In today’s age of social distancing, some businesses are using QR functionality to increase ‘touchless’ options for customers. For example, it has become more common for restaurants to place QR codes on tables so that customers can use their cell phone to quickly access an online version of their menus.

Waitlist Me has a new feature for generating a QR code to make it easier for customers to join the waitlist while standing outside of a business. All of the Waitlist Me subscriptions include options for businesses to use the Add Yourself Web Widget to let customers join waitlists remotely, and usually customers would access these features from business websites. However, in cases where a customer has already arrived at the business and your staff is unable to greet them in person, adding a QR code to a flyer or sign posted near the front door with some simple instructions can be an easier way to get customers to the web widget and join the waitlist. Using a QR code to open up a link to the web widget in their phone browsers is easier than having them type in the web URL directly. 

The widget can be configured in the settings online by going to Account > Settings > Add Yourself. Once you’ve tailored the options to fit your workflows, generate your unique QR code by using the link at the top of the Add Yourself settings page.

From there, you can print or download your QR code and add it to whatever signage you have for customers. Using the QR code feature can provide a touchless option instead of a sign-in kiosk, or simply save your staff time from needing to enter each customer’s information into the waitlist app.

‘Tis the season for fresh powder and freezing temperatures. This winter, ski towns across America are riding high on the sort of snowfall that would make Frosty proud. As the inches accumulate—and ski bunnies flock in droves—the small businesses that keep these high-altitude towns running are awash in customers.

How are they turning out consistently excellent customer service? They’re downloading Waitlist Me, the intuitive waitlist and reservation app designed for restaurants, retailers, and all sorts of businesses in-between. The service makes interacting with your customers a cinch from the first day the slopes open to the very last snowfall.

Not sure how your business can use Waitlist Me to improve customer service and make overall operations more efficient? Take a peek at how these winter businesses are leveraging the app to win over customers and boost their bottom line.

Food and beverage businesses

From fine dining to dive bars, American ski towns are awash with excellent eateries. Here’s how businesses are using Waitlist Me to score customer service points:

– Wrangling the queue for a popular downtown bar

– Managing the constant waitlist at a teensy locavore dining hot spot

– Arranging behind-the-scenes tours and tastings at a brewery

– Letting guests sip wine while they wait for a table

– Squeezing in a pre-run breakfast 

Resorts and hospitality-focused establishments

No matter how visitors are spending their days, they all have one thing in common: They require some serious rest-and-relaxation. Here’s how an assortment of hospitality businesses use the app to help their guests chill out:

– Booking private, slope-view hot tubs at a resort spa

– Scheduling a moment of zen with yoga classes

– Offering walk-in appointments for chair massages

– Reserving luxe recovery amenities

Retailers and recreational outfits

Niche small businesses are what turn tiny towns into delightful vacation spots. Waitlist Me enables business owners to deliver spectacular service to their customers and clientele. Here’s how they’re using it:

– Prep for incoming customers at a bike rental shop 

– Arranging private tours for parties large and small at a historical site 

– Booking beginner spots in ski school 

– Saddling up for sleigh rides 

– Scoring space on a slopes-bound shuttle 

– Fitting skis and gear on newbies at a shop 

Want to see how your business can benefit as well? Contact us for a free trial and see how Waitlist Me can change business-as-usual for you today! 

You run a sale to get people in the door. That’s what the circulars are for, the TV spots, the radio ads, the email blasts, the social media posts—it’s all to get eyes on your business and cars in your parking lot.

But what happens when all that promo works better than you’ve dreamed, and you’re overrun with customers eager to snap up whatever it is you’re selling? You lose them…unless you have a plan in place to handle the high customer volume.

Don’t wait ‘til it’s too late. Plan now to turn your biggest sales into massive success stories. Here’s exactly how to use a waitlist app like Waitlist Me to capitalize on sale day foot traffic.

Tip #1: Greet every guest as they pass through your doors

Station a greeter near the entrance and task that person with setting the tone for each customer’s visit: Be warm, inviting, and helpful. Let them know what specials you’re running. And, if your greeter can’t help them right away, they can add them to a waitlist so that the next associate can help them pick out the perfect item for their wants and needs.

The big plus: Waitlist Me makes adding customers to your list a cinch. Your greeter is one tap away from adding a new name and number and sending that customer into the store to browse—no muss, no fuss, no toe-tapping frustration. When it’s that customer’s turn for attention, they’ll get a text to let them know. Simple!

Tip #2: Make customer service your No.-1 priority

Just because a customer understands why staffers are booking it around the sales floor on Columbus Day or Black Friday doesn’t mean that a customer will accept anything less than top-notch service. Encourage your team to spend time with shoppers, to answer their questions fully, and to remain focused on the customer in front of them, despite the busier-than-usual atmosphere. To ensure that they’re able to do that, use Waitlist Me to delegate different areas of responsibility to each of your associates. Assign individuals to different departments, divvy up cash wrap and changing room responsibilities, and task someone with restocking shelves or manning the stockroom.

The big plus: Creating assignments means that your sales associates can focus exclusively on individual customers rather than keeping their eyes peeled for empty shelves, messy displays, and new shoppers walking through the door. And because Waitlist Me lets customers see where they are in line right from their smartphones, there are none of those “is it my turn yet?” interruptions to deal with, either. No more splitting attention means better service, which improves your bottom line every time.

Tip #3: Make more sales from your sale

One great sales day is fantastic. One great sales day that converts foot traffic into loyal customers? Even better. A single top-notch shopping experience can turn browsers into buyers and buyers into VIPs—and that starts with service. Waitlist Me lets you build trust through customer service by quoting accurate wait times and ensuring that your shoppers remain visible to your sales floor staff. And trust leads to sales.  You can’t always eliminate waits, but you can show you care about your customers’ time and make the waiting more bearable.

The big plus: Waitlist Me helps you track the actual time each customer has been waiting next to the estimate you told them, which improves your quote accuracy.  That means that when you tell a customer that an associate will meet them in the home entertainment department in 10 minutes, it’ll really be a 10-minute wait. Setting the right wait expectations reduces walkaways, and delivering on those wait estimates boosts customer satisfaction.

Plus, when customers don’t have to worry about losing their place in line or how long the wait will be, they can relax and continue browsing through yours store, making it more likely they’ll find more things to buy. That’s a win for everyone!

As you deck the halls and adjust your playlists, you should seriously consider giving your waitlist and table management system an update, too. With holiday parties a-plenty, this is no time for clutter and inefficiency!

You need to reboot your hostess stand and kick that datebook-and-grease-board duo to the curb. We have a shiny digital solution that will keep your season truly merry and bright—and save you plenty of woe (and money) to boot. We’re talking about a waitlist app that brings your queue, your reservations, and your resources together on one easy-to-use interface. It’s called Waitlist Me Pro.

Why do you need it? Let us count the ways:

#1. You need an intuitive way to balance walk-ins and reservations

What’s worse than losing a reservation fora twosome on date night? Losing a reservation for a 12-top the week before Christmas. Yikes. Still, it happens.It’s easy to forget a group—yes, even a big one—when you’re struggling to handle the nightly dinner rush.

When you upgrade your restaurant to a digital waitlist and reservation system, you say “goodbye” to misplaced reservations.With Waitlist Me Pro, you can use our flexible reservation views to see what your restaurant has in store for the holiday season and beyond. Plus, we built the app to incorporate reservations and walk-ins seamlessly. That makes it a cinch to navigate your guest list, no matter what.

#2. You need to visualize the best places to seat parties in your restaurant

Forget about peering behind the hostess stand to survey available seating options. Your hosts won’t even have to squint at hard-to-decipher grids anymore, either! With simple, digital table and resource management, confusion over where to seat your large and small parties is a relic of yesteryear.

Waitlist Me lets you view your tables indifferent ways, including by availability, by size, and by server. They’recolored coded so that you can immediately tell what’s open and what’s not. The Pro-level version of the app also gives you access to our layouts and sections feature, which allows you to build more detailed floor plans that are still easy to read.

#3. You need to keep bringing in foot traffic, no matter how busy you are

A wall of waiting guests in your lobby is intimidating to newcomers. To them, one large group waiting for a few tables to be pushed together can look like a dozen parties—and that’s enough to make anyone want to try the restaurant down the street rather than risk a queue.

Technology can transform your vestibule and the way you run your restaurant. With Waitlist Me’s text notification feature, you can set your guests free. Instead of lingering around your hostess stand, waiting for their name to be called, they can hang out at the bar or wander around the area without worrying about losing their table. When they’re next in line, you can let them know, no shouting necessary.

#4. You need to ensure that all your guests have a great experience

With a paper waitlist and reservation system, you’re constantly flipping back and forth and scrabbling around for notes. It’s unprepared and unprofessional, and that’s frustrating for your hosts and for your customers. And ETAs? Let’s not even go there.

Our app brings a new level of sophistication to eating out. We designed it to be easy to use from the get-go,which will decrease employee training time. And because Waitlist Me is so simple, hosts can focus their attention where it should be: on the guests,rather than on the paper they use to keep track of them.

You’ve been the curious customer discovering a new spot, so you know just how promising it feels to walk in a restaurant and see happy people eating mouth-watering food. You’ve also been the hungry diner who’s waited an hour before discovering that the hostess somehow missed your name on the list roughly 10 tables ago. Cue the toe-tapping, eyeball-rolling, and finger-pointing.

As a consumer, you want to see your favorite restaurants doing good, steady business. After all, you want your neighborhood picks to stick around! However, you don’t want to experience the downsides of busyness: interminable waits, lost reservations, and poor customer service.

That’s why we built Waitlist Me. Here at Waitlist Me, we’re creating customer service technology that helps you manage your guests more efficiently and effectively. Five-star review, here you come!

What is Waitlist Me?

Waitlist Me puts your customers right where they should be: at the front of your mind. It’s an app that’s designed to make it easy for your front-of-house staff to keep track of both your waitlist and your reservations. We keep it all in one at-a-glance place so that you’ll never lose another name again. Phew!

How does Waitlist Me work?

The days of grease pens and messy paper appointment books are over. Waitlist Me is the forward-thinking tech your service-oriented business needs. And you know what? It’s an absolute cinch to use. We designed Waitlist Me to be intuitive for everyone to use, no matter how comfortable you are with smart devices. You can set it up for your business during an afternoon lull and train your staff to use it in minutes.

After that, you’re good to go! With a few taps, Waitlist Me lets you add walk-ins to your waitlist. With just one look, you can see how long they’ve been waiting and when their table should be ready. And once they hit the front of the line, you can forget about hollering out a last name. Instead, one more touch on the Waitlist Me app will let you send them a text notification right to their phone. No matter where they are—the parking lot, a nearby store, or hanging out in your lobby—they’ll know exactly when it’s their turn to take a seat.

 It doesn’t get any easier than that.

And Waitlist Me isn’t just for restaurants, either

Sure, Waitlist Me is an obvious must-use for restaurants, but scores of other businesses are using our app every day to make their businesses run better—and keep their customers walking through the door.

Who’s using Waitlist Me?

• Big box retailers that rely on sales associates to sell big-ticket items, like televisions, computers, and smartphones
• Jewelry stores helping individuals pick out special gifts for anniversaries, birthdays, and holidays
• Recreation centers, like bowling alleys, ice rinks, and arcades
• Gyms and fitness centers that see high traffic volume on certain pieces of equipment
• Doctor’s offices and veterinary clinics with urgent care 
• Hair and nail salons that offer a variety of walk-in services
• Retail chains, specialty boutiques, and consignment shops to allow for more one-on-one time between employees and customers