"We love the modern and simple aesthetics and client experience. It's beyond "merely functional," yet crisp and clean - well suited for our brand."
Tara McMullin and her team behind What Works don't believe in magic formulas, one-size-fits-all blueprints or get-rich quick schemes. They believe that for small businesses to thrive, it is important to build a strong network of support and entrepreneurial resourcefulness for long-term success.
That's why What Works produces a podcast, hosts an amazing private network and facilitates mastermind groups to connect small business owners with each other. Through the What Works podcast and community, small business owners get to have candid conversations about what really works for running and growing a small business.
Shannon Paris is the Community Advocate for What Works's private network. She manages community development and fosters engagement between the members.
With the What Works podcast crossing the milestone of 200th episode, the team is busy collecting stories and lining up more interviews with small business owners. In addition, Tara and Shannon also conduct one-on-one research sessions with community members at What Works.
To automate their scheduling process, the What Works team uses CozyCal to book podcast interviews, member research sessions and virtual coffee chats.
Before CozyCal, Shannon and her team were using a different booking program that felt bloated and even at times confusing. With hundreds of members in the What Works community, the team wanted a more user-friendly scheduling tool that could meet their simple but important needs of scheduling podcast interviews and virtual coffee chats.
Shannon: "Our needs for a scheduling program are pretty straightforward. We simply need to be able to book clients for podcast interviews and virtual coffee dates. So an easy to understand interface and multiple calendar synch are our main priorities.
Before we used CozyCal - we were using a different booking program. There were lots of bells and whistles for features, but for our purposes, their service felt bloated.
The functionality on the client side was okay, but very confusing on the back end. Team members were afraid to touch anything for fear of "breaking" the set up.
On the operations side, I admit my own confusion in not always understanding how to manage our account. I felt like it was not intuitive, and I had to relearn it each time I needed to make an adjustment. There was a lot of wasted clicking around when I was in there!
Then along came CozyCal."
CozyCal's clean interface and smooth client scheduling experience have won Shannon and her team's hearts.
Shannon: "We can do what we need to do without being confused by all the superfluous bells and whistles, yet we still feel like we have what we need for our current workflows and to grow into.
The back end experience is so simplified and streamlined, each team member has found it a breeze to manage their appointments and availability.
We love the modern and simple aesthetics and client experience. It's beyond "merely functional," yet crisp and clean - well suited for our brand."
With CozyCal's team scheduling, Shannon's team is able to set up their own schedule, integrate it with their workflows and also keep track of other team members' availability.
Shannon: "We love how each team member can set up CozyCal to suit their individual workflow - and yet we can all retain visibility to the big picture. Tara books her podcast interviews stacked up on two days of the week , and rests assured that she'll have the buffer time she needs and doesn't have to worry about double booking or lots of back and forth to find the right time.
Whereas I book coffee dates with members or meetings with strategic partners on a broader and more random schedule. I love how easy it is to hop in and tweak my availability, see a preview of the booking page, and grab a sharing link."
For the past a year and half, Shannon and Tara have witnessed the evolution of CozyCal and supported the growth of the product. Through CozyCal, they have customized the booking process to align with What Works's branding.
Shannon: " We were following Kat & Chris's journey to build out a great product, while at the same time feeling frustrated about our old scheduler. Kat did a demo of the product for us as a special guest inside one of our community conferences, and we were sold. The simplicity of the design and aesthetics made the decision a no-brainer (I believe those are the exact words used when we were considering whether to move programs!)."
CozyCal is such a great fit for our brand, and we love the way we've been able to personalize the colors and branding.
We were also blown away by Chris & Kat's hands-on responsiveness to our needs, and their customer service. We've witnessed the evolution of the product, and can track the changes as they relate to real and useful feature requests."
As the admin overlooking What Works's scheduling set-up, Shannon finds CozyCal to save her much time.
Shannon: "From an admin perspective - I've saved lots of time in set up and maintenance. It was basically a "set it and forget it" operation to get started, and then it's so easy to make changes and adjustments that I don't even worry about it.
Nobody is afraid of breaking our scheduler anymore!"
Shannon believes that CozyCal is a useful tool in streamlining scheduling for small businesses.
Shannon: "I would and I have recommended CozyCal to others. It's a simple yet mighty product. They've created a product that is both incredibly useful and incredibly easy to use. And there is no way to speak highly enough about the hands on customer service and responsiveness of team CozyCal."