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Corona Results After 3 Weeks

Just a quick update on how Appointment Reminder is doing after three weeks of an economic shutdown.

One thing that is important to point out is that AR only runs for businesses in the USA and Canada, so any economic changes in those two countries will have a full impact on AR.

For the end of March 2020, we saw about a 10%+ pullback in customer billings almost exclusively coming from customers that had to cancel due to the shuttering of their businesses.

Almost all of them said they would be back as soon as this was all over, but that's only if they are all still in business.

Many of AR's customers are small businesses, nail salons, barbershops, yoga studios, exercise class locations, etc. Obviously, these are the types of businesses that everyone worries about failing before the economy can get back to a respectable level of traction, as they likely to have a high fixed cost and little flexibility to survive a sudden cessation of income.

I imagine April will see the same level of contraction - if not an accelerated amount of closed or postponed accounts. Obviously, that hits our viability as a going concern as well, as fixed costs are tough to get out of quickly.

One note, of course, that we all know, is that software does have a higher margin and much more of a variable cost structure (I'm generalizing a lot there, bear with me, but I realize some online businesses aren't this fortunate) and with less usage, our costs will go down a bit. I'd guess maybe 2-3% for every 10% in lost revenue.

Like many small businesses, if AR can survive to the point where the economy is allowed to function again, and most of the customers come back, it will survive quite nicely through the pandemic. If a loss of 40-50% of customers is permanent, then AR would still be profitable, fun to operate, and can even help SMB’s recover in the future as businesses get back to normal.

Only time will tell!

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    Hi Tyler,
    So sad to hear about this unfavorable turn of events!
    I'm wondering to myself - these people use your product and can't make a living, meaning they won't be ACTIVE customers for a couple of months. Why not offer them a "free up to X appointments" tier for Corona times?
    Seems like a win-win-win situation:

    1. You don't lose them as customers, just as revenue.
    2. They feel you feel them and help them when they're down.
    3. You do some good (Karma).

    Just a thought, hope this helps,
    Jonathan

    1. 1

      I like this idea, we are kinda doing it for them, but neither party realizes it, so I need to make it more explicit.

      At the moment, if you pause the payments your account, you can still use AR, we aren't locking anyone out. Challenge is, many of them have nobody to send reminders too. But we still want them to have access to their customer list, past schedule, etc.

      But I like your idea, what if we write some blog posts about sending a monthly email to remind your customers you'll be back and even quick status updates on the business?

      Might make a human connection for the customers and the businesses ... and we can help enable that using your idea.

      Gonna chat this over with the team and see if we can get that going today.

      Thank you!

      1. 1

        Hi Tyler,
        Glad to hear this resonates with you!
        I'm doing free 30-min consults for the community - https://calendly.com/jonathanoron
        Feel free to book me so we can go into some detail!
        Cheers,
        Jonathan

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