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Ever wonder what you’re missing by having “Block of Time Window” Scheduling options vs Down to the Minute? We did, so we did the calculations before we ever started coding FittleBug. Below you can clearly see based on certain conservative estimates that if you’re booking is blocks of time and not allowing for the actual time that things take – You are leaving $$$ in Cyberspace, and taking yourself OFF the market to be booked!

I’m the first to admit that I sometimes I have a difficult time understanding the thought process of Women. Don’t get me wrong I like women, but I don’t think any woman will be taking the time to process their home into inches so they can inform the service provider of their needs. I mean, they are always getting inches wrong anyway. Woman make about 80+% of the decisions on things like carpet cleaning, so why would you want to confuse them? The 20% of the men I know won’t do it!  I guess that it boils down to do you want their business or not. I get the fact that a small business owner needs to be as precise as possible, but don’t you think he/she should draw the line somewhere? Let’s test the theory – how many inches is a normal size living room 20 feet X 10 feet? Quickly. Now trying this one – 18 X 15? I’ll wait. BUT they won’t. Here’s the lesson I believe – it is better to be slightly off on your estimate and get the client, then make consumers feel like they are doing all the work; only to have you change it anyway. I mean, really, is it worth losing the customer over a couple of feet? Have you ever made an online appointment for a doctor’s appointment or a car tune-up or anything else? Did you have to wait a couple minutes from the time they said? Life Happens! Online Scheduling is not without flaws, but asking consumers to do all the work is the kiss of death in any business. Also – while I’m on my rant… Filling out a FORM is NOT ONLINE SCHEDULING!!! It’s filling out a form. It like calling and being placed on hold. Someone will eventually be back to you and probably interrupt what you are doing at that time. It’s kind of like booking an airline flight that says we’ll be leaving sometime between 1 and 4. Why would you as a service provider want to take yourself off the online booking market for a 3 hour window when the job might only be 40 minutes. That would be like only answering your phone for business between 10:30 to 11:00 and 2:45 to 3:15. Oh that’s right, some of you actually do that. I’m not blogging this in an attempt to make people feel stupid. I truly don’t think that they know CONSUMERS time is JUST AS IMPORTANT as theirs. Treat others as you would want to be treated. FittleBug “Down to the Minute” Booking is empowering clients and cleaners from Coast to Coast with better relations 24/7. Find out Now!

In this piece I will share with you how to offer specials that are not available to the entire public. Oh yea, FittleBug offers the ability to have promotion codes tied to a % or a $ amount, even tied to a list of items that you might call a “package”. BUT what I am going to share is a little known feature that I believe is under used by the majority of FittleBug clients. Did you know that you can “hide” sub-categories (for example “free spot cleaner”) from the public seeing it at all – yet it is still available to include in a package for those special people. 

You go to the grocery store, you by a candy bar for a $1.00, you eat it and it makes you feel real good. Was the candy bar worth the buck? Everything is unknown until tested. This is true of your services, software, and just about everything you can think of. So… I want to talk about perceived cost vs. actual value. If to get something that you think you really want is going to take $10 dollars out of your left pocket, but 30 days later will put $30 back in your right pocket – Is that a good value for the 30 days time value of money. Now what if it were $50 that returned $200 dollars; or $200 dollars that returned $1000? You get the point. You’re in business to make money. You must invest in that business to make it grow. The internet is allowing you to have a chance at growing about 2/3rd faster than before the internet existed. Prior to the internet you probably only worked about 8 hours. Today, oh yeah, you still only work 8 hours or so. So… What the heck am I talking about? I am talking about Leverage – Through the Internet you can market and advertise your services the other 16 hours of the day as well. Why aren’t you doing it? Are you? Is it a cost vs. value question? It shouldn’t be! Software like FittleBug allow service providers to leverage their time, effort and dollars to maximize their consumer offerings. There is certain software programs out there that helps run your business and then there is software like FittleBug – that helps grow your business. What comes out of your left pocket sometimes is NOT the problem – IT’S THE SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM.

People always ask me why some people do better with FittleBug. I can’t get it out of my mouth quick enough – Keep it Simple Stupid concept. It’s human nature not to want to be confused, and feel stupid which leads to uncertainty.  As it relates to FittleBug – to many choices can confuse the consumer on what they really want, and what they really want is for you to come out and clean something or service something. Make it easy – Make it Simple – Make it Clear. Click, Click, Click and they should be done. I understand that service providers need to sell the sizzle and telling people why they are different and should be chosen. My only concern is don’t drown in your own minutia (def: a minute or minor detail). Here is an example of what keeping choices simple can do for you. No one would suggest that google is anything but a complex algorithm, yet it’s ease of use is undeniable. Think about how you can make your website simple for your consumer…

Everyone strives to provide the “Best Customer Service” to their marketplace. It’s easy for the large well funded companies that might be your competition to offer things to the market that you can’t with your “Owner-Operator” budget. So how do you compete? How can you make yourself standout? How do you get that opportunity to “sell your sizzle”? The answer is… be smarter about how you brand yourself to the market (with the limited dollars you have) and do the things that they can’t or won’t. I am always asked why I built FittleBug Real-Time Scheduling , and why did I build it for the 1 to let’s say 12 service truck market. It will work for larger, but that really is the majority of the marketplace. Why didn’t I build it for the behemoth franchises of the world. The answer is for example, 93% of the market is owner-operator and 7% is franchises. Now I may be ignorant, but I’m not stupid! (Sissy Spacek in Coal Miner’s Daughter). FittleBug gives the little guy the ability to market to the public at a tiny fraction of the cost that the big boys spend. It allows them to 24 hours a day share, process and secure information from their marketplace. There isn’t a “Digital Mom” around who wouldn’t appreciate being able to get the quality that smaller owner-operators offer in their services at the convenience of her own time. Big Boy Companies have call centers – Millennials say “What’s a call center?” Baby Boomers get frustrated (cause they’re OLD) 😉 waiting on hold to talk to someone. Empower your clients to work with you the way THEY WANT TO! More and more that’s online, quickly, and DONE! Not a form, but a completion of the task. Recently I was reviewing some threads on Mikey’s bulletin board (a carpet cleaning fav), and some of our FittleBug clients were suggesting that about 50% of their orders are now being booked online with no admin involved. What you don’t know is some of these clients have only had FittleBug for about 2 years. Convert them to the Internet, let them do it themselves and Book it on their time and be DONE! For more information click here or call 630-444-2000.

So you’ve been thinking about FittleBug to help you grow your business, but not sure that how it would tie into your present Calendar program? Allow me to share how one of our clients in using FittleBug and a program that we don’t even tie into… As you know we sync with a product that a lot of Carpet and other service providers choose to use call ServiceMonster by Principle Focus. Those clients love the relationship between the two programs. But, what if you want to use a CMS program that we presently DON’T sync with – what can you do? Enter Google Calendars… Most programs to day have written into their functionality the ability to sync out data/scheduled appointments to Google Calendars. Once the scheduled appointment is in Google Calendars, programs like OURS that sync both ways can pull in the appointments into our program. FittleBug Real-Time scheduling is one of those programs that can sync both ways. SO… now programs like House Call Pro, ServiceM8 and more can sync calendars with your routes in FittleBug – allowing you to make sure that you are always presenting a Real-Time Version of your availability to your online consuming marketplace. In other words, people can book you around the clock based on your House Call Pro or ServiceM8 internal calendar. Here’s a visual of how it would work.

Let’s play the Honey Game… Honey, get on the internet and see when flights leave and fly to Atlanta on the 28th and tell me what they cost and if it looks good book it please. Honey, can’t we just go on the internet and see if our checks have cleared as opposed to waiting for the paper statement at the end of the month? Honey, we need our carpets cleaned, go on the internet and fill out a form so they know that we are interested, and I’ll make sure that I am around the phone when they call back so I can coordinate a time that works for us. If you choose #3 Congratulations you are an Idiot! I mean really, isn’t that all that a (web)-Form does. How does a form know how long it takes to do things? What if I was forced to choose a two hour window, but what I want them to do takes about 5 hours? Are they going to change it on me? I hope they don’t, I’m really tight for time. This is the dilemma that Digital Consumers are forced into when providers of services force them to live in the 90’s technology. Forms don’t empower – they waste time! Everyone’s Time! If you want a client for life, allow them to work with you on THEIR TIME, BASED ON YOUR TIME – ANYTIME! THAT’S REAL-TIME! BOOKED AND DONE! (Welcome to the future – It’s been here for awhile now!) Get FittleBug Real-Time Booking NOW and differentiate your company from the Formers

Man, I hear that ALL THE TIME, but is it? Is it really? Offering Digital Mom the ability to work with you on her time, yet still based on your time, anytime – Is it really innovative. I would suggest to you that it is OPPORTUNISTIC and CREATIVE, but NOT Innovative. It’s been said, “innovation is understanding not just what customers want next, but knowing what they already want now .” I truly believe this. Another way of saying it is – Give them what they want – NOW, or someone (probably younger, technically smarter and with more kahuna’s WILL). What do consumers want? ASK THEM! I did. Prior to even spending a dimec necessary to built the Real-Time Approach of FittleBug, I asked as many people as I could that would be considered potential “service provider customers” , so basically everyone I knew and met. I heard all kinds of answers as to whether what is now called FittleBug could be a useful tool for them. Millennials said – Yes, Gen Xer’s – (don’t bother me, I’m gaming), Baby Boomers – Yes please. So I looked at the market and here’s what my Business Plan told me in 2009 : There are approximately 70 million Digital Moms in the U.S. that are online and don’t need training on how to use the Internet. Annually about 14 million ask the carpet cleaning professionals to clean and protect their carpets. On average they each spend about $197… together they spend $2.74 billion annually ! AND NO ONE WAS THINKING ABOUT THE CUSTOMER’S WANTS AND DESIRES!!! So what did these 14 Million Moms really want over and above a good clean back in 2009? That was the easy part – Convenience and Time. No one was giving it to them. Forcing them to wait for returned calls and at the availability of the service provider. Guess What – NOTHING HAS CHANGED! Over the last 8 years since the incubation to creation of FittleBug Real-Time Booking, service providers have started to wake up to the reality of technical innovative progress for the growth of their companies. When I first introduced the concept, it was like they were looking at a guy with 3 eyes trying to figure out what they heck I was really saying. I heard things like, ” Why would I ever let people book my services without first talking to me?” They now know the answer – Because a large chunk of their market or future market doesn’t care to talk to them and their existing clients already knew them. Try calling your 20 or 30 something kid on the phone, you’ll get a text back. Today more and more companies are taking baby steps into what consumers STILL want. They are offering more FORMS to fill out. That’s what they are – Forms. If they aren’t based on factual times for service, it’s a square peg in a round hole approach. It’s just another service provider attempt to control what they presently call their market. How would you feel if United or American airlines didn’t tell you when the flights would be landing? This is what forms do. People say what they want without ANY understanding of how long things take. Today’s World – Problem! Folks – the Future of Service Provider growth is Real-Time, not some time. The reason CHAT has gotten more popular in the last couple years is because it is a stepping stone to Real-Time Solutions. Consumers today KNOW that forms just prolong, they don’t complete. Chat requires dual communications, someone at both ends and that is not a cheap thing whether it’s you or your staff. You’re a consumer, ask yourself: “When was the last time I filled out a form for someone to get back to me about a service I was interested in?” How was that experience and did it do any good for you? FittleBug Real-Time Booking (or something real-time similar) will be what you need to compete! Let them BOOK NOW and be an INNOVATOR… in the eyes of your Marketplace

Today I caught myself thinking about what I “originally thought” results would be for our FittleBug Clients and then what really occurred over the last 6 years. I also thought I would share some of my surprises and challenges today and going forward. My biggest surprise was the time of day that consumers are booking our clients. It’s all over the board! My thought was that it would be mostly after hours of work. Boy was I wrong. It’s all day and night. I have seen orders at 6:00 am in Ohio, and 2:30 am in Canada. I’ve seen clients first “Live” day with FittleBug get 6 orders and watched as one client secures 13 in a 24 hour time period. I always knew that rich folks would book, but I wasn’t sure of the amounts they would feel comfortable booking. Over the last years I have seen a bunch of orders $750 and up. Not bad for an industry of Carpet Cleaning that averages $200 to $225 across the country. The largest I have seen is $1750 as a new client and new order for the provider. Although simplicity is the key to booking, I have seen some very complex orders especially in the repair area. As far as the service providers experience, I can tell you that “ IF ” they take the time to think about how they want to offer services online and “For God Sakes” tell people, very rarely have they been disappointed. Clients that we have for at least a couple years, see that their clients just go book online and don’t even think about calling. So I guess that makes FittleBug Real-Time and Empowerment Time. Some of the Challenges that I have experienced have been with clients really not marketing their own company. Having just a link button on their website is only going to make it available to those that know of their website. There is a reason they call it the “net”. Clients have to cast the net wider to attract more prospects to turn into clients whether they call in or book themselves online. Think of it this way – FittleBug is a high quality paint that you can get, but you still have to put it on the wall. I am truly surprises that franchises do not have FittleBug Real-Time Booking! 87% of the carpet cleaning industry is referred to as owner/operator. Fortunately we have been marketing to them first. Struggles going forward I see are… trying to constantly help the service providers think in terms of what “their” clients wishes and wants are. To often providers are their worst enemy when it comes to marketing. What worked 10 years ago is on the fast track of “premature retrogression”. Fancy term for ain’t’ going to help build a business these days. Well – that’s kind of what I was thinking! What are your thoughts? Reach out to me at 630-444-2000 or steve@fittlebug.com . 

We have this saying in our office to remind us that being different in the business world is often the key to success, but you still have to sell your differentiality. If you are different enough, often times all you have to do is “Tell em – Not Sell em”. We have clients that are like us at FittleBug – they created a concept and wrapped a fun marketing game plan around it. I mean really – what is a FittleBug? Short answer, I have no idea! My son at age 9 came up with the word and said it was fun to say. He was right! We recently acquired a new carpet cleaning client that wrapped his marketing around a storybook puppet character and has had great success and fun with his marketing. (8 trucks) The point is – being different makes you stand out. Being different makes people question their thought process about your offerings. Be different can also expose idiocy. You have heard the old saying – If you don’t want people to know how dumb you are, it is better to keep you mouth shut, than open it and remove all doubt! Technology can help you stand out among the sea of “you’s”. Something as simple as just allowing people to work with you on their time, yet still based on your time, is often enough help them remember you next time.  The simple approach of Real-Time or as some call it On -Demand booking, has been proving itself for the last 7 years with FittleBug as a big part of not only helping carpet cleaners and others with attracting New Clients, but retaining Existing Clients! Don’t believe us… riddle me this batman… Although you can, how many of you choose to call the airlines when booking their services? How many call National to rent a car? How many still wait for the attendant at the gas station? How many are still waiting? Different is not Bad – It’s different, until it’s not! Get on board the wave of the future for Service Provider service booking. It’s Real-Time and not waste time! Call NOW: 630-444-2000 to find out more before different becomes the new normal

Actually it is, but I’ll get to that! Years ago I blogged about “Change is a Coming”. Well… it’s here and roaring done the track. Everywhere you look people are looking for faster more convenient features to their lives… and they’re getting it!  Waiting for the gas guy to come fill the tank became a time issue and that was back in the 70’S! Walking down to the stock broker or playing telephone tag with him or her was losing money in the 80’s. PDA’s (personal digital assistants) were introduced in the 90 to make us more organized. Napster arrived in the year 2000 to help us share our love of music easier with our friends. 2010 brought us “Square” was making it easier for small business. Let’s not even talk about Airbnb! People are always seeking better and faster with more convenience in their lives. Each of the items mentioned above have one thing in common… they all required a “Change in the Way People Perceived Value”. But change for change sake is dangerous. Point being, it has to be good for everyone in the Value Chain. For example, if it is good for a service provider to adapt to Real-Time Booking tools, but not for their potential clients – that of course won’t be good; and the inverse is true as well. If change is good for the client, but not for the service provider, the service provider has two choices – Adapt or continue with the status quo and hope the change never catches on. Go ahead and put this in the Business Risk Column… I will end this blog the way I started – Change Should be a Four Letter Word!

The Future for Service Providers Marketing: Empowerment & Conversion ! You can do all the marketing approaches that you want, spend as much money as you desire, but if the actions don’t turn into conversions – it was a waste! By conversions I mean an actual sale on the books. Marketing used to be “How can I make the phone ring?” This was assuming that you or some other paid person were there to answer the phone, but you still have to get the order. After about 8 years of preaching from the mountain tops to the service industry about what online real-time booking can do for their companies, it appears that some still need to understand just what the term Real-Time really means. Real-Time means empowerment. The power to know right now – not guess or wait for answers. Yet, still service providers think forms are enough. It might be enough for the provider, but to the consumer a form is just another step in the conversion cycle. Consumers seek information on the Internet to complete tasks – not to continue them. Making people add steps to the already time inefficient process of scheduling services is perceived today as an inconvenience. That’s what forms do – they ask consumers to tell them everything about their objectives so that someone can get back to them with a potential time for those services. Some forms offer blocks of time to choose from, but this is just another question in the form and is not based on actual availability. Thus a continuation is required. What you should want is the shortest, most cost effective and informational method available to convert a prospect to a booked and done client. Offering Real-Time scheduling is this approach. People sometimes don’t understand the size of the marketplace that given a choice would choose not to use the phone, but do it all on the Internet. If you aren’t providing them the option to book and be done, I guarantee some one on the same page of the google search will!  FittleBug is the Ultimate Conversion …find out NOW! www.fittlebug.com 630-444-2000

Is it to have more sales, to make more money, to stay busier? Yes, Yes, and Yes. Why do people choose to have Online Scheduling? It’s funny how things change and change quickly! I remember when I was still building FittleBug Real-Time Booking . The talk of the carpet cleaning industry was “Should I put my pricing online?” That was about 7 years ago… Today I was perusing the Forums and came across this thread:

I’ve been wanting to write this blog for a long time now. Part of our job at FittleBug is to help newbies to the whole real-time booking thing understand their audience better. Cause they’z different in the senses they use to evaluate your services. When a prospect calls you on the phone it’s your voice they hear and based on that and the content spewing out of it, they form an opinion if they want to listen. If not, you could be talking but their ears have shut you out. There is only one form of impression making and that’s the voice. Here’s where it gets interesting with FittleBug and real-time booking. If you can get right to the point with simple choices that they can understand, you have captured their attention. If you can create simple visuals like images of items they are considering or better yet a 20-30 second video explanation it’s like moving them along in the online sales cycle of: Why you? What do you offer? How much is it? When are you free when I am? Booked and Done! Simplicity is the key. I realize that some things are so complex in the eyes of service provider that they think the consumer wants to know everything that they do. Online – the things that they have questions on can be addressed with informational pop ups of imagery, text, video and more. Short concise answers so they can move forward in the cycle. What do “ YOU ” do when you go to a site and are confused… 

Carpet Pro Cleaners of North Carolina (a Housecall Pro user) Owner Wesley Stone has had FittleBug for about 5 and half years now and has been able to secure about 4400 Online FittleBug order for total sales of $1,182,000 (as of 11/21/22). He obviously is having some great success, but I wanted to share some of his techniques so others can learn from his success. When asked how much or where does he spend his time marketing to his market, Wesley replied “We market FittleBug on postcards (we hand out), the website, some direct mail and business cards”. I tell people all the time when they start with FittleBug, you don’t have to spend more money – Just put the power of what FittleBug does on every touch piece whether it’s on or offline. Consumers love it, but they have to know about it. Wesley knows that once consumers use FittleBug they will continue to use it again and again in the future for repeat business. He admits that his average job booked using FittleBug is slightly lower than his overall average, but he knows why. They do lots of repair and stretching which tends to be more off line for him and has slightly higher averages. His big take away for others would be that he has taken the time with his Developers to “properly” optimize FittleBug for Search Engine marketing. NOTE : It might surprise many to know that Wesley uses the power of HouseCall Pro to help run his business internally. HouseCall Pro not having an API interface with FittleBug certainly has a limitation for Wesley, but as he puts it “There are some limitations but compared to similar products, that work in the same manner, the advantages far outweigh any limitations.” HCP only syncs calendars with FittleBug and not all data as a true API interface would. Apparently he’s OK with the 2-3 Real-Time orders that FittleBug provides his business each day and the $10,000 average sales per month that FittleBug brings Carpet Pro Cleaners. Maybe you might be also… ?  Call us to learn more about how to implement FittleBug in your business and start taking advantage of the other 16 hours of the day you don’t answer your phone! 630-444-2000 www.fittlebug.com

No not for the latest fashion with holes ripped out of your jeans, but the GAP between what people have and what they want in life.  I recently came across a study done by GetApp Labs and their parent company Gartner Research. Although these charts were interesting, they got me to thinking about the gap of opportunity that was right in front of me!!! Click to enlarge images to review them easier…

Don’t confuse your audience! Change is sometimes difficult for people, but Confusion can be worse. Prior to the advent of Real-Time booking and tools like FittleBug there were and still are lots of sources offering simple web-forms. These are simply a way for the consumer to fill out a form and then send it off to the service provider hoping that they get back with some information relevant to the request in a timely manor. Now with Real-Time Booking the need for “so called scheduling forms” is gone, BUT some people just can’t let go of the need to keep that old “time consuming” web-form on their website along with a Real-Time Booking tool so people can use it if they want, as they have in the past.

Is FittleBug a good choice for your Business Growth? The 2022 Results are in... Average client ROI - 2555% Average Yearly FittleBug Bookings - $50,074