In 2017, don’t get another paper appointment book. Waitlist Me’s appointment management options can help you manage your time and customers better than pen and paper ever could. Whether it’s a salon, barber shop, or similar business, you can leave your scheduling nightmares behind and make managing appointments simple. With a quick set up and easy to learn interface, we can help you start the new year on the right foot.

When the phone rings, instead having to look everywhere in an appointment book, Waitlist Me lets you see your availability at a glance in an intuitive digital calendar. Monthly and weekly views show counts of your scheduled customers so it is easy to see the big picture on when you have availability. Then in the daily view you can see appointments broken out by time and stylist. When scheduling appointments for a team of employees, simply check one screen to see who has an opening. You can easily find the best appointment times for your clients and send them text confirmations and reminders.

When a potential client walks in without an appointment, you don’t need to scramble to figure out if you can fit them in. Quickly see your availability for that day and give them an accurate estimate of how long it would be until you can help them.  You can even give them the freedom to walk around while they wait and text them when you are ready for them. Waitlist Me will help you improve your guest’s experience and make smarter business decisions faster.

Another great benefit of going digital with Waitlist Me is the flexibility to check your appointment calendar from any computer, tablet, or smartphone. So if a valued client calls when you aren’t at the salon and asks when you can squeeze them in, you don’t need to head back to look at your appointment book.  Or if one of your stylists calls in sick on your day off, you can do all the rescheduling from home. With Waitlist Me, you won’t have to worry anymore about carrying around your appointment book, driving back to the salon, or even worse, losing your appointment book. Try it out for free today.

Add more magic in the holiday season by giving your customers the precious gift of time. Lines are always longer this time of year, and painful waits just frustrate customers.  You can improve the waiting experience for your customers by using Waitlist Me. This simple to use app can not only track who is on the waitlist, but also helps employees to give more accurate wait time estimates than a paper list.

Waitlist Me is being used successfully to drive more revenues across many retail segments.

Selling phones and setting up calling plans take a lot of time, tying up service representatives and frustrating customers who are waiting to be helped. Don’t lose those customers. Greet them and add them to Waitlist Me, so they can roam the store to choose phone cases, screen protectors, and other items while waiting.  It’s a smart way to reduce walkaways while increasing sales.

Businesses selling electronics have customers that may need more personalized service to help them choose the right television or computer, yet they don’t always know who to ask for help. Don’t let them walk out the door frustrated.  Make sure to get an idea of what they need and assure them they will be helped soon.  Customers have more patience when they are given an accurate quote of how long it will be until the right person is available to help them.

Shopping for clothes can involve a different type of waiting frustrations, and long lines for dressing rooms and checking out can scare away customers.  Add them to a waitlist, so they can continue shopping and grab more items to try on and buy. This is a really easy way to drive incremental sales.

Waitlist Me can improve customer shopping experiences in all kinds of retail environments, from shoe stores to jewelry counters to children waiting to see Santa. Providing exceptional service means happier customers.  Plus, more time to shop while waiting means more sales. Do your part to reduce stress and make the holidays brighter for your customers.  Use Waitlist Me!

We are excited to announce a new set of calendar views that make managing and scheduling reservations and appointments even easier.  Building on our previous streamlined list views, the new calendar features let you see your availability at a glance so you can plan ahead and deliver great customer service.  View total scheduled customers by month, week, or day and just tap on a specific time to schedule a new customer in a few seconds.

Reservations

With the Reservations and Group options in your waitlist settings, you can make reservations for groups of different sizes and see the total number of customers as well as groups in your calendar.  The daily view also makes it easy to schedule reservations for specific tables if your business is a restaurant.  Or in other businesses you might make reservations for room numbers, rental items, tour guide names, and so on.  Here is a video on how it works.

Appointments

With the Appointment and Individual options in your waitlist settings, you customize scheduling to not ask for or display group size, since you’d normally be meeting one person at a time.  The daily view lets you schedule appointments for specific team members or people at your business. Depending on your business these might be the name of hair stylists, sales people, technicians, doctors, and so on.  Here is a video on how it works.

Here is how the daily calendar view looks:

Monthly calendar view:

Weekly calendar view:

You know there are ways you could be using technology more in your restaurant business, but with millions of apps to choose from, how do you know where to start?  Well now there is a comprehensive new resource on the top free apps from the people at Orderly.  They definitely know their stuff when it comes to restaurant technology and have their own free Snap App for paperless invoicing that lets you capture, manage, and share invoices online.

The ultimate list of 50 Free Apps for Restaurants has a lot of great ideas for making managing your restaurant easier. These free apps will help you talk to your customers, organize your to-do list, hire the right people, speed up your processes, and market your business. You’ll find descriptions, features and benefits for your restaurant under each listing and links to download the apps for free.

They are also divided up into categories to help you focus on specific areas of your business that you might want to improve.  The categories are:

• Top 10 Must Have Apps (Waitlist Me is one of these!)
• Best 12 Apps for Restaurant Organization & Productivity
• 6 Apps for Phenomenal Customer Service
• 9 Apps to make restaurant marketing 10X Easier
• 6 Must-Have Apps for Recipe Planning & Organization
• 7 Apps for No-Hassle Stock Photos, Images and Design

Check out the report.  You’ll be glad you did.

We are happy to announce that our popular table and resource management features are now available for the online version of Waitlist Me that can be accessed on computer and tablet browsers.  Previously the resource management features were only available in our iPad and Android apps.

Whether you assign customers to tables, staff, or other resources, Waitlist Me resource management features help you make smart decisions faster and leads to better overall customer service.  Here is an example of how a salon might track which of their employees are available and who would be coming available soon.

It is simple to see availability with the color of the status, and there is a count of minutes for how long they have been with a customer.  Notes and customer names give more context to how customers are being served at any given time.  Estimate times of customers waiting or with upcoming appointments with specific people or resources will also display to help know when to be ready for the next customer.

Customers can be moved between resources if needed, and when a customer is done they can be easily cleared.   Assignments are integrated with the waitlist so that when a customer that has been assigned a resource is checked off the waitlist, that resource will automatically switch to taken in the assignment view. If a customer was using that resource it will switch them with the new customer without any additional steps.

Customers can be assigned to one or more resources upon arrival or while waiting. When choosing assignments, available resources will show with a green status. Resources that are already assigned will have a red status and show the number of minutes they have been occupied with the current customer.

If a customer is already assigned to a resource from the waitlist or as a reservation, the estimated serving time for that customer will show along with any notes that were added. Businesses that serve groups of customers can also define resource sizes and view those sizes in the status areas. For example a restaurant hostess seating a party could scan for open table sizes that would seat six or for smaller tables that could be combined.

The more you use Waitlist Me to manage assignments, the more data you will have on how well you are managing your resources, and there are a number of new downloadable reports that can be run in the Analytics section of the Waitlist Me site. Look for trends over time with the Assignment Overview, do deeper analysis with the more detailed data in the Assignment Logs, and see results split out by assignments and sizes in other reports.