• The admin interface for BookMe has been revamped completely. The new interface makes it much easier to set up a new BookMe page or configure an existing page.
• The “Book now” button in the very first step of the BookMe process is now always shown with each service in order to ensure that your customers don’t miss it.
• Similarly, we have improved the bread-crumb navigation in the BookMe process to make sure that your customers will follow through to the very end of the process.
• With the “Manually accept” booking mode, BookMe will now only send confirmations after you have explicitly accepted an appointment request by a customer.
• Last but not least, appointment requests can now be accepted or rejected directly from the e-mails that BookMe sends out. This is a great feature to manage your appointments on the go.

We will be taking a look behind the scenes in the coming months at very different practical examples of BookMe in action and presenting them in our blog. Today, Flying MED Masseur describes his experienc with the new service from Doodle.

The company

Kay-Nicolas Klauck set up Flying MED Masseur in Zurich in the summer of 2011 and has been offering a wide range of massage styles ever since. His central focus is on the individual needs of each patient.

This not only includes a detailed preliminary consultation, but also the option of choosing appointments of different lengths and a free choice with regard to the location. Because the masseur not only carries out treatments in his own practice rooms, but, on request, also in the patient’s office or home.

Why BookMe?

Kay-Nicolas Klauck single-handedly runs Flying MED Masseur, offering massage treatments as well as taking care of the complete coordination of appointments directly. An enquiry by mobile phone on the train, a request by e-mail to postpone an appointment, an answering machine full of messages after a short break:

The standard organization by phone and e-mail took its toll on time and nerves, was extremely complicated and, in some cases, led to double bookings. When the attention of the massage therapist was drawn to BookMe from Doodle in a meeting in February 2012, he immediately decided to try out the new booking service.

Experiences with BookMe

All the different options for lengths of treatment and location are offered on the Flying MED Masseurs’ BookMe page. His patients have reacted very positively to the option of booking online, with the result that 95% of all appointments are now made via BookMe.

The initial skepticism of Kay-Nicolas Klauck against bringing in an external service has given way to total enthusiasm: “No phone calls and no back and forth via e-mail; I certainly save at least one hour a week through that alone.

Double bookings do not happen anymore and the automatic appointment reminders are also very practical for the patients. And I only realized a while later that I can actually control my complete appointment organization via the mobile phone thanks to BookMe – and that’s something I no longer want to do without.“

As the most important advantages of the service, the massage therapist mentions the time saved and the greater flexibility for his patients, who can now book their appointments from anywhere and at any time, even when he is away on holiday. Kay-Nicolas Klauck is thoroughly impressed by BookMe and has already recommended the service to others.

He adds: “BookMe makes everyday life considerably easier for me as a service provider and even brings additional traffic to my homepage. And all of this at a super price-performance ratio. Actually, in today’s world, it’s almost funny how many companies have not yet realized how useful online appointment booking is for everyone!“

• Doodle is about reaching consensus on when is the best time to meet. We try to support this process as much as possible. Today, we introduced a small indication that highlights the currently preferred option (Screenshot). We hope that this will incentivize participants to make this option happen.
• Better printing: While we suggest to save paper and follow the status of your Doodle polls online only, many of our users wish to print the information once a poll is closed. Now you can print Doodle polls directly from your browser, e.g. pressing ctrl+p. You no longer need to print via the PDF export. Update: Due to popular demand, we rolled back this feature and re-introduced the old PDF functionality on April 24 2013.
• Many of our users who use the Kaspersky security suite had troubles using Doodle recently. We have introduced a fix for the problem and hope it resolves the issues. Let us know if it does — or doesn’t.

• Locations are now optional. This enables virtual companies with no physical locations to also use BookMe.
• Buffer times: Certain businesses need buffer times before and/or after an appoinment to clean or prepare for the next customer. Such buffer times can now be set individually for each service in BookMe.
• Lead times define the minimal time span between booking an appointment and the actual appointment to take place. This allows you as the business owner to prevent overly short-term appointments.

And we’ve asked some of our customers about BookMe. Here’s what they say:

• Eurocentres says: ”The first BookMe appointment came in on the first day of offering the new service – and the number of appointments by potential customers from around the world is growing daily.” Learn more
• Float says: “30%-50% of all appointments are booked through BookMe. Oscar Trott estimates that the center is spending six to eight hours a week less on the phone.” Learn more

Companies come to Elance with projects they need completed, posting their jobs online. Online freelancers with the skills to perform the jobs learn about the opportunities and submit proposals for the project.

This gives businesses a global pool of talents to select from, and freelancers a way of escaping their local economy. This happens while they’re accessing a more mobile lifestyle, working with clients who don’t judge them on where they’re from or how they dress – but strictly focusing on the quality of work they deliver.

One big global collaboration every day

To make this work, Elance provides an online work platform where each collaboration has its own online workroom. In this workroom files can be shared, feedback can be delivered, to-do lists made, video conferences held, screens shared and much more.

But as people are creative and continuously seek ways of optimizing their work, what we see on Elance is that they also utilize other tools to perfect the collaboration between the hiring business and the freelancer. One of the most popular tools is Doodle.

Doodle enables collaboration

As Elance is a global platform where people from all over the world work together every day, one of the challenges is to overcome time zone differences. We see projects every day where several workers from several countries and time zones have to speak together to define projects, set milestones and give feedback.

Doodle works well in solving this challenge as:

• Doodle offers time-zone support
• Doodle offers multi-user participation in scheduling
• Doodle offers multi timeslot suggestions

Elance offers a way for companies to work different and be more successful. Access to the best workers is no longer a challenge, as more than 2 million freelancers are ready to tackle your next job today. It’s now possible to focus on what you’re best at, and then offer the other projects to talented freelancers. This includes jobs that you don’t have enough time to do, or projects you need a specialist to perform. With Elance, you can follow your passion and help others follow theirs. Doodle is an important contributor to enable this global collaboration.

About the Author: Kjetil Olsen is Elance’s Vice President for Europe.

When creating a Doodle poll, the poll creator can set a time zone so that the times she chooses for the poll options are with respect to that time zone. However, Doodle seems to only offer time zones for winter time. For example, “(GMT-5:00) EST” is available, but “(GMT-4:00) EDT” seems not to be; “(GMT+1:00) Zurich” is available, but “(GMT+2:00) Zurich” seems not to be. Furthermore, a poll’s options might feature both dates that lie in winter time and dates that lie in summer time.

So what are poll creators and poll participants supposed to do? First and foremost, don’t worry! Simply choose the “normal” time zone for your region without concern for the current time or the dates & times of the respective poll. For example, a user in New York always chooses “(GMT-5:00) EST” while a user in Zurich always chooses “(GMT+1:00) Zurich”. Behind the curtain, Doodle (or rather the Java platform that Doodle is based on) does its summer-time magic if need be.

Here’s an example: http://doodle.com/ehbn7guem4tq4m4f. A company with an office in New York and an office in Zurich wants all employees to be on a conference call. An employee from the New York office sets a Doodle poll up, always suggesting 9 to 11 AM.

Most of the year, the time difference between New York and Zurich is 6 hours (GMT-5 -> GMT+1 or GMT-4 -> GMT+2), so 9 to 11 AM typically becomes 3 to 5 PM. However, daylight saving time begins one week earlier in New York and ends one week later, so for two weeks per year, the time difference is only 5 hours (GMT-4 -> GMT+1) and 9 to 10 AM becomes 2 to 4 PM during those two weeks (cf. March 11 and 13 as well as October 28 and 30).

None of the users has to worry about that, either, as Doodle takes care of any and all necessary conversions. And everybody is on the same call at the right time!

Many of our users ask us how to connect Doodle with Outlook 2013 or with Outlook.com. And here’s how:

Update: Please refer to our extensive support section on that topic.

Let us know what your experience is. Either in the comments or via http://doodle.com/about/contact.html.

To investigate the influence of national culture on people’s scheduling behavior, the team analyzed more than 1.5 million anonymized  meeting polls from 211 countries that were initiated on Doodle.

Here are just some of the highlights from the comprehensive project:

• People from countries with strong economies schedule more meetings.
• Countries that plan their events far in advance (such as Switzerland and Germany) take the most time to respond and decide on a time.
• In comparison to individualist societies (such as the US), community-oriented countries (such as China and Japan) respond to meeting polls earlier and make more of an effort to select times that will work for the entire group.
• Only 2% of meeting polls contain 5, 10, or 15 minute meeting time options (such as 4:15 PM).

The full report can be viewed at http://tinyurl.com/DoodlePaper-pdf.

Do the results match your experiences?

We want to know how our new offer is being received in daily business. Who is using BookMe and for what purpose? A few weeks ago, we reported on float Zurich. Today, we look at how Eurocentres’ language schools are using our new service.

The company

With 35 schools on five continents and teaching in eight languages, Eurocentres has been offering language courses for more than 60 years. Every year, all around the world, about 13,000 people learn a new language with Eurocentres.

The direct sales of the global courses are organized by an international team based in Zurich, primarily through e-commerce activities and personal phone calls.

Why BookMe?

Eurocentres offers its customers a free service number for advice on suitable courses and to book the selected courses over the phone. The disadvantage of this approach is that the large number of customer requests can lead to long waiting times — especially at peak periods.

To prevent this and to operate a more efficient phone sales system, Eurocentres has long been searching for a suitable callback service solution. Being an international company, the ability to provide this service in several languages was a crucial requirement. BookMe fulfilled its expectations exactly and Eurocentres implemented the new service in October 2012.

Experience with BookMe

In addition to the phone service, Eurocentres customers can now place a callback request directly through the company’s website with BookMe. A particularly popular function among customers is the ability to specify a date for the callback.

Michel Sägesser, head of E-Commerce and ICT Services at Eurocentres, is convinced of its benefits: “If you want to receive advice on our language courses, all you have to do is choose a free appointment on our BookMe schedule. It even works across time zones. Customers can prepare themselves beforehand and rely on the time of the callback. With BookMe, not only are we providing a new service, we are also ensuring that potential customers are not lost through the waiting queue.“

The first BookMe inquiry came on the first day of offering the new service – and the number of recall bookings by potential customers from around the world is growing daily. Eurocentres’ employees are convinced of BookMe’s benefits, while Michel Sägesser is certain that the potential of the new callback service is far from exhausted:

“Our busiest season is spring, when most of the courses are booked for the summer holidays. The advantages that BookMe brings to our daily work will become even more obvious then.“

Yesterday, we’ve added this little feature. It’s called “create a duplicate” in the screenshot below.

The screenshot also shows you all the other things you can do with a Doodle poll, most notably “close”: Please don’t forget to close your polls when they’re done. You’ll be able to select the final date and time and prevent the poll from being edited further. All calendar-integrated users will be especially thankful to you because fixing the final date will free up all tentative events in their calendars and only block the final date.