These are challenging times with the spreading of the coronavirus. Many businesses are being forced to close their doors or to change the ways they do business to continue serving people.

Asking customers and patients to wait in their cars is gaining popularity as a better alternative than waiting inside businesses. Curbside service has taken on a whole new significance across multiple industries.

Waitlist Me makes it easy to track who is next in line to be served and then press a button to send a text notification when you are ready for them, so people can wait in their cars until it is their turn. There are also options for people to add themselves to the waitlist without even having to leave their car.

Here are some of the industries using Waitlist Me to provide better wait experiences in new ways:

Healthcare Facilities – Medical offices, urgent care centers, dental offices, eyecare centers, and hospitals are some examples where patients often wait in confined areas and may be afraid of getting sick from others. Allowing them to wait outside or in their cars helps to limit cross-infections for patients and healthcare workers.

Dispensaries – As this Forbes article aptly points out, “It should go without saying that medical cannabis patients are the most vulnerable cannabis consumers, and the most at risk of serious complications from Covid-19.” Social distancing strategies like curbside pickup can help reduce the risk to these patients. Even for non-patients, waiting in the car can be better for limiting the number of people in the store at a time or avoiding the need to go into the store at all.

Veterinary and Animal Services – With people spending more time at home and the elevated stress-levels caused by the crisis, pets are going to be an even bigger focus than ever. Vet clinics, animal shelters, and humane centers can keep visitors and staff safer by not having too many customers waiting inside their businesses.

Restaurants – For those restaurants that don’t have to close altogether, shifting to delivery and curbside pick-ups so customers don’t have to leave their cars can be a way to continue serving their clients.

Blood Donation – With people more reluctant to leave their houses, blood supplies have declined. Making it easier to schedule an appointment and wait outside can help encourage more people it is safe to donate blood.

Supply Stores – While many retail stores are closing, some types of supply stores will be important for builders, plumbers, electricians, mechanics and others that perform important home and automotive services. These stores can reduce crowds and offer more touchless systems for picking up supplies.

Grocery Stores – People will continue to need groceries and safe ways to shop. Some grocery stores are already moving towards limiting the number of people in the store at any given time to keep aisles clearer. When a customers finish shopping, the next customers are texted to invite them inside.

People don’t like crowded wait areas, even in the best of times. These days social distancing requires an even higher standard of avoiding crowds, and letting customers and patients wait in their cars can be a valuable option for businesses to provide.

Tired of writing down reservations on paper? Now you can keep track of reservations in the same place as you manage your wait list. In May, we announced our new reservations feature for iOS at the National Restaurant Association Restaurant, Hotel-Motel Show. Now we have added reservations to our Android and Clover apps. You can now use our online NoshList waitlist from any browser.

Taking reservations through NoshList is great for any customer reservation call in because it works just like our same-day estimated time of arrivals (ETAs) feature that restaurant staff enter when adding parties. The only difference is that you can choose a future date in addition to a time.

Reservations are also grouped in their own section that you can view by pressing on the calendar icon so you can get an overview of the number of reservations and people by day as well as the details of the individual parties for each day.

Then any reservations for the current day will automatically show up in the ETA section of the waitlist. So, it is easy to get an integrated view of the walk ins waiting and expected people coming in with reservations.

“The new Reservations feature opens up the use of our NoshList app to restaurants and retailers who take advance bookings, and is the first app that offers this type of functionality for multiple industries across iOS, Android, and the web,” said Craig Walker, NoshList founder and CEO. “By continuously updating our wait list app, we are answering the call to create the only wait list platform restaurants and retailers should consider.”

We are excited to announce a new POS integration for our popular wait list app that will allow restaurant operators to better manage their guest experience. Working with Clover, an all-in-one POS solution with an open platform, NoshList is one of the first apps available on the Clover app marketplace. NoshList is exhibiting with Clover and First Data at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in booth #80203. CES takes place Jan. 7-10 in Las Vegas.

“We are thrilled to have the opportunity to show off NoshList with Clover at CES,” said NoshList CEO, Craig Walker. “It makes sense to tie the POS and wait list management pieces together and we love how Clover’s open-platform makes it possible to improve the guest experience in completely new ways. We are already working on a number of new features that would only be possible through their platform.”

The NoshList app on Clover makes it simple for any restaurant owner, operator or general manager to manage their wait list and POS all from one place. The app makes getting started with NoshList a snap, and will automatically pull the merchant’s information into NoshList when signing up. More features using other integration touch points are coming soon.

“NoshList adds tremendous value to our restaurant customers,” said Mark Schulze, vice president of Business Development at Clover Network Inc. “By replacing buzzers and shouting with text messages, our customers can not only give better service to their diners, but also get valuable data about frequent diners and past visits.”

We are always looking for ways to make people’s wait experience better, and we have added a new way for restaurants to engage and communicate with guests in a non-obtrusive way while they are waiting.

There is now a new NoshList Premium feature for restaurants and other places using NoshList to customize their public waitlist page on WaitList with any information they’d like their customers to see. Some ideas include daily specials, reward program information, a social media feed or video, a link to leave a review on Yelp, among others.

Here is an example of how a rewards program could be highlighted below the waitlist on the page visitors can check from their phones:

The way NoshList normally works is when a visitor has left their phone number and is added to the waitlist on NoshList, they automatically receive a text message confirming they have been added to the list and giving them a link to the public waitlist so they can check their place in line. The new feature allows guests to see more information below this waitlist, giving restaurants a great way to improve the guest experience even more and give helpful information to guests while they are waiting, right on their phone. The public waitlist can also be displayed on an internet browser in the restaurant or can also be viewed by customers from home. This public waitlist page is free for all NoshList accounts, and NoshList Premium users get access to this new customization feature as well as the option to let customers add themselves to the waitlist from their phone.

To add information to the public waitlist page, login to NoshList on the web and go to the Settings in the Account area. There is a “Customize Page” link that goes to a page where you can add text or HTML and preview how it will look on the page. Adding HTML gives you the flexibility to style the area with any fonts, colors, links, and images that you’d like to appear on the page. Otherwise you can just add text for some simple messages. There are also various online HTML editors as well as HTML views in most popular online blog services (like Tumblr, Blogspot, WordPress, etc.) that can help with formatting text into HTML

Want to customize the page even more or include the NoshList waitlist on your site? Let us know at [email protected] and we can help you with this as well.

We have recently added some new sets of features to Perklist, the new service we have been developing to make loyalty and customer engagement simple and effective for small businesses.

Better Manage Your Online Reputation with Review Public Tracking

In today’s digital landscape, online reviews can make or break a business. Perklist empowers you to take control of your online reputation by streamlining review management from Google and Yelp.

With Perklist, you can:

Increase Personalized Engagement with Customer Profiles

In today’s competitive market, building strong customer relationships is vital. Perklist’s customer profiles empower you to do just that, offering a centralized area for tracking interactions and preferences.

From feedback and perks to visit history and private messages, these profiles provide a multi-dimensional view of customers. This information allows you to tailor your engagement strategies, anticipate their needs, and create personalized experiences that keep them coming back for more.

With easy onboarding and seamless integration into your existing workflow, Perklist makes it simple to unlock the power of data-driven insights. Embrace the future of customer engagement and help your business thrive.