client management metrics, such as repeat business from customers who book the most, which employees are most productive, or which types of services are most popular with customers.
“We keep track of critical metrics that helps owners and providers make better business decisions,” Ford said.
FlexBooker provides predictable pricing based on the number of users and bookings. The company gets customers up and running in minutes with a 14-day free trial.
Next Steps
Ford and his brother founded FlexBooker together. They are software engineers and are developers of the platform.
“This is our second company,” said Ford. “Our first was a company that did restaurant waitlists and reservations. We sold it to the Food Network, and we went to work for them. We took our experience in scheduling and built a company that does it for every kind of business, other than restaurants.”
Like most startups, FlexBooker does not yet have a large business development budget nor outbound sales. “We have digital marketing,” Ford said, “and two sales funnel flows on our web site—free trial or demo.”
When FlexBooker’s founders talk with a customer, Ford says the conversion rate is high. The conversation is solution-focused. Instead of talking about features, they ask a potential customer to describe the problem.
FlexBooker, a Rev client, hired an intern through Rev1’s innovation internship program and is gearing up to add additional positions.
Learn more about Rev1’s startup studio approach to building scalable companies.
