Customer experience is one very important thing you can’t afford to skimp on. That five-star review you’re looking for starts as soon as guests walk through your front door.

The good news: Customer experience is the easiest thing for restaurants to fix. Still, scads of otherwise-awesome spots lose stars before diners take their seats!

Read on to find out where they’re going wrong—and one so-easy-we-can’t-believe-not-everyone-is-using-it way to wow guests, garner top-notch reviews, and keep customers coming back for more.

5 signs your waiting area is turning off your diners

Could your waitlist use an upgrade? If your restaurant is facing any of these five dining experience problems, it’s time to revamp the way your customers wait.

It’s cramped. If it’s tough to squeeze in a party of four between your entry way and your hostess stand, you’re setting your guests up for discomfort right off the bat. The longer they stand there—and make way for new arrivals and passing busboys—the less they’ll enjoy their dining experience.

It’s crowded. Packing guests in like sardines sounds great in theory, but it’s really a disaster waiting to happen. When hungry guests walk in and see a crowd ahead of them, they’re liable to walk right back out—and go to the restaurant across the street.

It’s noisy. A little chatter and some mood music? Totally fine. Guests straining to hear their names being called? Absolutely not. No one should have to miss out on conversation with their tablemates because they’re afraid of losing their spot in line.

It’s dull or dingy. Thanks to smartphones and Instagram feeds, diners arrive at your door with spotty attention spans and high expectations. There’s lots of leeway between busting your budget and giving them a chance to be unimpressed from the get-go.

It’s nonexistent. We’re all for small spots maximizing their floor space. A hole-in-the-wall hideaway is a fantastic find…until we have to park ourselves behind another diner’s chair because there isn’t room to wait anywhere else. Awkward.

The easy fix for your waiting area

You don’t have to invest in fancy chairs or a swanky patio or even a fresh coat of paint. All you need is a  waitlist app called Waitlist Me.

Waitlist Me allows you to set your diners free. Thanks to optional text message alerts and a waiting list with estimated wait times that they can check on their smartphones, they don’t have to worry about missing out. These simple features mean…

– Guests can wander around the area, eliminating the need to accommodate and entertain them inside your restaurant

– Your visible queue will be shorter and more attractive to newcomers

– Diners can enjoy quality time with friends and family without worrying that they’ll miss their name being called

– Your host will be free to provide excellent service because they won’t need to keep answering “how much longer?” questions (or avoid frustrated glares)

The app is simple to learn and flexible to use. Making it work for your dining space is easy, and training your front of house staff to use it takes mere minutes. It works on most tablets, mobile devices, or a desktop computer, and you can sync it to multiple devices at once so that multiple staff can use it at the same time. The more you use Waitlist Me, the better you’ll be at giving accurate wait times, which reduces walkaways and improves the customer experience as well as the bottom line.

While most of the places that use NoshList are restaurants, we have seen more and more businesses from different industries use NoshList to manage customer waits. The addition of our new reservations feature has made NoshList even more appealing to any business that schedules future appointments, whether they have a walk-in waitlist or not.

Not all businesses have WiFi or want to get an iPad or Android tablet though, so it is great for those businesses that NoshList also runs on any computer right from the browser and also on Clover. So we were thrilled to be able to join First Data in their booth at the RetailNow conference highlighting Clover and some of the top apps running on Clover.

Here are some shots from the event:

Add more magic in the holiday season by giving your customers the precious gift of time. Lines are always longer this time of year, and painful waits just frustrate customers.  You can improve the waiting experience for your customers by using Waitlist Me. This simple to use app can not only track who is on the waitlist, but also helps employees to give more accurate wait time estimates than a paper list.

Waitlist Me is being used successfully to drive more revenues across many retail segments.

Selling phones and setting up calling plans take a lot of time, tying up service representatives and frustrating customers who are waiting to be helped. Don’t lose those customers. Greet them and add them to Waitlist Me, so they can roam the store to choose phone cases, screen protectors, and other items while waiting.  It’s a smart way to reduce walkaways while increasing sales.

Businesses selling electronics have customers that may need more personalized service to help them choose the right television or computer, yet they don’t always know who to ask for help. Don’t let them walk out the door frustrated.  Make sure to get an idea of what they need and assure them they will be helped soon.  Customers have more patience when they are given an accurate quote of how long it will be until the right person is available to help them.

Shopping for clothes can involve a different type of waiting frustrations, and long lines for dressing rooms and checking out can scare away customers.  Add them to a waitlist, so they can continue shopping and grab more items to try on and buy. This is a really easy way to drive incremental sales.

Waitlist Me can improve customer shopping experiences in all kinds of retail environments, from shoe stores to jewelry counters to children waiting to see Santa. Providing exceptional service means happier customers.  Plus, more time to shop while waiting means more sales. Do your part to reduce stress and make the holidays brighter for your customers.  Use Waitlist Me!

Public Waitlist in settings – The public waitlist page can be customized in the “Settings” area of the “Account” after logging into www.noshlist.com. In addition to being able to customize the link of the public waitlist and change the settings on how guests can add themselves to the list, you can customize the page itself by clicking on the “Customize page” link

Customize page – You can add text or any HTML to the bottom of your public page and preview it on the customize page. When you want to push it live, just click “Publish”. In the example below simple HTML has been added to reference an image (which would be hosted on another website) and add a link to that image

Customized page example – Below is an example of how the public waitlist page would look with the above example, and you can link to this page from your restaurant website as an easy way for people to see the current waitlist and add themselves to the list. You can also see this example live here: http://www.noshlist.com/n/brianscafe

When a person adds themselves to the list the hostess will see a notification on their NoshList app and can choose a wait time and add other information through the regular flow for adding parties. The information the person submitted will automatically be pre-populated in this flow and the customer will get a confirmation message when they are added to the list. You can also choose in the settings to have the person automatically added to the list.

Customized public page on the phone – Whenever a person is added to the waitlist with the NoshList application they get a text message confirming that they have been added to the list if they have given their phone number. There is also a link to the public waitlist so the customer can check their place in line from their phone, and their initials will be highlighted in the list. This makes it easy for people to estimate their remaining wait without finding and bothering the hostess. By customizing the public waitlist page, you can also give customers information about daily specials, coupons or your loyalty program that they can check out while they wait

Default notifications in settings – You can also customize the two text messages that customers receive while they wait. The first message confirms the person has been added to the waitlist and gives them a short link to check their place in line. The second message notifies the customer that their table is ready and gives them a couple simple options for replying whether they need more time or if they have decided to go somewhere else. These will appear in the NoshList app so the hostess can see the customer’s response. Here is what the default messages look like:

And this is how the default messages look on the phone

Customized Notifications – NoshList Premium gives the ability to customize both of the messages in the settings. In the example below the first message has been changed to give an additional prompt to check out a coupon while they wait on the public waitlist page, and the second message gives another reminder to check out other online offers, which could go to the loyalty program

And here is how the customized messages would look on the phone

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: