Brooklyn Bridge Fencing Club Defends Their Time With Acuity Scheduling
Appointment scheduling can sometimes feel like an Olympic sport, especially when you’re trying to coordinate time across multiple staff, calendars, and service types. But Dan Kellner, owner and head coach of Brooklyn Bridge Fencing Club, is up for the task.
Building an award-winning fencing business
An Olympian himself, Olympic coach, and USA Fencing Hall of Famer, Kellner once ranked 10th in the world in Men’s Foil and placed 4th as a member of the 2004 US Olympic Team, Team USA’s highest finish in 56 years. Hoping to give back to the sport that gave him so much, he started Brooklyn Bridge Fencing Club as a part-time business in 2010 as the sole coach of 13 students.
BBFC seeks to transform children’s lives through the sport of fencing, whether their goal is to get recruited to college or represent their country at the Olympic Games. Today, the premiere Brooklyn fencing club has grown to approximately 150 students and 6 coaches, while Kellner has continued his award streak as both an Olympic coach and business owner.
To remove a bottleneck to continued growth and success, as well as to streamline the business’s online scheduling process and help it run more efficiently, Kellner was drawn to Acuity Scheduling.
Searching for scheduling software to beat booking challenges
There were two primary features that made Acuity stand out in BBFC’s search for a sport scheduling solution. “The first was the ease of scheduling recurring lessons on the backend,” Kellner says.
“On my previous platform, the task of scheduling and/or rescheduling one month’s worth of private lessons previously took 8 to 10 hours every month to complete. With Acuity, we booked 5 months of lessons in 2 hours. Not 2 hours a month. Just 2 hours. Being able to quickly reschedule individual lessons, or a series of them, or change a coach’s availability has made running my business so much easier.”
The second was Acuity’s ability to integrate with Stripe, removing friction from the checkout process and making it simple for new clients to pay for their first purchase on BBFC’s website.
“We were having a lot of interrelated problems scheduling and rescheduling lessons, tracking cancellations and no-shows on multiple staff calendars, all while juggling availability,” Kellner says. “On the checkout side, we were having difficulty getting clients to pay online without abandoning cart, sending an email with an issue, and calling us or having to call them to complete a purchase. Acuity helped solve all those problems by reducing the amount of information clients needed to enter for us to take payment and letting clients schedule and reschedule their own lessons with coaches based on availability.”
Advancing appointments with Acuity
Since integrating Acuity into BBFC’s daily operations, Kellner and his team have been able to book and manage fencing camps, private fencing lessons, and group fencing classes with ease.
“Acuity has made my business easier to run. I no longer worry about the calendar.”
When it comes to specific features, Kellner values the ones that allow BBFC to bulk repeat scheduling tasks, which on their other system needed to be done one at a time. Acuity’s booking software has reduced administrative time by at least 10 hours a month as a result, while Kellner’s visibility into his schedule has significantly improved. “I have a better grasp of the day’s appointments based on being able to see all my coach’s schedules in one place. We also have color-coded appointments, so a coach knows where the client is in the onboarding process.”
Kellner also enjoys the product’s flexibility—with the option to not send an email to a client when scheduling or canceling recurring appointments, he’s reassured that he won’t clog their inbox unnecessarily, and with customized calendar links for the buttons on the BBFC website, he can halve the number of clicks needed to reach checkout.
But above all else, he says, “The most enjoyable features of Acuity are the general user-friendliness of its interface and the amazing customer service. It has become abundantly clear that Acuity listens and strives for improvement.”
Experts you can trust with your sports training, and your schedule
BBFC has already seen a wealth of positive results from Acuity Scheduling, and Kellner believes the software will enable the business to scale and hire more staff, while seamlessly integrating them into the appointment process and keeping administration costs low.
“Acuity has absolutely impacted our business and overall client experience for the better,” he says. “We have had complaints from clients in the past about previous software interfaces’ inability to give the client control in scheduling their appointments. Since switching to Acuity, we receive far less scheduling calls and emails. One of the best positive outcomes we’ve seen is the growing trend of, whether viewing a new appointment or a canceled one, the system will say, ‘Scheduled by/Canceled by Client.’” What a relief.
For anyone else in the business of sports and fitness, Kellner has a final word of advice: “Give Acuity a shot. It really made my appointment calendar ‘set it and forget it.’ Making changes to calendars, availability, and appointments is a breeze. It has reduced my anxiety a lot.”
