Saturday, August 14th, 2021 .

The pandemic has changed many aspects of business and everyday life, and the importance of customer convenience is absolutely not going anywhere. Consumers have become used to almost every interaction being as fast, simple, and convenient as possible, and this trend is encompassing every industry in our lives.

Grocery shoppers are still doing curbside pickup, ordering an entire household’s supplies with the tap of a few buttons.

The routine of getting a haircut includes reserving a time slot online at a salon or joining the waitlist at a barbershop.

Getting your car worked on at the dealership can now include them sending you a text when that brake job is done.

Society is quickly learning that this isn’t a fad like the Atkins diet in the early 2000s. This way of doing business is here to stay, and businesses that fail to adapt are simply going to get left behind. Customers are done with wasting away in a lobby or waiting room when they could be relaxing in the café down the street.

Here’s a quick 10 second thought exercise: Let’s say you bring your dog to one of two groomers that are right next to each other in the same strip mall. These groomers are nearly identical, and there is about a one hour service time for both of them. The only difference between the two? One of them has an electronic service that will text you when Fluffy is ready, allowing you to grab a milkshake at your favorite burger joint down the street. The other groomer has a lovely waiting room that offers the luxurious aroma therapy of wet dog scent, and the tranquil sounds of a dozen dogs that very much do not want to be getting a bath. Which would you choose?

Everyone has to wait in life, but not everyone has to wait the same. Processes that were previously mere conveniences have turned into must-have features across many industries, with wait times and crowds being two of the main factors that need to be optimized.

Keeping customers waiting can have a devastating impact on any business. They might spend less, leave a bad review, or walk out your door, never to return. Waitlist Me is an app that keeps customers happier while they wait.

How do we do that, exactly? It’s a breeze. Waitlist Me brings your waitlist from a crowd in your lobby to an easy-to-manage digital interface. Our app makes it simple to see waiting customers at a glance, provide accurate wait estimates that are tracked in real time, and notify customers with a text or automated call message when their table is ready. It also has a number of other features like reservations, table/resource management, and the ability for customers to add themselves from a kiosk, your website, Google, or even a QR code. Letting customers join the list before arriving and skip waiting in the lobby is a great recipe for customer happiness, which can also lead to higher revenues and better reviews.  

Monday, August 9th, 2021 .

For serving customers more effectively, Waitlist Me has a set of features for managing tables across a couple main views.  The floorplan view displays tables as they would appear spatially across one or more rooms with the basic table sizes, shapes, and positioning.  The grid view gives a flexible way to sort and view tables by different dimensions such as section, size, and status.  The views can be used together or independently, depending on business preferences, to track availability and easily know where to seat the next customer.

Previously, the phone versions of our apps only offered a list view of tables, optimized for smaller phone interfaces.  To provide more flexibility in managing customer visits across devices, we have recently added the floorplan view and features to our apps for iPhones and Android phones.  While detailed floorplans can often be more efficiently managed on larger devices like iPads or Android tablets, the phone versions are great for managers that may want to zoom in on a particular area or servers wanting to keep tabs on their sections from their phones.   

Features for setting up and managing sections and layouts are also now available on the phone applications, along with the tools for placing tables, lines, and data elements in the floorplan edit mode.  Check out this page for more information on setting up floorplans.

Monday, June 28th, 2021 .

Want to save time entering customer information when using Square and Waitlist Me together? Our new integration passes basic customer information between the two systems to make serving customers more efficient. For example, when you add a customer to the waitlist or a reservation in Waitlist Me, you can pull it up later in Square when it is time to pay. Or for scenarios where customers pay first or are already in Square, you can look up their information when adding them to Waitlist Me to manage their wait and send notifications when their order is ready. In these and other cases, businesses can save time by not having to add customer info twice.

To get started, in your Waitlist Me app go to the gear icon and select Square Integration. Select On for the Square Authentication option, and you’ll be prompted to enter your Square login information. 

An acceptance page will come up; choose Allow to let Waitlist Me read and modify your customer information. Once you’ve done that, you can then turn on one or both of the next two options. 

Square Customers Search, when enabled, would allow you to search your Square customers in the Waitlist Me app by phone number. Start typing their phone number to see a list of matching names and phone numbers as you type.

The last option lets you add customers to your Square customer database from the Waitlist Me app. Choose Yes to have them all automatically added, or Ask Me to be prompted whether to add customers. 

If you’re using multiple devices, your settings will sync across devices automatically. 

Monday, June 21st, 2021 .

Whether you’re using the Waitlist Me web widget to let customers self-schedule or your team is entering reservations or appointments for customers, there are some optimizations you can make in your settings to get the most out of the scheduling features. 

If you plan to use the widget, on the Waitlist Me website go to Account > Settings > Add Yourself. The Main View section has a feature called Time Increments, which will control how frequently the time selection option shows reservation slots to customers. You can choose every 5, 10, 15, 30 or 60 minutes. (If you haven’t started using your widget yet, also see this page for the basic setup information.)

Click Waitlist at the top to go to the main waitlist page, then click on the settings gear icon and choose Reservations. You can customize the time increments you want displayed on your calendar view and the average time a table or resource is occupied.  Based on these settings you can block out your reservation availability visually in your calendar view.

Choose to show tables as occupied either by how many parties will be arriving in a time block or by how many parties are expected to be currently seated in the time block. The Arrivals option shows the total number of people arriving, with the number of groups in smaller font below if more than one group is arriving in that time block:

The Scheduled option shows the total number of people and groups being served, regardless of when they arrived:

Some settings (including many view settings) are device-specific. These settings for how you prefer to view reservations would also need to be set on tablets you plan to use. In the tablet you can navigate to the calendar and press in any time block to see an additional option on the upper right for changing views.

A Waitlist Me Pro or Platinum subscription offers more controls for scheduling. You can set up party size limits by going to Account > Settings > Add Yourself > Input Fields. Under Size Limits, select reservations, waitlist, or both. Then you’ll see the option for minimums and maximums. There are also more scheduling features available with Business Hours, Display Hours, Scheduling Rules, and Blackout Dates. Please see this page to walk through these features. 

Wednesday, May 5th, 2021 .

Running a restaurant isn’t the same as it was a couple years ago.  With the introduction of government mandates regarding COVID-19, technology has shaped customer expectations around service in all parts of their lives, and people are less willing to put up with unnecessary waiting to get the goods and services they want. Fortunately, there are applications like Waitlist Me that help restaurants and other businesses raise the bar and deliver at a higher level of service that meets today’s expectations.

Cut the clutter and stay organized

When the phone is ringing off the hook at the front desk, it can be near impossible for a frazzled host to serve the line of customers spilling out of the entrance, waiting to be acknowledged. Forget grease pens and paper planners. Waitlist Me eliminates hostess stand clutter and makes it easy to add and seat dining parties. Your front of house staff can see your business’ waitlist in a single glance and add customers to it with a swipe.

Over-deliver on wait expectations

With Waitlist Me, even a rookie host can quote accurate wait times and set the right expectations. The app shows real-time waits next to quoted times to make it easy to improve and know when things are running ahead or slow. Using status colors and notes to organize and keep tabs on waiting customers helps you get them seated more efficiently. And with the smart historical wait estimate features available with Waitlist Me Pro, you can take into account the previous 4 weeks of data to get more accurate estimates. You can’t always control the wait time, but you can improve the wait experience by serving customers on time, when you say you will.

Set your guests free

With so many new mandates on restaurant capacities, having guests wait in the lobby is no longer an option for many businesses. The text notification feature does away with diners’ worries about losing their place in queue without requiring them to physically be there. No more looking for a socially distanced area around your hostess stand, and no more long queues stretched 6 feet apart around the corner turning off new walk-ins. Whether they choose to window shop, walk down the block, or hang out in the car, one quick text lets them know when their table is ready. All you have to do is tap a button, and the customer will be paged instantly.

Give people visibility into their wait

The number one question your host doesn’t want to answer when it’s busy: Is my table ready yet? A close second: Where are we on the list? Waitlist Me keeps customers in-the-know automatically with its popular public waitlist feature. Once they’re added to your waitlist, they’ll receive a text confirmation that includes a link to your public waitlist that they can check in their phone browser (no app download required). In real time, they’ll see exactly where they are in the queue along with their wait time.

Never lose a reservation

The worst problem customers face on busy nights or big holidays is lost reservations. When your restaurant relies on overstuffed date books, though, hostesses get used to saying, “What was the name again? I’m not seeing it in the book.” Your guests deserve better, and Waitlist Me helps you stay organized and manage your reservations in one location that you can access from multiple iPads or Android tablets. You can even login from your home computer or your smartphone to keep tabs on your reservations.

Make waiting less painful with Waitlist Me.