Hey – remember Booksy, the most popular online appointment management platform for health and beauty businesses? Yeah, the very same one that saves you from your phone phobia and awkward scheduling negotiations. They’ve just closed their biggest-to-date funding round, acquiring over 49,3M PLN!
Seven investors participated, among them Sebastian Kulczyk and his VC Manta Ray, RTAventures VC and Müller Medien GmbH und Co. KG. Since 2015 the company has managed to round up a head-spinning sum of 80M PLN, a feat not many Polish startups achieve.
The money will be used to strengthen the company’s position on all the six big markets where they operate: the USA, the UK, Canada, Brasil, Poland, and the RPA. However, their priority is the American market, due to the huge popularity of new technologies among the citizens. A beauty salon may convert to online scheduling management within 30 days, while in Poland it sometimes takes up a year or more. Stefan Batory, CEO Booksy, says that the USA is also their most active client base – with the most app downloads, users, and bookings.
The rest of the funds will be spent on recruitment. Booksy is currently looking for AI and machine learning experts, as they want to develop their own technology of customer analytics.
Booksy is currently the most popular app for online appointment scheduling. Over 120 thousand beauty salons worldwide is registered with the platform, and each month 2 million users make over 2,5 million reservations. In Poland alone, since the start of the platform, there have been 400 thousand users with 8 million bookings.
So, what’s the key to Booksy’s success? According to Batory, there are three main aspects to it: a good product, excellent customer service and a thought-through business model.
“We provide a good product and customer service. Thanks to that our NPS score, which indicates customer satisfaction, is very high,” says Batory. “In the software industry, when it comes to customer service, the usual NPS score is between 20 and 30. Anything above 50 is very good, and above 60 – sensational. Booksy has a score between 70-72, from the very beginning we’ve been measuring it. In the company, we say that customer service is the new marketing.”
The services registered with Booksy pay a monthly fee, regardless of the number of the bookings they get. It’s 140 PLN/30$ for self-employed business owners and an additional 20 PLN/10$ for each additional employee. It’s actually what distinguishes this app from others, which tried to implement the same scheme Uber or Airbnb uses – charging a fee for every order.
Let’s see what Booksy has in store for us in the future! Download the app for free or, if you’re a business owner, try a 14-day trial version available here.
