Is your business seeing a summertime boom? The easiest way to boost your earnings from now through Labor Day is to make it easier for you to serve your customers—and for you customers to work with you and enjoy your products and services. Waitlist Me is a free app that helps you do exactly that.

Ready to find out how your business can reap the benefits of all those happy vacationers walking through your door this season? Read on.

Restaurant

It doesn’t matter if you’re a year-round dining favorite or a beach bar open for the season, an influx of foot traffic in the summer months can overwhelm hosts and servers. Without a waitlist management app, that overwhelm can lead to table pile-ups and frustratingly long lines.

Good for you: Get rid of the grease pens and toss the paper trail. Waitlist Me streamlines your hostess stand. Within the app, you can add parties to your waitlist, estimate wait times at a glance, and contact waiting customers via text messages, keeping your service running smoothly from breakfast through last call.

Great for your customers: Nobody wants to wait around in a foyer or entrance area for a hostess to call their name. Waitlist Me’s public waitlist and text alert features let tourists take in the views (and the corner knick-knack shop) without missing their table.

Boat and equipment rentals

Whether you rent out sailboats or kayaks, paddle boats or stand-up paddle boards, inner tubes or jet skis, you’ve got an equipment roster you have to keep an eye on and customers you have to keep happy.

Good for you: Got one boat that’s broken down, another that should’ve been returned an hour ago, and a line of tourists eager to hit the water? Waitlist Me helps you manage your availability and your ETAs, and our text alerts will ensure that your renters are docked on time, every time.

Great for your customers: Vacationers can hit the water without worrying about when they have to return to dry land. Assure them before they go that you’ll text them when it’s time to head back in, leaving them free to enjoy their rental.

Ropes and adventure courses

A vacation is the best time to do something wild and crazy and completely spur-of-the-moment. Sure, you’ve got the planners, who made reservations before their plane touched down in your town. But you’re also juggling the tourists who fly by the seat of their pants.

Good for you: An intuitive app like Waitlist Me allows you to add groups quickly (and makes notes about their wants and needs). That level of efficiency means you can move through a line of waiting guests quickly, which keeps foot traffic flowing and prevents customers from taking one look at a long line and running the other direction.

Great for your customers: Nothing kills an adrenaline rush like standing in line. Waitlist Me lets you add customers to a public waitlist they can check from anywhere and text them when it’s their turn to hit the course. That means they can get up to an adventure of their own—without missing their turn.

Surf and swim shops

Your store is a novelty to tourists. They can’t wait to inspect every nook and cranny, but when it comes to choosing a new equipment or trying on apparel, sometimes they need a little more help than the average shopper.

Good for you: No sales associate wants to split their focus on a dozen customers clamoring for their assistance. When you add them to a waitlist, you guarantee that your associates will deliver the level of service you want to be known for.

Great for your customers: Forget the frustration of hunting down a sales assistant or wondering where that guy with the name tag disappeared to. When customers are placed on a waiting list, they know that the focus will be 100-percent on them from dressing room to check-out.

Hotel pools and beaches

Your guests expect the highest level of service, no matter how slammed you are. Treat them like the sunscreen-toting VIPs they are with a little help from Waitlist Me, which has been proven to increase customer satisfaction.

Good for you: The app’s interface is easy to navigate and intuitive to use. Waitlist Me makes checking to see which chairs or seating areas are open and which will be coming available soon a breeze, letting your attendants focus on service rather than floor plans.

Great for your customers: While nobody wants to wait for their fun in the sun, our app lets you make the wait bearable. Waitlist Me offers accurate wait time quotes, easy-as-pie reservations, and a public waitlist your guests can check from the comfort of their hotel room or the bar.

Building on our launch of table section management features a few months ago, we have added some new features to make it even easier to know where to seat the next customer.  Labeled mode displays valuable activity metrics, section notes help you track servers covering each section, and additional waitlist integration makes it faster to do more from the table management screen.  Here is a video that highlights some of these new features and shows more on how to set up your section and layout management strategies:

Labeled mode

In “Labeled” mode, you’ll also see additional details about each section.  The “Open” metric shows the number of available tables as well as the total available seats at those tables.  The “Filled” metric shows the percentage of seats occupied in a section along with the counts of the occupied and total seats.  These key stats help make smarter decisions faster.  For instance, when a group comes in that’s too big for one table, you can instantly see which sections have enough empty tables, with enough empty seats, to accommodate them.  And you can also see how many of the seats in each section are filled, and ensure that each server gets their fair share of the work, not just their fair share of the tables.  These metrics are also visible in the “Size” and “Status” sorts for seeing breakdowns of availability by table size or overall status.

Section Notes

You can add comments to each section—for instance, to identify who’s working where, or to leave a reminder about a special event.  Just tap “Add Notes,” fill in your remarks, and then tap “Save.”  Instead of having to set up complicated server scheduling or other section tracking processes, the notes feature lets you make updates faster and more naturally.  It’s as easy as the common practice of writing server names on a laminated floor plan, but with all the advantages that our app has to offer for seeing real-time data, easily knowing where to seat the next customer, syncing information across devices, and more.

More Waitlist Integration

If you like working within the table management view of the app, it is nice to be able to assign customers from the waitlist, notify them their table is ready, and seat them at the table without having to switch back to the waitlist view.  Now you can.

From the action bar, when you tap on add, you can choose someone who’s already on your waiting list, and serve them at that table, right now.  If the table is already occupied, this removes the old party from the waitlist, and seats the new one, with one tap.

Or, if you’re not ready to seat them yet, you can just “assign” them to use that table next.  If the new customer has stepped away, you can even make the assignment and also send them an SMS text message, asking them to come back.  When they’re ready to take their seats, just tap on the table, and then tap “Next.”

You can also add a new customer by tapping a table.  Just fill in their name, phone number, and other details.  The table has already been selected, so you can go ahead and seat the customer right now, or add them to your waitlist, or even make a reservation, all in one place.

Quick Seating

When you aren’t crowded you probably seat customers at tables without taking their name.  You can still track that the table is occupied and for how long by using the status button in the action bar.  This makes it easy to keep track of your availability without having to create a customer for each table.  You may want to start tracking your table availability at a certain time, like before it gets busy, and you can mark all your tables that are currently occupied all at once.  Just press and hold on one table to use the multi-select feature, then tap on all the tables that are occupied, and then tap the status button to make them occupied.

With Memorial Day Weekend behind us, it’s all tourists, all the time, for restaurants in vacation destinations. Are you ready for the crush?

While the boom can be terrific for your bottom line, a mid-summer dinner rush can be a nightmare situation for your host. And the only thing worse than a frazzled host is an unhappy vacationer. Avoid the panic and frustration with Waitlist Me, a waitlist and table management app that’ll help you run things more smoothly and bring more smiles to your customers’ faces.

Here’s our step-by-step guide to nailing your summer service:

Step 1. Greet ‘em with a smile—and an accurate wait-time

The one thing diners hate more than walking in to a wait-time is being given a wait-time that doesn’t pan out. Waitlist Me provides smart wait-time estimates that adjust as you use the app—and you can check ‘em in a glance.

Bonus! Since the app displays actual wait times right next to the estimated wait times, your team can see how they are doing and adjust as needed for lulls and surges in traffic. This simple feedback loop makes it easy to quote times more accurately.

Step 2. Ask if your guests need anything special

A highchair? Crayons for the kiddos? An accessible spot for Gran’s wheelchair? Waitlist Me allows you to make notes for every party you add to your waitlist, ensuring that no detail is forgotten.

Bonus! This is also the perfect time to ask if they’re celebrating a special occasion. If the answer is a big Y-E-S, give your servers a heads-up so they can make the groups experience at your restaurant one to tell the world (and Yelp) about.

Step 3: Encourage them to explore the area while they wait

Text notifications mean your diners don’t have to hover around the hostess stand. Once they’re added to your waitlist, they’re free to check out nearby shops or stroll down the block ‘til their table is ready.

Bonus! As soon as you add a party to your restaurant’s waitlist, they’ll receive a text confirmation with a link to your public waitlist. Let them know the link is there and that they can use it to check their place in line directly from their phone.

Want to see how other restaurants are using Waitlist Me to manage their summer rush? Click here.

With the biggest eating-out day of the year upon us, the big question is this: How are you going to make Mother’s Day a big success for your restaurant?

It’s not just about getting people in the door. It’s not even about serving the best food in town. It’s about giving your customers the best overall experience possible—one that will keep them returning long after Mother’s Day ends. And that experience starts the minute they walk through the door.

Here are 3 ways Waitlist Me wows customers while they wait for their table

Accurate wait time estimates make you look like a pro

Shuffling through loose papers doesn’t inspire confidence. Neither does the look on your host’s face when she’s guessing when that table in the corner will turn.

Waitlist Me takes the guesswork out of time estimates. The app shows estimated waits by table size, so you have your answer with a quick look, whether it’s a table for two or ten.  Plus, it tracks how long customers have been waiting in real time, right next to the time they were quoted, so you can better adjust for surges and lulls in visitors to fine tune your quote accuracy.

Text alerts let customers relax while they wait

No one wants to be tethered to a restaurant lobby—and a cluster of hungry people waiting for a table can be a turn-off for walk-ins.

Waitlist Me lets you text guests when their table is ready, which means they can wander freely without worrying that they’ll miss their name being called. We’ve even made it easy for them to let you know they’re on their way, or that they need to cancel with a simple text response.

A public waitlist allows customers to see where they are in line (and plan accordingly)

An out-the-door line keeps you busy enough. Add the inevitable “how long will it be?” grumbles to the mix, and you’ve got mayhem on your Mother’s Day menu.

When you add a customer to your waitlist, Waitlist Me sends them a confirmation text automatically. That text includes a link to your public waitlist, empowering them to check on their place in line wherever they are, whenever they want.  The less time your team has to spend providing updated estimates to the people waiting, the more time they can spend greeting and making guests feel welcome.

A 5-minute fix? You bet.

You can start using Waitlist Me now on any iOS, Android, or web-accessible device. Getting started is easy, and you can get it up and running in less time than it takes you to fire up your restaurant’s most popular dish. Now that’s a win!

Forget display advertising for a sec. The best thing you can do for your business this spring is to build your store’s reputation by offering unrivaled customer service.

Want to beat the competition? Download Waitlist Me and transform the wait experiences customers have when they visit.  By adding them to the waitlist and sending them text notifications when you are ready for them, you can show you care about their time and give them the freedom better use their time while they wait.  They’ll thank you for it with more purchases and repeat visits.

Consider this: Your customers are awash with ways to unload the results of their spring cleaning purges. There’s the drop-it-and-forget-it ease of Goodwill and Salvation Army, the millennial comfort with Craigslist, and the DIY thriftiness of “oh, I’ll fix it up at some point, just toss it in that pile over there.”

As a consignment boutique owner, you’re struggling against years of customers swapping stories about long wait times and nonexistent communication for mere pennies on the dollar. Your store is great! But the industry you’re in? Well, there are some ghosts in that closet.

You need one easy way to break free from the brush that tars you—and set yourself apart from the half-dozen other consignment stores in your zip code.

7 ways Waitlist Me will revolutionize the way you work with customers:

– Text and call notifications let you notify your customers when their appraisals are ready.

– Public waitlist allows clients to check and see where they are in the list without stopping by (or tying up your phone lines).

– Status color coding lets you see at a glance where a client’s items are in the pipeline. No more fumbling for lost bits of paper!

– Loyalty tracking shows you who’s new to the store and who’s a repeat customer, letting you know in an instant when a VIP walks through the door.

– Built-in analytics run in the background, letting you track traffic and activity patterns and delegate your resources efficiently.

– Multi-device sync lets you use one business account on multiple devices. That means no more calls on your day off about what’s going on with so-and-so’s check.

– App compatibility for iOS, Android, and Web means you can use Waitlist Me on a device you already have.

The solution: Start using Waitlist Me, stat.

It’s time to get rid of Post-It notes and legal pads. It’s time to stop losing customers’ contact information (and their trust and business along with it). It’s time to bring your store into the 21^st century with Waitlist Me.

Second-hand retailers across the country use Waitlist Me to manage their clientele and their in-store resources. Waitlist Me offers simple software that’s intuitive to use as soon as you start it up. There’s no training and no hefty user guides. Just download it and get back to work.

Consider it spring cleaning for your small business.