Big news from #TeamAppointedd…
In the fast-moving world of startups, you never know where your next big opportunity is going to come from. It makes for an exciting life where no two hours, let alone days, are the same. While variety is to be expected, the last few months have been particularly jam-packed full of activity for the team here at Appointedd.
As you may have seen in the news last week, we have partnered with the wonderful people at Alliance Business Centers Network! Alliance (ABCN) is the world’s largest network of serviced offices and coworking centers.
With over 700 locations spanning 52 countries, ABCN services more than 500,000 businesses. And now, thanks to the Appointedd and Alliance strategic partnership, every one of those member businesses can benefit from the streamlining, cost-reducing, business-booming functionality of Appointedd! It has honestly been one of the most exciting projects to work on as a team, and we are absolutely delighted to be working on a new partnership that is catapulting Appointedd into exciting new territories, both geographically and sectorally. Feel free to check out the media coverage – our favourites were the Mail on Sunday, The Scotsman, the Daily Record and CNBC, but we were featured in over 300 online publications!
The development has been a real lesson in being creative and, dare I say it, thinking outside the box. When Appointedd started marketing its products to businesses, we were focused solely on online booking and our core goal was allowing a customer to make a booking right from a business’s website. But ABCN looked at our product and saw another use for our technology…
Best of Both Worlds
ABCN provides some amazing ancillary services to its 500,000 clients, and Appointedd is fitting into its suite of products to help deliver a fantastic customer experience. As a starting point we are working with ABCN’s Live Reception service to underpin great customer service with a cutting edge technology platform. This allows the receptionists to not only answer calls for the business center members, but also book in calls and meetings, and organise their calendar for them. This transforms a standard service into something much more powerful. Now, with Appointedd, arranging a meeting needn’t involve a lengthy email exchange or a phonecall at just the right time, because the receptionist has direct access to the online booking tools from within their existing call answering system. From there they can put in a confirmed meeting, or a meeting request, and this kickstarts a series of automated emails to inform the relevant parties.
What We Do Best
Of course, we don’t want to go too far off piste. We are also working with ABCN in our usual way, helping them to make their services bookable online. The ABCN business centers can boost their accessibility by allowing members to book facilities 24/7. Members can book tours of the space, meeting rooms, event spaces, hot desking, and more, anywhere, on any device, in any timezone. Appointedd’s seamless booking tools will integrate directly with the business center’s website and can be customised to fit each center’s branding.
With Appointedd, business centers can take secure online payments and deposits at the time of booking, allowing them to make money from their facilities at all hours of the day or night and track turnover at a glance within the Appointedd system. Not to mention, by using Appointedd they can cut out the cost of manual scheduling, to further increase profit margins. We’re feeling pretty proud of the efficiencies and cost savings we can deliver to the people who run the business centers where hundreds of thousands of businesses are born, grown and run.
Which brings us to the next way in which we are collaborating with the lovely people at ABCN…
Online Booking for Every Business
Every single business working in an ABCN center will be offered the opportunity to use Appointedd for their own purposes, so that they too can have their business processes streamlined.
Businesses can take bookings online and view all activity (including bookings, payments, reports, and client information) all in one place. A pretty cool way to cut down admin and introduce some scalable processes! Users can also take advantage of Appointedd’s many integrations with leading accounting systems (FreeAgent, Xero, Sage, to name a few) and external calendars (such as Google and iCloud) to make their business significantly more efficient.
Working Together
It really is so wonderful to work with an organisation that cares so much about its customers. ABCN is dedicated to empowering the businesses that use its services, and this deal will give them access to technology that will help them to thrive in the modern workplace. ABCN’s founder and Chairman, Frank Cottle, is one of the most entrepreneurially-minded people I have ever met, and I am inspired by his vision every time we speak. His team are innovators and they are passionate about giving their customers the best tool for the job – they have been unrelenting in their search to find the best in class technology platform to run their business on, and we are delighted that Appointedd has been selected to underpin the fantastic service already provided.
Frank Cottle, Chairman of ABCN, had this to say: “Appointedd understand our industry and have developed a solution that is closely aligned with the requirements of flexible workspace operators. Key features like real-time appointment setting, online bookings, and CRM is no longer a nice-to-have; in our increasingly competitive environment, this level of automation opens up new opportunities for operators to add value to clients, which is paramount to the success of every workspace center. Appointedd’s service provision is second to none and I am proud to call them a partner of the Alliance Business Centers Network.”
The partnership between Alliance and ourselves is a huge step, and it has been an amazing experience to work closely with such a talented team to design a user experience that will wow ABCN’s customers. We’re looking forward to delivering great results for a fresh wave of businesses and seeing what the future holds! If you’d be interested in checking out Appointedd, feel free to sign up for a free trial or request a demo from one of the team.
Published on 7 October 2016