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.

Our new Kiosk Mode feature for the iOS app is the latest in a number of features for making it easier for customers to check themselves in when arriving at a business using Waitlist Me.

Our waitlist widget is a popular option for businesses to add to their websites and allow their customers to themselves from home or their phones. And as more and more businesses began using the web widget page for self check in, we realized there were some additional advantages we could provide by making this feature part of the native app.

In addition to faster data syncing of updates in the number of people currently waiting, Kiosk Mode allows the view to be locked more easily and avoid confusion if the URL of the widget page ended up being changed by a customer by mistake. It also allows for a cleaner view in not having to show the URL and browser controls or play around with browser settings to hide these.

With Kiosk Mode, it is as simple as toggling it on in the Waitlist Me advanced settings, and it is ready to go for customers to use. Leaving the view requires a password, so a customer doesn’t get into the wrong place by mistake.

The display and settings can all be modified on the website in the existing add yourself settings, and there is more information on how these work here: http://www.waitlist.me/features/add-yourself

Let your customers check themselves into your waitlist or reservations from your website or when they arrive at your restaurant.  It is convenient for customers and will save your business time and money.

Waitlist Me makes it as simple as pasting our widget on your website or using a unique page we host for you.  And it is seamlessly integrated into our waitlist and resource management service that has been proven to reduce walkaways and improve customer satisfaction.

We have had our add yourself features available for some time, but we recently added some new features, simplified the customization and settings, and created this new video to show how it all works:

Here is an example of how it can be used for self check in at your business

Or it can be easily integrated into a website like in the example below