Schedulicity: Client Scheduling and Social Outreach, Made Easy

Is it worth $20 a month to you to make it ridiculously easy for you to empower your clients to schedule appointments with you? And for you to engage with them online in ways that make them happier and make you more money?

Those were rhetorical questions that nonetheless have two answers. The first is "of course it is." The second is "heck, yes, which is why you should already be using Schedulicity."

Schedulicity is a one-stop online shop that enables you to enable anyone to book an appointment with you, whatever business you're in. And the folks at Schedulicity have taken basic calendar management and scheduling and added all kinds of nifty social networking features, so that you can use the service to build and enhance all of your client relationships – even from a tablet or a smartphone.

You can let users reach and schedule appointment with you via Schedulicity.com, your own Web site, your Facebook page and/or via Twitter. And Schedulicity lets each client see and manage a "personal account" page showing past and upcoming appointments and reminders. And it's all free for your clients.

You, meanwhile, can use Schedulicity to manage your schedule, handle cancellations and rescheduling and even promote upcoming classes, workshops or special deals. Schedulicity even includes features that help you to manage "daily deals" with companies such as Groupon and Living Social. You can, for example, control the number of discounted appointments you want on any particular day.

If you can use an online calendar and/or Facebook and/or Twitter, you can sign up for and start using Schedulicity, probably in about the time it's taken you to read this far. (If your business is more than you, Schedulicity will cost you $39 per month for you and as many as 19 colleagues.) And you will then have access to all of the information and most of the tools you're likely to need to manage your schedules AND your client relationships. Keep track of their preferences (and even their birthdays). Tell them about upcoming special deals. Do pretty sophisticated e-mail marketing with easy-to-use templates. And more.

Schedulicity gives your business the power to deliver "better-than-most-big-companies" scheduling and client care, even if your business is only you. And the company behind it has scheduled more than five million appointments, so they've gotten pretty good at making and keeping the service robust, reliable and simple.

If you deal with clients who need to schedule appointments with you, for anything from accounting services to yoga classes, throw away the sticky notes and that overflowing bound calendar, and sign up for Schedulicity. (Of course they offer a free, no-credit-card-required trial.) It's a win for you and for your clients.