Amid the bottles of product and spritzes of perfume, what sets a top-tier cosmetics store apart from a beauty bargain bin? It all comes down to service—customer service. Greeting customers at the door with a grin and a basket is just the beginning.

Here’s how luxury beauty brands are bringing waitlist management apps like Waitlist Me into their stores to turn run-of-the-mill customer service into rock-star treatment that keeps customers feeling pampered (and primed to buy).

Make the most of exclusive offerings

Your sales associates are great at their job, but even their well-trained peepers can’t estimate a perfect foundation match 100 percent of the time. That’s where technology comes in, and top brands are increasingly turning to tech to move more product. Sephora, for example, has partnered with Pantone to create Color IQ, which helps customers discover color-matched products that are currently available in stores. Brilliant, right?

The next step is to get more customers using it on a regular basis—and that’s where a waitlist can help. Waitlist Me offers text alerts, which means that you can let customers know when it’s their turn to check the tech or have a special consultation, no matter where they are in the store (or the mall).

Balance resource-heavy bookings—like product parties—with walk-ins

You’re tapping in to the power of parties for one very good reason: They’re the perfect storm of shoppers who might never buy, normally, without scads of personal attention from your ace sales reps and a smattering of “oh, come on, buy it!” from their friends. Booking regular parties is a boon for your sales goals, but managing them in real-time can be a bear for store managers.

Enter Waitlist Me. Its interface is flexible, allowing managers to allocate resources (think: space and sales talent) for blocks of time and check on the fly to see who’s available on the floor to do what, whether that means tidying shelves or taking on an impromptu makeover.

Let product experts lead the way

Whether your pros are trained in skincare or eye makeup, Bobbi Brown or Benefit, their knowledge and expertise is what sets your in-store experience apart from a dot com. Give them the time and space to do exactly what you’ve taught them: Connect with shoppers on a personal level, show them product best practices, and help them choose the items that are right for their unique set of needs.

Instead of enlisting all your sales associates as greeters, some stores are choosing to station a generalist up front who can direct newcomers to the right aisles and book walk-ins looking for one-on-one assistance with a specialist. Waitlist Me’s real-time ETA lets greeters give accurate time estimates to eager customers, and our public waitlist feature also lets customers check in on their own to see where they are in line.

What do patients complain about most? It’s not bedside manner or needles or paperwork, it’s the waiting room. If you want a glowing review on HealthGrades or Vitals, or you’re looking to boost your Yelp or Google stats, there’s one thing you can do today—right now—to make that happen: Improve your customer service.

Waitlist Me is a waitlist and reservation management app that can help you do that in a snap. Can’t envision it in your office? Here’s what it’s helping other healthcare businesses across the medical industry achieve:

Manages fluctuating crowds and periods of high volume

Perfect for urgent care centers and emergency rooms

When you cater to patients who need help now, telling them they have to wait is just about the worst thing you can do. The next best thing, though, is making their wait easier, no matter how full the waiting room is. Waitlist Me does exactly that. Our public waitlist feature lets patients check their real-time ETA from the comfort of their chairs, a bench outside, or wherever it is they feel best. Best of all: You can customize the information displayed on it, protecting your patients’ personal information while still cutting down on those painful walks to the front desk to ask when it’ll finally be their turn.

Makes walk-in visits possible alongside scheduled appointments

Perfect for dental offices, doctor’s practices, and clinics

Watching a receptionist click through a series of complicated screens takes eons when you’re the guy with a toothache standing on the other side of the counter. With Waitlist Me, administrative staff don’t have to hem and haw about squeezing in an emergency walk-in, or waffle over exactly how long it’ll take to get him in front of the doc. Waitlist Me’s intuitive interface is learnable in minutes and readable in seconds. With just a glance, you can estimate the wait, check him in, and reassure him that you’ve got everything under control.

Allows customers to book facetime with medical experts (and easily wait for prescriptions)

Perfect for drugstore and hospital pharmacies

Not every pharmacy customer needs a Q&A to accompany their prescription. For the ones who do have questions about the medications they’re prescribed—or any they’re considering taking over-the-counter—a waitlist app can make scheduling a conversation with a busy professional quick and easy. Waitlist Me can be used to manage customers waiting for prescriptions to be filled and for consultations. The color-coded interface lets you easily see and sort who is waiting for what and instant text notification allows you to call them over when it’s their turn, no matter where they are in the building. Looking at magazines? Stretching their legs? Not a problem!

Moves patients through check-in, waiting, and procedures efficiently

Perfect for donation centers, blood drives, and testing centers

Plasma donation? Drug test? Routine bloodwork? These sorts of visits are ones that people schedule before a work shift or in a free hour between meetings. Getting them in and out of your office is the order of the day, and Waitlist Me makes it easy for everyone. The app’s simple visual interface makes registration quick and painless for every person on your staff, whether they’re a long-time volunteer or a receptionist-in-training. Once a patient is checked in, they’ll receive an automatic text confirmation with a link to a public waitlist, which allows them to see where they are in line—and take care of whatever business they have before you’re ready for them.

Waitlist Me makes it easy to let customers add themselves to your waitlist or reservations with our web widget, and we recently added features to our Pro service to control business hours this feature is available or accepts reservations.  Complementing these settings for regular business hours, there is now a feature to set specific blackout dates for holidays or days you might be closed or not taking reservations.

Simply login to the Waitlist Me website and navigate to Account > Settings > Customize Settings (under Add Yourself) > Blackout Dates. Press the green Add button, and choose the date you desire to restrict. The drop down menu lets you select whether you are closed and not taking reservation or waitlist requests or if you just aren’t taking one of these options like you normally would.  For example, on Christmas you might be closed, but on Valentine’s day you might be open but so busy you don’t take reservations that day.

Once a blackout date is set, you can see and manage the upcoming blackout dates on this page. If you need to remove a restriction, just hover over the date and press the red X that appears on the right.  Or click on the row to edit it.

Once you have blocked off a date, if a client tries to make a reservation they will receive a message letting them know that no reservations will be accepted:

The move-in rush. The “can we meet for 5 minutes to sort out my schedule?” emails. The all-at-once campus crush as students, faculty, and staff jockey for rooms and resources. There’s nothing like back-to-school season on a college campus. This year, give your “welcome back” spiel with a hearty dose of “we got this!” and then take a well-earned breather. When you tap a waitlist management app like Waitlist Me, you’ve got this back-to-school thing completely under control.

Not sure how to put a waitlist to work at your college or university? Here’s how schools are already using Waitlist Me:

Schedule counseling appointments with academic advisors

With the first day of classes coming up quick, every student’s scheduling concern is a top priority. Add on a new class of freshmen who are just settling in, and you’ve got a slew of counselors who need a better way to manage the onslaught of appointment requests. Waitlist Me keeps every appointment in one place and lets anyone (a receptionist, a student, the counselor in question) book time from wherever they are (a coffeeshop, an office, a dorm room at 2 a.m.). That means no email back-and-forth and no begging for a drop slip while you’re in the lunch line. Win-win, right?

Manage professors’ departmental office hours

Office hours from 3 to 5 p.m. on Mondays and Thursdays sounds great—until you pop by the office in question and realize you’re one of 50 students who had the same brilliant idea. Waitlist Me eases the line, allowing students the opportunity to get the help they need on classwork without spending their entire afternoon holed up in a hallway. The public waitlist feature lets them check on their spot in line and allows professors to shoot them a text when it’s their turn, ensuring that appointments aren’t forgotten and nobody’s time is wasted.

Divvy up access to student activity areas

There’s nothing relaxing about a game of ping-pong when there are two other groups of potential players tapping their paddles just a few feet away, waiting for you and your friends to hurry up, already, geez. Instead of calling dibs on the next game and then defending marked territory, a waitlist system lets everyone enjoy their free time—and know exactly when it’s their turn to crush their roommates at pong or pool or whatever it is the kids are playing these days.

Book writing centers, computer labs, and other resources on the fly

You’re continually striving to give your students and your teachers the best resources money can buy. Now, give them a chance to use them to fullest. Waitlist Me lets your entire school community see if there is a wait for popular resources and how many people are waiting.  The add yourself features let them join the waitlist instantly, no matter where they are or what sort of resources they need to utilize. Leaving their dorm rooms for the library? Easy. Making plans to meet up with a group in the middle of the quad? Consider it done. Checking to see when they can meet with a writing fellow? Not a problem.

Streamline student appointments in financial aid and administrative offices

Students struggling with intricate administrative problems aren’t one-time, five-minute stop-ins; they’re repeat visitors who are frustrated that they’re back in your office again. Waitlist Me lets your admin staff keep tabs on on-going issues with a notes feature built right into the app. Before a student walks into for a meeting, you’ll know immediately what it is your team has already tackled and what’s left to fix, freeing you up to address the problem rather than rehash it.

It is easy to customize Waitlist Me to your business needs.  You can streamline the process of adding customers to the waitlist by choosing the level of information you need and by removing unnecessary steps.  Just tap on the gear icon in the app to get to the settings, then go to Customization and Adding Customers. The options include:

Assignments: These are used by businesses that assign resources to customers. For example, a stylist in a salon, a table in a restaurant, or an exam room in a medical center. If you don’t assign resources to customers or you don’t want to see the options when adding customers to the waitlist or reservations, you can hide this option.

Group size: This is helpful when the number of people in a party varies, such as in a restaurant. For a business such as a car detailing facility where group size doesn’t matter, this option can be turned off.

Demographics: In some businesses, it’s important to know if the group includes children, or whether the clients are male or female. The simple demographic tracking lets you choose between adults/children/seniors, while the full demographics also gives options for gender. Choosing the Off option will remove this completely.

Image: Full Demographics, Simple Demographics, and No Demographics

Category colors: Category colors can be used as a simple way to identify and sort different groups in the waitlist. A restaurant might choose to use the color green for groups that request outdoor seating, while a spa may assign colors for different services. This option can be turned off and would no longer show up when adding names to the list.

Notes: The notes field lets you record important information, such as the service the client is requesting. The option can be switched off if the notes field will not be used.

Image: The streamlined look of removing the Group Size, Demographics, Category Colors, and Notes.

History: If it’s important to see some stats on past customer visits, leave the History field turned on.

Wait Time Quotes: For those businesses who do not give an estimated time, the wait time could be switched off. For those who do give a time, there are two options. Normal will be 5 minutes, while Last Time will show the last wait time selected.

Image: Choose to have the spinner default to 5 minutes or to the last wait time quoted.