Our customers use their Schedulefly online Message Wall to share good news and comments from customers with the entire team - creating excitement, motivation, camaraderie, and connectedness. Employees can comment on the messages, and share thoughts and ideas. A fun, high impact aspect is the ability to broadcast messages to employees’ email in-boxes. For instance, the owner of a restaurant recently posted the below message on her wall – all employees also received it in their email inboxes! Of course they can also read and post to their wall from mobile devices like iPhones and Blackberries.
Staff...I wanted to pass on this email I received. Congratulations! You did a GREAT job!!!
"I wanted to take a moment to simply say ‘Thank You’ to the Staff at Liberty Market for their wonderful service and hospitality. My husband, son, and I visited the restaurant last night for the very first time for dinner and we could not have desired a better experience. From the moment we walked in the front door we could feel that Liberty Market was a special place. The food, service, and atmosphere were all exceptional. We were especially impressed with the young gentleman who walked us out to our car and conversed with our family as we left the restaurant. Our dining experience held true to Liberty Market’s stated principles exemplifying craftsmanship, professionalism, hospitality, and that of being servants. While last night was our first visit to Liberty Market it will certainly not be our last. Thank you again.
We've added the über convenient Facebook Connect button to Schedulefly's login page. If your already logged into Facebook when you hit schedulefly.com - click it and we will usher you right on in...
If for some weird reason you've arrived at Schedulefly's login page and are not logged into Facebook yet (these days, who does that?), clicking the connect button will allow you to login to Facebook and Schedulefly at the same time - with your Facebook userid and password.
We had planned a blog about the subtleties and intricacies involved with restaurant employee scheduling. Then we noticed this neat post on one of our customer's Schedulefly Message Wall. There are many ways to skin a cat, here's one...although this is probably pretty common in the restaurant industry.
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"I want to thank all of you for coming to work to serve our customers with dedicated focus. That is why we are all here. I also want to explain how scheduling works a little more. If you are new remember - remember that we do have more alot of employees and everyone wants the perfect job in a perfect world. Unfortunately this is not reality. While we are very flexible in working with people's schedules - this doesn't mean that you will get exactly what you want.
There are several things that go into putting a schedule together. Seniority is something that is considered. As you become the not so new kid on the block you will appreciate that we do this. Also the more things you can do in the store the more options I have in plugging you into the schedule. We will only let you move on to other positions as we see that you are ready for them and you are good at the position you currently work.
Another thing that is factored in...is how you work. The best people will get more hours. This means how you work or don't work factors in to how many hours you will be scheduled. ATTITUDE and how hard you work all is considered. If I have the options of 10 Builders for a shift...I will put in the one who is the better worker with the best attitude. Availability is also a factor. Another thought...fewer people work in the day and those people usually are the ones who can do multiple positions. This is why employee's who have been at Sheridan's longer usually gets more day shifts.
The more available you are the more chances you have of being scheduled. Also if you have requested a certain number of hours and I put you on shifts only to see that you are giving them up often then I wonder how committed you are to the job. This feature is nice to have but should not be abused."
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Clearly a lot of thought and strategy goes into creating a schedule every week. At Schedulefly, we're just trying to make the execution of creating the schedule - and managing all of the inevitable changes that come along after a schedule has been posted - a little easier, a little faster, and a little bit more fun for all involved.
We are lucky to have so many awesome customers at Schedulefly. They all appreciate the value of easy, web-based restaurant employee scheduling & communication. They like simplicity, ease of use, intuitiveness, and fun. They don't leave us unless they close their doors - we renew 99% of our customers every month.
We realized that we can tell people how much value Schedulefly can add to their business 'till we are blue in the face, but, we admit - we're biased. So we decided to let our customers speak for us. We bought this neat little Flip video camera, and we started sending it to customers. We give them no scripts, no lines, no quotes - nothing. We simply ask them to tell the camera why they like Schedulefly, and say whatever is on their mind.
So far, the camera has been to two customers. It is in the hands of another now, and two more are waiting. Here are some of the clips we've received already. We can't thank our customers enough for taking time out of their busy days to do this for us!
And one more...Dave Downs - a super cool guy (GM at a restaurant in Denver) who spent an entire day with us at the Chicago NRA show - because he wanted to! He spoke to people with us - told them how much he is enjoying being a Schedulefly customer and why. It was cool to watch - dang good salesman that Dave. Thanks Dave!
All of us at Schedulefly are obsessed with making restaurant employee scheduling & communication easy, simple, intuitive, and even FUN! That obsession leads us to launch enhancements like our new bar graph schedule snapshot. Want to know how many people are on at 10pm? And who they are? One click - done.
You'll see in these screen shots that Kandy Fletcher, our awesome customer from Sheridan's Lattes & Frozen Custard in Lubbock TX, can quickly see that she has 7 people on at 10pm. If she wants to know who they are, she just clicks the total and - voila - her list appears!
Not only is this fun, simple graph a great time saver and an easy way to quickly see coverage at any time of day, it can also be used to help Schedulefly's customers cut labor costs. As an example, we got this neat note from Kiersten Traina of Liberty Market in Gilbert, AZ today. She wasn't at work - but she could still check Schedulefly with her laptop and internet access:
"I'm actually sitting at a coffee shop trying to figure out how to cut labor, and the graph is helping me in relation to my sales data, so I can make sure I don't have people on at dead times!!!"
So now that the graph is launched, we are off to work on more fun, cool, highly valuable stuff that will make our customers' lives easier.
The article mentions many of the benefits to owners, managers, and employees - and also provides a nice list of some of the leading providers. If you are an independent or small chain, we believe passionately that Schedulefly is the easiest, simplest, most intuitive, and FUNNEST solution available. And our customers that have kicked the tires of several providers all agree!
The cool thing is, you can try most of the apps for free, and determine which works best for you and your team. The online employee scheduling trend is picking up steam – quickly!
Schedulefly and Local Customer Elijah's on WWAY News Channel 3 - Wilmington NC
We spent some time this week down on the Cape Fear River with WWAY News Channel 3 and the staff at Elijahs - a popular Seafood Restaurant and Schedulefly customer. WWAY filmed a great story on how Elijahs is using online scheduling at Schedulefly to save time and money - while transforming the way they communicate with their staff!
Schedulefly is an easy-to-use online employee scheduling application created for the restaurant industry.
Schedulefly helps restaurant management establish better relationships with an increasingly web-savvy workforce.