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Wednesday

Jul282010

Fourth Winner of 10K by 10.10.10 Contest + Question # 5

Wednesday, July 28, 2010 at 5:05PM

While we’d love to send prizes out to each and every one of you who posted your responses to our last question about the recent Gulf Coast oil spill, alas, there can only be one winner. Congrats to Jeff Brown of Applebees for being randomly selected as the prize winner this week. Jeff will receive our awesome prize package of gift cards from iTunes, Best Buy, P.F. Chang’s, Cheesecake Factory, Outback, as well as a HotSchedules coffee mug.

As we mentioned in our last blog post, the HotSchedules team can’t thank you guys enough for all of the wonderful comments and suggestions on ways to help out with the Gulf Coast oil spill. Please keep them coming and be sure to share with us any volunteer/donation activities you are doing individually or with your coworkers – we’d love to see photos/videos!

For a reminder on the official rules of the contest, check out the first blog post on it here.

Questions #5: Show us where you use HotSchedules
We are very excited to announce the next question for our 10K by 10.10.10 Facebook contest, and are quite confident that you all will not disappoint us with your responses! So here goes: As many of you have already told us, HotSchedules makes your life much easier because you can check schedules, change and manage shifts, anytime and anywhere on your mobile phone. Your challenge - we want you to post pictures of the places you are accessing HotSchedules with your mobile phone. For example, requesting a shift change because you are stuck in an airport in Chicago, or checking your weekly schedule while catching some sun on Venice Beach, just snap a pic and post it to our Fan Page Wall. The only rule is that you must include a sign in the picture that says, “I use HotSchedules _________,” indicating where you are. Sounds easy enough? Oh, and please no inappropriate pictures – this is a family show!

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Gulf Coast: How we can Work Together to Help Communities in Need

David C.

Tuesday, July 27, 2010 at 4:17PM

There's no way to sugarcoat it (or try to make it look better than it is) -- what happened in the Gulf has been a disaster for the surrounding wildlife and communities. Here in Austin, we’re fortunate to not be directly affected, but we're only a few hundred miles from the Louisiana coastline – and many within our family of customers have been strongly affected by the event. Even restaurants far from the coast that serve seafood are seeing sales decline as consumers are wary of fish that may originate from the Gulf region.

As our most recent question for our Facebook contest, we wanted to ask our users how they have been personally (and professionally) affected by the oil spill -- or even if they have not, what they could possibly do to help those that are. We have been humbled by your responses and great ideas, and a number of you had questions about what you could do to help. So, we wanted to put together a list of ideas for how you can help, and reputable organizations in case you are looking to donate your time or resources to clean up and help the people and wildlife in these communities return to normalcy.

Before we dive into that list, we wanted to mention how we are going to do our part – I’ve started personally calling some of our affected customers in the area to offer our support, and we are going to waive our monthly subscription fee for two months for about 25 of our customers that we identified as independently-owned small businesses in the region. It may only a drop in the bucket, but it’s one way that we can directly give back to restaurants and small business owners that are struggling as a result of the crisis.

And now, here are some ideas that you have provided, along with others that we brainstormed and some great organizations that are helping with the cause. We strongly encourage you to do your part to bring aid to these communities.

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And the Keepin' it Hot Award Goes To...

HotSchedules

Wednesday, July 21, 2010 at 4:52PM

... Amy Castner!

Each quarter at HotSchedules, we recognize an employee who's been going above and beyond to do outstanding work for our customers -- we call it our "Keepin' it Hot" award, and this time around, the honor goes to the amazing Amy Castner. Check out our interview with Amy to get to know her better, and be sure to come back to the blog as we'll be introducing you to a different HotSchedules employee every month!

What is your role at HotSchedules, and what does your day-to-day workload entail?
I'm a Support Services Technician, so I field support calls and emails, troubleshoot and investigate issues for clients. The majority of the cases I work with involves training our users on proper use of the software.

How long have you been at the company?
I have been at HotSchedules for one year as of August.

What was your professional or academic experience before HotSchedules?
I have a BS in Communications from the University of Texas with a focus on Radio, TV and Film production. I have a pretty varied professional background, which includes having worked as Executive Assistant in Development at a TV production company in Hollywood, as Sales and Acquisitions for Web services in the Real Estate industry, and as Director of Operations/Producer/Editor for a small HD Video Production Company in San Diego. Oh, and I was an assistant manager at Amy’s Ice Creams and a server at Scholz’ Biergarten, too. ;)

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Wednesday

Jul142010

Thanks for your Engagement + Contest Question #4

HotSchedules

Wednesday, July 14, 2010 at 4:48PM

It's that time again! We've drawn the third winner of our 10k Facebook Fans by 10/10/10 contest. Congratulations to Cam Copeland of Tubby's Ice Cream in Wayne, Maine for being randomly selected as the prize winner for this round. We'll be sending Cam our prize package of gift cards combining our two favorite things, restaurants and technology. For everyone else that answered, we really appreciate your feedback, and don't forget you can enter again with each question we post bi-weekly.

Before we move on to our next question -- which is very near and dear to us -- I want to thank you all for taking the time to participate in our contest. Our objective in trying to get more users to become "fans" is really tied to the ultimate goal of increasing our engagement with our customers. We love doing giveaways for our loyal user base, but we also want you to know that we are looking to build a two-way street for dialogue year-round, whether it's part of a contest or not. Each one of your comments will help us become a better service and product for all our users, from the top-level corporate management all the way to hourly restaurant employees.

A great recent example of this: last year, we held a "My Life, My Schedule" video contest in which we received some really great submissions (check them out at the HotSchedules YouTube channel) which we showed at our annual user's conference in the fall. We recently received another video, and while the contest is long over, we really appreciated the submission, and it reminded us how lucky we are to have such a great, engaged user base that enjoys communicating with us. Check out Andrew D'Amato's recent video here, and we strongly encourage you to engage with our team year-round, whether it's through comments on the Facebook page, questions on our Community Forum, videos, songs, art, etc! We love hearing from you and sharing your feedback and creativity.

Now, on to the next question of our Facebook contest. We are almost to 3,000 fans, so we're steadily working toward our goal! If we reach 10k by 10/10/10, everyone who enters will be put into a drawing to win an iPad, so spread the word. For a quick reminder on the rules, click here.

Question #4:

The oil tragedy on the Gulf Coast has severely affected residents and businesses in the area -- certainly including restaurants. For users that live and work in the region, how has the incident directly impacted your life/job/restaurant? For those of you not in the affected area, what have you done or could you possibly do to help those who are?

This question will be active on Facebook until July 28, when we'll randomly select the winner and post the next question. In the meantime, please post your responses there -- we really look forward to hearing from you, and our thoughts go out to all HotSchedules users affected by the oil disaster.

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Monday

Jul122010

What HotSchedules is Having for Dinner

Ray P.

Monday, July 12, 2010 at 10:26AM

Recently, our longest-standing customer, P.F. Chang’s, created a line of cook-at-home meals called P.F. Chang’s Home Menu. We know tons of diehard P.F. Chang’s fans are loving the ability to recreate their favorite dishes at home — and that certainly includes us!

On the first day that grocery stores were stocked with P.F. Chang’s Home Menu, we bought out an Austin store’s entire stock of the meals and passed them out to HotSchedules employees to show our support for P.F. Chang’s newest initiative.

And a special note to my team at HotSchedules:

It’s great to see our customers succeed at what they do, and knowing that YOU help them run their business successfully is truly gratifying.Your hard work and dedication towards making our customers lifetime fans of HotSchedules is greatly appreciated. Keep on keeping it HOT!

-Ray

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