Setster: Let Your Clients Pick Their Own Appointment Times
Setster is a new service, still in beta, that allows businesses to let their clients or customers book appointments with them directly through an online calendar widget. Setster supports working with multiple employee calendars (which they call providers) on the same login, as well as a catalog of services a client can choose from and a couple of different widget styles.
Online calendaring is great, but there are some types of jobs that require a lot of calendar interaction between the employees and the clients that aren't well-served by what's out there in the Web 2.0 space, for example realtors and health spas. Traditionally, a live receptionist has had the duty of maintaining the various employee calendars of these types of businesses, but being able to automate this process online may become more important, especially in this economy. In addition, there are some roles where the organization may not be large enough to warrant a full-time receptionist, like a hairstylist working for themselves.
This is the problem that Setster was designed to solve. On the back end, once registered, the Setster user can set up their business information, work hours, service providers, basic services with cost if any, choice of widget style and maybe some important clients. Users can also manually enter appointments on the calendar once everything else is set up, as well as approve, make changes to, or reject unverified or unconfirmed appointments. On the front end, users are given a Setster URL that they can give to their customer to schedule appointments, or they can take the widget code and embed it in their own business web page.
From the client end, there is access to a very simple-to-use widget either from the business web site (after set-up) or the Setster provider-specific site, where a client can choose an appointment time and fill out the rest of the details, and then click on an email confirmation link. The service takes care of reminding the provider (the Setster user) of the appointment and confirming it on their end. Alerts can also be set for important appointments.
Finally, the site has been tuned to also work with small business that may have several employees all with busy calendars. One login allows selecting which employee calendar to look at, and choosing the next available appointment slot either for one employee specifically, or across all the calendars (first available). This can be a great help in a business like a hair salon where the customer may not need to choose the same person each time.
There are a couple of downsides to be considered. First, there doesn't seem to be a way to import or export calendar data from Setster. It seems to assume that a company will start off using this software and love it so much they will never want to migrate to anything else. Second, the site indicates that the service isn't going to be free, or that perhaps there will be tiered pricing. However, we couldn't find any suggestion for how much it would cost to use Setster after it emerges from beta, so you might want to get signed up and test it now if the concept appeals to you.
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That is a pretty sweer UI and logo. Just saying.
Too bad the site has such poor support for non-U.S. users. There is no option for non-U.S. addresses in the settings, nor is New Zealand's time zone even listed in the time zone select list. Hopefully, they address these problems soon because otherwise it looks like a useful tool.
ohh i read the review and i was all excited ... this little tool could save me so much time ... BUT i realize it's all in flash, it's web 2.0 dude flash died back in 1999 ...
my personal problem is a business oriented one ... other people looking just to use it for free or to test it might have different opinions ... but flash doesn't get integrated with ANY setup, not to mention there won't be any API to even find away
but most importantly, i wouldn't want this application just to be hosted on third party website with third party branding ... this is my business, my hours, my customers, i want to be present from the beginning to the end and i do not want them to think they are leaving my company to book with another company. TRSUT + COMFORT = $$$
needless to say i'm no longer interested, but i think i'll pass on the beta to some of my programming buddies maybe they'll clone the business model out of python or php with api ready ... this could be a lucarative business...
thanks for the idea, but fail as a real business service!
Flash is not dead, HTML/AJAX will not achieve the richness of the UI you see in the application above from a usability perspective. The future is Rich Internet Applications. Flex/Air/Silverlight running as hybrid desktop/internet applications. Also, from the looks of it, your customers would not leave your website to request an appointment, I am not sure if the branding is going to be white labeled once it is a none beta offering. Overall, I do think that we are going to see more of these applications in the future and I do welcome new technologies that will challenge the same old same old AJAX/HTML paradigm.
Hello, I am the Founder of Setster. To update, we are planning an export to iCal and Outlook feature. Also, currently we DO send the appointment requests as attachments that do get inserted into your outlook or iCal calendar on receipt. Thanks again everyone for checking us out and letting us know your thoughts.
Thanks for the quick reply, Edward. Being able to export a whole calendar to a standard format would allow interoperability with mobile phone-based calendars as well, which could definitely be a plus.
Recently we received another comment complaining that the interface is 100% Adobe Flash, is there a more cross-compatible version in the works as well?
@Nik:
i'm not saying HTML/AJAX will live on forever but it will be dominant for many more years to come. Flex/Air has a long way to go. but since when richness UI is more important the richness of SERVICE/BENEFITS.
when it comes to businesses, you cannot force them to adopt a technology that does not integrate with their current setup. it's too costly; it's too unknown; it's way too risky!
- this app is not a consumer end product period!
- only businesses will use it (small to medium)
- it needs to integrate with outlook (euntorage on MAC), CRM system or Quickbooks type application. AT MINIMUM!
this is the big problem with programmers starting a business on their own, they fail as businesses simply because they don't understand business process.
I didn't see anything about Outlook support... it has to work with Outlook.
I am the founder, not a programmer or a developer. As most entrepreneurs, I started with due diligence on the market and what needs our service would eventually fulfill.
As far as integration with Outlook and iCal, it will be part of the final release. On the second part, using our services with non-flash enabled websites; this is a feature request that has been slotted for integration into a future release. Our widget will have a automatic mode that will detect and support an html /ajax appointment widget.
Hope this covers all concerns raised so far and thank you so much for you valuable feedback.
Best,
Edward Lujan
edward@setster.com
hi
To join a dynamic organization that offers an opportunity to cintribute and to grow the field of accountiong.
i wana a goood partner for every type of intertainment
Great post.