3 min read

Cheers to a great year for online scheduling!

As the year comes to a close, we at ScheduleOnce have been taking this opportunity to reflect on how far we have come. When we started in 2006, online scheduling for business professionals was a new concept, and a controversial one at that.

How could online scheduling be controversial? Today, it seems silly to even suggest this, but 10 years ago things were different. This was a time before smartphones were popular - when friendships weren't initiated through clicks, and conversations required talking instead of typing. Back then, things took more time. People were used to back-and-forth interactions to get things done.

With this in mind, imagine a person receiving a link to schedule an appointment online. People used to the personal touch could be insulted that someone who wanted to meet did not have the time to speak with them. At the time, the concept of online scheduling for business professionals was new. There were just a few companies braving the new market, including us, Timebridge and Tungle.me. It was a tough industry, and unfortunately some companies like Timebridge and Tungle.me, who were backed by venture capital firms, did not have the endurance to keep up.

Little did they know what was coming. Over the last few years, the trend of instant gratification started growing. Customers became more demanding, wanting to be able to do everything from their phone at a time and place convenient for them. This trend set the stage perfectly for online scheduling.

Fast forward to today, online scheduling is becoming a critical component for businesses looking to engage with their prospects and customers. It helps a company present an efficient and sophisticated image, and provides customers with the self service abilities required in this day and age.

We at ScheduleOnce spent the last decade working hard to be at the forefront of the online scheduling industry, so we were ready when the market caught up. We have continually worked to adapt, and provide a cutting edge solution for today's online scheduling needs. We are proud of how far we have come, and how we have grown over the years.

Now, as we finish 2017, we want to take a look back at some of our major accomplishments this year.

1. More branding and customization features

This year, we put a special emphasis on branding and customization features. We launched our new theme designer, allowing customers to fully brand their booking pages. We also added features for customizing the scheduling experience such as our improved automatic redirect feature, or the option to use "clickless confirmation" for time zone detection.

2. Greater emphasis on design and usability

While having a feature-rich solution is one thing, the real challenge is creating a platform that is intuitive and easy to use. This year we focused on design and usability with our launch of ScheduleOnce 8.0. We revamped our entire platform with a new clean and uncluttered design both in the user interface, and the customer front. In this release, we also redesigned our booking pages and master pages to be fully accessible for your customers with disabilities.

3. Increased security measures

Security has always been our top priority. This year, we added multiple new security features to further safeguard your customer data. For example, we added new controls for encrypting customer data, released a feature allowing users to send a hidden copy of all outgoing customer notifications, and added a new layer of security for booking forms with prepopulated data, just to name a few. We are continuously working to strengthen security and become compliant with additional industry standards.

2017 was a great year for us at ScheduleOnce. We worked hard to showcase what we are all about and what we have become over the last decade. Cheers to a wonderful year! We look forward to powering your scheduling scenarios in 2018!