We talk a lot at Schedulefly about keeping things simple. We try to keep our business model simple and our restaurant staff scheduling software simple. And we try to make sure it’s a simple process to do business with us.

To that end, we’ve always had just one version of Schedulefly. While most software companies maintain multiple versions of their product, and ask their customers to decide which is best for them, we believe in making the decision for our customers. People are forced to make tons of little decisions every day, incrementally taxing and exhausting themselves, and we don’t want to contribute to the dilemma.* Rather, we want to make our customers’ lives just a little bit easier.

The only choice anybody makes with Schedulefly is whether or not to use it. That’s it. If you want to use it, you pay based on how many employees you have:

It’s that simple. Also, when we add a major enhancement, or a new feature, our customers all get it. We don’t ask them to decide whether they want to pay more to use it. Rather, we simply roll it out, tell them about it, offer some ideas on why it might be useful, and get out of the way to let them decide if it will help their business.

Sure, customers then have to choose whether to use the new tool. But that’s an easy decision because there is no cost involved. What matters most to them is they never have to make a decision on whether to “upgrade” to a more robust version of Schedulefly to get more tools, or “downgrade” to a less robust version to save money. If we provide a tool, it’s theirs to use.

If you own a business, think about how you can make your customers’ lives easier by simply stripping out many of the choices you ask them to make. You may find that not only are your customers happier, but that you are too because you’ve now made your life easier as well!

Keepin’ It Simple & Fun,
Wes, Tyler, and Wil

* You may have heard of Barry Schwartz’s book on this topic, The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less