vcita recently launched a new integration with Apptor.AI’s app Smartslots, which uses AI to automatically schedule appointments and send booking reminders to clients. By analyzing customer visit behavior and frequency, it can match customers to the SMB’s calendar, helping prevent gaps in their schedule, optimizing business resources, and ensuring that small businesses are maximizing their bookings.
We talked with Yoav Shpringer, co-founder and CEO of Apptor.AI, to explore the inspiration behind Smartslots, the impact that AI could have for service-based SMBs, and why partnerships are the way to go for SMB-facing tech,
1. Tell us a bit about your company and the problem your app solves.
Between us, our founding team has over a decade of experience building predictive AI models. We wanted to find a place where our AI tools could really make a difference, and we saw that need in the service-based SMB market.
Small businesses like salons, clinics, financial advisors, and wellness providers rely on frequent, personalized appointments, but often lose revenue due to last-minute cancellations and missed follow-ups. When we launched our Smartslots app, we immediately saw that we can make an impact.
Smartslots uses AI to optimize scheduling for service-based SMBs. By analyzing customer booking trends, it can suggest which customer the SMB should contact to fill a slot after a last-minute cancellation. When appointments open up later in the calendar, the app messages suitable customers about it, knowing that they prefer this time of day or that it matches their visit frequency. It also contacts customers who don’t have any future bookings to gently remind them to schedule their next appointment. All of this can be either automated entirely, or run in a semi-automated way that requires human approval before the task is executed.
It is a perfect match: SMB owners don’t have the tools to optimize appointment frequency and remove friction from scheduling, causing them to waste time and miss out on income. And this is exactly the kind of data-driven task, with repeatable customer behavior and clear patterns, that AI can automate perfectly.
2. What’s your broader vision when it comes to empowering SMBs with AI
Our broader vision is to give small business owners AI that creates an unfair advantage. These people are experts at their core work. They aren’t tech people, and unlike enterprises, they can’t afford to run a tech department. They want to focus on the things that they know and love, and they should be able to do so without missing out on the powerful tools that large enterprises enjoy.
For too long, predictive analytics and personalization has been reserved for big enterprises with massive budgets and data teams. With Apptor.AI, we’re bringing enterprise-grade AI and automation to everyday business owners, in just one click and for an affordable fee.
In addition, many small business owners don’t realize just how much they can do with their data. Our goal is to provide the tools that use their data to make a real difference to their business, enabling them to make smarter decisions, maximize every customer interaction, and grow their business, as though they have a data scientist on their team 24/7.
3. How do you see the role of AI evolving for SMBs in the next 3-5 years?
Over the next 3–5 years, AI will move from “nice-to-have” to table stakes for daily SMB operations. I expect a shift from reactive to proactive business management, where AI predicts customer behavior, fills calendars, automates outreach, and helps decide which services to promote, when, and to whom. SMBs won’t need to dig through data or guess what to do next, because AI will surface the right actions at the right time.
AI tools will become more accessible, and adoption will rise. SMB owners are already seeing enterprises using AI to accelerate their market share. They want the same tools, developed specifically for their needs and their industry. At the moment, there is very little available, but that’s changing rapidly.
Tools like ours and BizAI by vcita, designed and customized for their business, give SMBs the strategic firepower they need to compete with their corporate rivals. What used to require a full-time data team will become built-in and invisible, removing complexity and leveling the playing field for small businesses.
4. How does your app simplify life for SMBs?
Smartslots takes care of tasks that frequently fall through the cracks, like filling last-minute cancellations, reducing customer churn, following up on time, and seizing booking opportunities. It runs in the background automatically detecting calendar gaps and sending perfectly-timed messages to the right people. No spreadsheets, no manual reminders, no guesswork.
It’s like having an AI assistant for each of your clients that helps you fill your schedule and grow your business, without lifting a finger.
The results speak for themselves. Our clients see an increase of over 27% in client retention and 19% in revenue growth, and successfully reschedule 55% of last-minute cancellations. In effect, we’re turning lost time into revenue and helping service businesses operate smarter.
5. What sets your app apart from other AI tools on the market?
First and most important, our tools are personalized. Most AI tools are generic, using public generative AI. They don’t use business data, so they can’t deliver tailored decisions. Because we integrate with platforms like vcita, we can use each business’ structured client data to train and launch personalized models in less than a minute. Every SMB receives customized actions and recommendations based on customer preferences and behaviors.
Another factor that sets us apart is that our solutions are easy to use. Many AI tools that are marketed to SMBs are complex, requiring a relatively high level of tech expertise or demanding manual setup and tuning. They don’t always integrate smoothly with existing SMB daily workflows, so they aren’t intuitive or user-friendly.
What’s more, we deliver actions, not just insights. Smartslots connects directly to the SMB’s calendar, understands client behavior, and automatically fills gaps and sends reminders at the perfect time. We deliver 91% accuracy in predicting churn and 92% accuracy in predicting ideal appointment frequency for each customer. That enables us to prevent last-minute cancellations and ensure that SMBs hold onto every drop of revenue.
6. What made vcita the right partner for you?
vcita is the perfect partner because we share the same mission: empowering small businesses with powerful tools that are easy to use. What’s more, users really love the platform. vcita is a trusted part of the daily workflow for hundreds of thousands of service-based SMBs, so they are much more willing to trust our tool when it’s part of the vcita suite.
Launching Smartslots through an existing SMB business management platform enables us to connect with a larger audience. It made our solution far more scalable, allowing us to reach millions of new customers without expensive marketing campaigns. By integrating with vcita, we could bring AI technology directly where it’s needed without adding friction or complexity.
Further, the vcita team has been amazing to work with. The collaboration has been smooth, communication is excellent, and we got our joint solution up and running extremely quickly. Together, we’re making enterprise-level AI accessible to SMBs in a way that feels native, seamless, and genuinely helpful from day one.
7. How does the integration of your app and vcita work in practice?
We worked closely with the vcita team to ensure that integration is natural and frictionless, allowing any vcita user to tap into advanced AI tools without leaving the platform they already trust.
Smartslots is available directly in the vcita App Market, so any SMB using vcita can discover it, install it with one click, and get started right away. They don’t need any training, and setup is intuitive. No tech expertise required.
Once activated, Smartslots connects to the business’s vcita calendar and client history. From there, our AI takes over analyzing gaps, predicting booking behavior, and triggering personalized messages through vcita’s native communication tools.
8. What kind of impact do you think this joint solution will have on SMBs?
We believe this joint solution can be a game-changer for SMBs. Combining vcita’s powerful business management tools and CRM with our AI-driven automation layer gives SMBs a strong solution. Together, we optimize business operations for small business owners, so they can focus on the core work that they love.
Online and repetitive tasks like marketing, scheduling, and invoicing are crucial for growing a successful company, but that’s not why people started their business. Our collaboration with vcita opens the door for SMB owners to delegate those tasks, operate more efficiently, increase revenue, and give clients a better experience.
9. What’s next on your innovation roadmap?
We see a lot of opportunity to grow within the vcita ecosystem. Our goal is to expand Smartslots across vcita’s network, integrating with more of their partners and reaching even more SMBs. Through white-labeled versions, deeper feature sets, or new verticals, we’re excited to keep building together and delivering more value to vcita’s community.
Our roadmap includes deeper personalization features that go beyond filling calendar gaps. We want to put client data to work to help SMBs truly understand and engage each customer in the most effective way. The plan is to move from reactive scheduling to intelligent, ongoing relationship management that’s powered by AI but feels personal.
We’re working on smart retention tools that can detect when a client is about to drop off and take proactive steps to bring them back. We’re also developing advanced segmentation, so businesses can tailor messages, offers, and reminders based on each client’s behavior, preferences, and history.
10. What advice do you have for startups or tech companies considering a partnership with platforms like vcita?
Focus on real value and seamless integration. When partnering with a platform like vcita, don’t just build features; solve real problems their users face. Make your solution feel like a natural extension of the platform, not an add-on. That means thinking deeply about the user experience, minimizing setup friction, and aligning with the platform’s mission. Most importantly, treat the partnership as a long-term collaboration. The more you align on vision, goals, and user success, the more powerful the partnership becomes.
