Booker Reviews

After using for over a year, I have grown accustomed to this software and probably will stay with it in the foreseeable future!

I was happy with system. It helped keep my business organized

The system does not work as it is supposed to, I have spent too much time calling support without anything getting resolved. The time an energy spent on using this system is not worth the price.

Booker does what we need, support has always been responsive and it is easy to use.

We have been using Booker in my business for years and earlier this year we were convinced by another booking service (the big name in our industry) to switch over. It was one of the worst decisions we have made. After 4 months of giving it our best try and much frustration over the new booking system's lack of features, unhelpful reporting options and staff frustrations, we switched back to Booker and THAT was one of the best decisions we made. Booker is the BEST platform for service based booking and the back end reporting of that kind of business. I do wish their customer service was as good as the other one we tried but it is not nearly as responsive. We are happy to be back though!!

disappointed

I’ve been using this software for six years the features seem promising but the reality of them are not easy to use and implement or take too long for customer service. It is not customizable for a large scale salon and that is not what bothers me the most, it’s when you call Support and they have no solutions except we don’t do that. And I mean repeatedly that is what I get from their Support team.

Terrible!

Nothing that I needed support with and is standard expectations were attended to nor problems resolved.

I found it an average platform for providing a decent appointment scheduling service to our customers.

Very pleased. We've been using it since day 1 in our Spa -6 years. Like I said before, really like the add-ons of [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN], for Marketing; and [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN], for never missing a call.

Fairly user friendly, easy to learn, and always loved all the details available.

Very good. easiest booking online I've come across as a customer

Very Unhappy -Open access for everyone to see all history, private information on a client. If they see a screen with appointments they can see anything for the client with a few clicks.
Other than no privacy Booker works pretty well considering. Im over the customer service answer is - if its a staff they cant see anything- really hire people that know your system and figure out how to add privacy.

I have had Booker since May, 2015. At first, minor glitches were sparse. An interruption in our day, but we were able to keep going. Recently, the interruptions have been more of an occurrence and lasting longer. I run a company and this is absolutely absurd. I can not do business if my main computer booking program is down. We constantly have pop ups on "We are working on it", "We are currently seeing slowness". On two separate occasions, their entire website was DOWN. Like, they forgot to pay and it was taken down. Ummmm... that is your business. How can that happen? And being a faithful client for two years, you think that you would give us a heads up if you are taking it down DURING PEEK HOURS. Today, on a Saturday of all days (Saturdays are BUSY for salons) we have the good ol' standby of "An Internal Server Error Has Occurred". This has lasted about two hours now. So, I can not ring people out, I can't check them in, I can't see our schedules.... I CAN'T RUN MY BUSINESS. Anytime you call customer service, it'll ring twice and go to a busy tone, OR they prompt you to leave a message after one minute for NO ONE to call you back. THEY ARE NEVER AVAILABLE. Customer service???? Give me a BREAK! They have the worst customer service ever. Oh, and my sales rep, the nicest guy ever. Who told me I could call him anytime... well.... he won't return my calls, or my emails. OR ANYTHING. I'll get a generic email from The CEO of the company that all of their clients have been BCC'd on about their recent issues and what they are doing to fix it. Meanwhile putting the blame on anyone or anything else other than themselves. I'm so beyond frustrated with this company, their lack of accountability, their "customer service", their whole being. They have lost me SO MUCH MONEY. The great customer service I am able to give my clients, leaves me looking stupid when I don't know they have an appointment, or when I'm struggling to ring them out on a 1980s credit card machine. We look pathetic. People don't want to come back to us and also, I'm left giving free services or discounts for the inconvenience to try and keep my clients happy. I will be taking my business elsewhere. As far as I'm concerned, Booker owes me $ for the past 5 months of terrible service (we will give them a break on the other 19 months). They also owe me probably $ in LOST WAGES.

Booker is a robust solution for online scheduling and taking payments too. In theory, Booker will save you loads of time since customers schedule and manage their own appointments. In reality, we spend too much time on the phone with Booker trying to work out quirks.

I love using Booker because it truly does everything I need it to. Not only is all your customer tracking in one place, I can easily override a schedule, track inventory, check my estheticians clock-in and out times, but all the merchant services and marketing with Frederick is also build in to make it a complete system. If I ever have a question, there are so many way to easily get it answered. Usually if I'm wondering, someone else has been too- so I can find it in the community boards, but if its truly technical, the chat is a quick and convenient way that I can still answer the phone as it rings, because the help line isn't tying up the phones or my hands. Frederick tracks emails, so if a client says they never got a reminder, I can double check that the system did indeed send one and with texts working better, more clients are loving the frequent reminders. Having the app option allows me to track the schedule from home also. Truly, I've looked at other software programs, but they just can't stand up to what Booker is able to do. Booker is just faster, easier, sleeker, and more intelligent.

The pro's definitely outweigh whatever problems or frustrations I have with Booker, so I'm overall a happy customer and will continue working with them. I honestly could not do without this software and look forward to them making more improvements to make it an even better products.

Booker has features that real you in but the functionality is antiquated, the "exceptional" customer service is non-existant once you have signed a contract and the features promised in the demo are not all delivered. I consistently get the answer that they are sorry but that feature is not part of the package you purchased - even though my sales rep assured me that it was when I asked him about it many times. There has never been an attempt to make it right or even console me for my trouble. The conversion cost me hundreds of dollars in changes needed to my website and credit card purchasing - many of which turned out to be inaccurate information provided by Booker that still did not fix my problems.
Moreover, the software has so many layers and steps to basic operations - it is a way to labor intensive to use. As a small business, your resources can not be tied up in having to change your schedule in three different places just to schedule a client after hours or to have to manually look up each gift certificate number - it doesn't stick with the client when purchased. Come on Booker - these features have been available for years!
Booker was a really bad decision on my part and I am looking for something else to replace it with that won't cost me as much to convert. They really did me wrong- whatever you do, don't take the Clover package as this is the software I am working with. They don't tell you ahead of time that it is a different program you than what they demo to you.

We had several manual processes and workarounds to track and fix our data, but the auditing capabilities and ease of use make this system worthwhile!

So there is no perfect product BUT... We've run our beauty business for 8 years now using a variety of non-integrated systems including AppointmentQues and Intuit POS. About 2 years ago, we became very frustrated with the total lack of customer support from our current solutions'they literally did not have a phone number to reach a real person in any circumstance. The role Booker would play for us was mission critical so I did some serious due diligence before selecting Booker. I created a massive feature spreadsheet that compared the 4 top contenders. Booker and one other option appeared to be the best on paper. So I called Booker and grilled that sales person for literally 3 hours about all the nuances of Booker. She was cheerful and knowledgable (I think her name was Erica) and answered pretty much all of my questions. We have over 60 employees, so training and switching our software backbone is a huge hassle'you really want to choose the right long term partner so you don't have to deal with all that work again.

I'd say Booker gets 98 out of 100 issues and features. It is very elegant and thoughtfully designed and a pleasure to work with on a day to day basis. So much more robust and clean that our previous patched together solutions. Yes, on the rare occasions when the Booker servers go down for an hour at 3pm, you will curse their name, but you will also quickly forgive, because no cloud based solutions has perfect uptime, and this cloud based solution is soooooooo much better than our previous desktop apps.

Yes, we push the limits of the features. Yes, we wish they would fix some of the "glitches" more quickly'it seems that adding new customers might be getting more CEO focus than improving the user/customer experience. But so far, Booker appears to still be the best available option.

Side note: Robert Schmidt in support is a rockstar and really gave us a lot of good advice and strategic insights related to Booker.

PROS:
Smart, friendly people in customer support that live in NYC or SoCal. They really know their stuff and try hard to help you. And they don't speak English as a 3rd language or live in Bangladesh!

Well thought out, elegant interface.

CONS:
Booker needs to hire more/task more programmers to fix glitches in the system'fixes trickle in, but far more slowly than other SaaS providers in other industries.
Feels like they are resting on their laurels with features'slow to fix or add features

We love Booker here at our spa. I love the features we use for creating yoga classes and memberships as well. It's very easy to use in that aspect. Scheduling appointments is a breeze and checking customers out couldn't be easier.

I do wish there was a way to put notes onto gift card codes or under a customer's name so that if there is any confusion with an order or if someone gave their gift card to someone else, we could go back and see who they gave permission to use that gift card.

Another thing that would be a great feature to add to Booker is the use of storing a client intake form on a client's file in the system. If we were able to take a photo of a signed client consent form with all of their information on it and upload it to Booker as a PDF file, it would be truly magical. Paper piles up... we would love to go digital :)