Bookfresh (www.bookfresh.com) is a great online system for allowing clients, or potential clients, to book time with you, without your having to undergo a tiring back-and-forth, or otherwise waste each other’s time scheduling an appointment. It is a beautifully designed, intelligent system.

However, I have had some real issues with it, and after many months, I finally decided to put them down in an email to them, which I repeat here:

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Hello. I would like to provide some feedback that I hope will be helpful.

I repeatedly find that I wish I could make use of your service — although, at this point, I would only like to use it 2 or 3 times a month, at this point. I believe I will grow, and could want it more in the future.

So, obviously I have a free account. However, like many people I use Google Calendar to manage my appointments.

My main feedback is this:

Because the free account does not allow me to sync with Google Calendar, I cannot use your service in any way that would really simulate the experience of actually saving me any time.

If the free account synced with Google Calendar — even if I were only allowed a few appointments a month — I could have the experience of sending someone the link, and JUST FORGETTING ABOUT IT, which would make me so happy, and knowing they would pick whatever (damn) time they wanted to to make the appointment, and it would all work out perfectly.

So what I am saying is that your free sample version of your product does not give anyone the actual experience of what it would be like to pay for the product. You want to make your free sample be an ENTICING TASTE of the actual, paid product.

Not allowing the Google Calendar syncing seems like a form of being “too cheap,” to use a phrase. Shooting yourself in the foot is another, sorry if I am being blunt.

Now, if I were using the service 2 or 3 times a month, even your full, actual service, you wouldn’t really want me to pay 20 bucks for it, would you? Perhaps you would just give it to me for free, knowing I would rave about it — as it would save me so much time, and make my life better — and hope I would later grow until I wanted to use it more.

Or, you might charge me 5 bucks, or something like that. Or, a dollar per appointment. I’d be happy to pay that, which is actually quite substantial.

But — and I am sure I have OVER-hammered my point here, at this point–is that, currently, with my free service, I will never have an experience of how wonderful your service could be.

Secondly, I think you are missing out on an entire category of users who don’t have massive appointment setting businesses like hair stylists or something, but nevertheless would LOVE to stop having to waste their time playing phone or email tag with clients, just to set up a bloody appointment. I.e., they are not $20 customers, but they could still be customers. For people like me, the leap between free and $20 is simply far too high.

Thanks!

I don’t expect you will call me about this, but you’re very welcome to. I am a web developer and consultant in Santa Cruz, CA. My phone number is (831) 435‑9053. I would be happy to give you more feedback, if you like.

I hope this has been helpful. I do consider that, out of the dozens of systems I have looked at, yours is the CLOSEST to the one I would ACTUALLY want to use, and that is why, after dozens of times of coming back to the site, and having this feedback, I have finally decided to actually write this.

Sincerely,

Chris Burbridge

I’m just going to mention that I added an Involver.com app to my FaceBook page, and something caught my eye, and even scanning, this very subtle thing got me to like them more.

Screen cap:

Why? Well, I’m gonna say it’s something about the informal tone, of the “thank you”. For some reason, it felt real.

I’m not going to go into all the reasons this particular thank you felt real, only to say that something about it felt casual, confident, and easy. Like the difference between walking up to someone with comfort and confidence, and walking up to her hoping to God they will accept you, I think.

The first one feel much better to the girl.

It’s similar, isn’t it?