These days, we’ve started talking about the world in terms of B.C. and D.C.—that’s “before coronavirus” and “during COVID-19.” Though we are eager to move into the A.C. era (“after coronavirus,” naturally) even the most optimistic projections put that at least 6 months from now.

‘Til then, we’re adapting. For people working from home, that means video conferences at dining room tables. For those who are keeping restaurants, stores, offices, and other essential businesses open, that means embracing new ways of getting the job done.

One of the most popular ways business owners are staying open while minimizing the spread of coronavirus is to embrace touch-free or contact-free service. 

What is touch-free service?

Touch-free service limits the spread of the novel coronavirus by reducing the number of people who touch an item. The danger with this virus is that it’s very contagious. When you decrease how many individuals handle, say, a pizza box, you lessen the risk that one of those individuals will transmit the virus to the recipient—or to another employee who comes into contact with the box.

Implementing touch-free service is a more complex preventative measure than, say, requiring all employees to wear a mask. Going low-contact or contact-free requires business owners and managers to consider their entire workflow from start to finish so they can decide how to best protect themselves, their workers, and their customers.

Tools like Waitlist Me, a waitlist and reservation/appointment app, are one piece of the puzzle. Now, let’s see how that puzzle piece fits into some strategies that can be used across a diverse array of businesses.

Strategies for providing touch-free service using Waitlist Me

Pickup outside – Whether customers are picking up food, medicine, or other items they have ordered, they may not need to come into your building to get them. Waitlist Me can be used to confirm their order with a text message that can also communicate instructions on what to do when they arrive. Customers can reply to texts when they arrive and either wait in their cars or outside the door in a more open area for their orders to be brought to them. With Waitlist Me Pro there is also an option to send open text replies to customer texts for things like clarifying questions or letting them know if more time is needed for their order.   

Limit numbers inside – When allowing people inside to dine, shop, or be treated, Waitlist Me can help avoid crowded waiting areas and limit the number of people in the building. Simply add customers to the waitlist when they arrive and allow them to walk around outside or wait in their car until you are ready for them. They can check their places in line from their phones using the public waitlist feature, and you can press a button to text them when it’s their turn. You can even have your staff greet them outside or add them to the list when they pull into the parking lot. 

Reduce points of contact – There are additional ways to increase safety by cutting down on person-to-person interactions for customers arrivals. Post information on your website or a sign on your door asking customers to call or use the Waitlist Me web widget to add themselves to the waitlist, rather than entering the building to do so in person. The widget can help show how busy you are, so people can have a better idea of when to arrive. Or they can schedule an appointment or reservation that you can approve and manage in the app. With Waitlist Me Pro there are also simple scheduling controls for business hours and hourly availability that can help stagger the number of people visiting your business across the day.  

We are happy to announce the opening of a new headquarters in Charleston, South Carolina.  Waitlist Me started in the Silicon Valley by former Google employees as NoshList, a popular restaurant app, and expanded to serve businesses across multiple industries.  As part of the company’s aggressive growth plans, Waitlist Me considered a wide range of options and was attracted to Charleston for a number of reasons.

“Charleston is a true hidden gem for tech start ups,” said Brian Hutchins, Waitlist Me CEO, “When you consider the beauty of the area and all the things the city has to offer, it is hard to beat the quality of life, and that is a key strategic advantage in attracting and retaining top talent.  Furthermore, smart investments made in infrastructure and programs to support business innovation are starting to pay dividends in Charleston, and the local tech economy is evolving rapidly. Waitlist Me has an office at the Charleston Digital Corridor, is part of the Harbor’s Propel accelerator program, and will be exhibiting at the DigSouth.  These are a few examples of very valuable initiatives that have come into their own relatively recently.”

To celebrate the occasion, the company will be giving away a free year of its Premium service to ten Charleston businesses that need it most, based on suggestions from locals.  The offer is designed to raise awareness around how technology can improve wait experiences in Charleston.  It also opens up ways for the broader community to engage and share ideas.  Many businesses are still struggling by using paper or clunky buzzer systems, and don’t realize there are better ways to manage their waits.  People that visit these places feel the pain though.  Nominating a business for the prizes is as simple as visiting www.waitlist.me/charleston and sharing a business name and experience that could be improved.

Charleston is well known for its hospitality, and Waitlist Me is tool local businesses can use to help offer the exceptional level service that makes it a top tourist destination as well as a great place to live.  Instead of just standing around bored or frustrated, waiting customers could take a nice stroll, experience more of the city, shop, and more.  It’s a win-win for everyone, and we are hoping people will help us spread the word.

When Scott Wise launched Scotty’s Brewhouse in 1996, he was 22 years old with little restaurant operating experience. He had graduated with a degree in marketing and public relations from Ball State University and had just returned home to Muncie, IN, after a stint as a copywriter in Houston.

“I had always waited tables and bartended, and after college, hated my 9-to-5 job. I came back to my hometown and was drawing up the idea of what I wanted to do when I heard there was a bar for sale,” Wise said. “The owners asked me to put a business plan together. Then, months later, I went to the owner and bought the business.”

That business was Mugly’s Pub & Eatery, a local Ball State University student hang out with a pool table, three beers on tap and a burger on the menu.

For the next three years, Wise worked on the restaurant’s revitalization, changing the name to Scotty’s Brewhouse and eventually hiring enough staff to handle the growing clientele. That’s when he decided to open a second location. He was only 25, and already was building a restaurant chain.

Well, maybe not.

“I got the food service bug and just loved what I was doing,” he said. “But at 25 I thought it was easy and the second restaurant failed miserably.”

Undeterred, Wise decided to take the equipment from his second endeavor and open another Scotty’s Brewhouse location in Bloomington, IL. The year was 2011. The restaurant was a hit. A franchise was born.

Today, Wise and his executive team operate eight locations throughout Indiana. Their biggest store, in downtown Indianapolis, holds 450 guests.

The technology solution

With locations throughout the state and a continuous rise in customer visits, Wise was looking for a way to increase operational efficiencies while reducing costs. This led Wise and his team to NoshList, a waitlist app designed to simplify restaurant operations and improve the guest experience. The app runs on iPad and Android tablet and mobile devices and replaces old-fashioned paper lists and expensive buzzer waitlist tools.

“For the majority of restaurant operators who use our waitlist app, the switch was made because of the ease of our technology and its ability to cut down costs while improving the guest experience,” said Craig Walker, founder of NoshList. “Our tool gives restaurant operators the ability to seat guests faster, which increases table turns and improves restaurant profitability.”

NoshList, available as a free or paid Premium service, works by sending guests text messages to their mobile devices alerting them that their tables are ready. If a guest doesn’t have a mobile phone, they can still be added to the waitlist and the host can locate them once their table is ready.

More importantly, however, is that NoshList’s Premium users can utilize the app’s ability to collect analytics based on diner history. Additionally, Premium users have access to a two-way communication system for dine-in guests, so customers can let a restaurant’s host know if there are changes to the party.

“The ability to gain consumer insights based on visitor history is a huge step forward for users of our NoshList app,” Walker said. “And the ability for two-way communication further enhances our restaurant support.”

Wise had long been considered an early adopter of restaurant technology, a reputation that placed him on the industry speaking circuit for many years.

Scotty’s Brewhouse first started using tablets at the table in 2010. The move was a premature one in regard to customer acceptance. While the tablets didn’t work for his customer base he continued to look for new and emerging technologies that would push the brand forward.

“With the use of technology, you don’t do something that you think is cool or looks good. It has to save an operator time and money,” Wise said. “The reason why I got into tablet waitlist technology was because I was frustrated with how many pagers got stolen, or broken or lost.”

After the failed tablet experiment, Wise decided to use NoshList as a way to increase sales and reduce operational costs even though he wasn’t sure customers would give out their cell phone numbers.

“In the beginning I was nervous,” he said. “I don’t believe in text marketing and I wasn’t sure if people would give us their cell phone numbers. We had a little pushback from customers, but it wasn’t enough to stop using the technology because we were saving money on broken pagers and streamlining our seating capacity,” Wise said.

To date, WaitList has seated more than 34 million diners through its free and Premium versions and in May launched an updated version specifically for iOS 7.

“The app continues to ramp up and is proving to be a great technology. With some of the bigger software companies, they are so slow in incorporating new technology that by the time they do it the next wave is out,” Wise said. “For my staff, the reaction was initially ‘how do I do this?’ But once they got it, they loved it. This is one technology that I didn’t have to push at all and was not too difficult to put in place.”

Additionally, Wise and his team were concerned that customers would walk away once their names went on the waitlist because there was no buzzer that would tether them to the restaurant.

“We worked with NoshList on a number system that let staff know if customers had gone somewhere else,” Wise said. “And if people are wondering about their wait, they can now look at their phone and see how much time they have left. This lets the hostess focus on other things and it doesn’t make guests feel like someone forgot about them.”

Over the past six months, Scotty’s Brewhouse guests have embraced the NoshList technology. And because it’s an app-based system, the waitlist keeps running even if internet connectivity is lost.

“The best thing is we don’t have pagers anymore. That cost was huge for us,” Wise said.

Waitlist Me has been helping restaurants and other businesses better serve their customers for over a decade with simple and flexible solutions for managing wait times and scheduling. Today thousands of businesses use Waitlist Me to serve millions of people every month, increasing revenues and customer satisfaction in the process.

As we have continued to improve our waitlist, reservation, and table management features over the years, we have worked closely with a wide variety of small and medium-sized businesses across several industries and developed a deep understanding of the needs of those businesses. Recently, we noticed several challenges businesses faced in delivering consistent customer service quality in ways that were simple and efficient.

Over the past year, we have focused more of our efforts on solving some of these problems. Starting with a deep dive into discovery initiatives that involved talking to hundreds of customers and businesses, we then moved through multiple design and feature iterations to develop a whole new set of solutions that we are launching under the name Perklist.

So what is Perklist? On a high level, it is a simple set of perks, or special benefits, that businesses can provide to their customers. As each business is unique, Perklist is designed to be flexible in allowing businesses to choose what perks they offer and how they use them to better serve customers in ways that fit their brands and processes. Basically, it is a versatile toolkit that businesses can use to understand, engage, and interact with their customers in more authentic ways.

To give a few examples, some key areas that Perklist can help businesses include:

– Better service – Providing better service through seamless seating and personalized benefits and experiences

– More visits – Driving more guest visits through targeted specials, timely messaging, and fun reminders

– Stronger relationships – Building stronger relationships through honest listening, consistent recognition, and genuine interactions

Perklist provides several types of perks that businesses can utilize based on their needs and goals. Some of the main feature areas include:

– Scheduling – Priority seating options through Waitlist Me integration

– Promotional – Customizable benefits that can be delivered effectively in novel ways

– Menus – Simple options to display menus, specials, and exclusive items

– Feedback – Private surveys for encouraging customer feedback and gaining valuable insights

– Messaging – Engaging group updates, question clarifications, and interactive conversations with select customers

Our journey in developing Perklist has just begun, and we see many opportunities to extend the functionality and value the service can provide to businesses and their customers. Some of these ideas are complimentary to Waitlist Me, like how Perklist can provide more choices, interactivity, and even exclusivity in scheduling visits. However, there are many other features that we didn’t feel fit neatly into Waitlist Me and could better evolve as a separate service. That said, our core product goals in developing Perklist are the same as those of Waitlist Me in our focus on simplicity, flexibility and providing exceptional value, and we hope people will enjoy this new service as much as they do Waitlist Me.

We are excited to see where things go with Perklist. Check it out!

What kind of device can be used for the Waitlist Me service: a tablet, computer, or smartphone? Yes, yes and yes! The service can be used on iOS and Android mobile devices using apps from Apple iTunes or the Google Play Store as well as on computers through web browsers. You might choose to use one or a mixture of these depending on the size of your business and the features you want to utilize.

iPads and iPad Minis are the most popular device options due to the popularity and solid performance of these tablets. It is important to make sure the device is a newer model capable of running the most current version of iOS available, as Waitlist Me is optimized for the latest version in accordance with Apple’s guidance for developers. You don’t have to go out and buy the newest iPad. You can use a prior generation model if you already have one, but for example, you would not want to use an old iPad 2 that cannot run operating systems higher than iOS 9 with Apple now on iOS 14. You can check here whether your existing Apple device currently has or is able to update to the latest iOS version.

Android tablets are another popular choice for running Waitlist Me. Android has a wider range of manufacturers and price points, and to some degree you get what you pay for. We don’t recommend buying a cheaper Android tablet for less than $150, as you are more likely to run into performance issues. Look for a device with at least 2 GB of RAM, which would be in the middle of the range for Android tablets. The Samsung Galaxy Tab A is a popular choice. As with Apple, we advise using a tablet that is updated to the latest Android OS. Instructions for how to check and update your Android version can be found here.

You can also use Waitlist Me in a web browser on a computer or tablet, and we recommend using Chrome or Firefox for the best performance. Some of Waitlist Me’s more advanced features, however, are only available when using our iOS or Android apps on tablets.  For instance, our apps for tablets you can use our self check-in kiosk feature, the floorplan view, and a few other features that aren’t available in the browser.

Likewise, iPhone or Android smartphones can be used to run the Waitlist Me app and access the basic functions of the service like adding guests, sending notifications, adjusting assignments, etc. To take advantage of features like the spatial floorplan view, you would need to use a tablet with a 7” or larger screen.

Waitlist Me will also run on a Kindle or Fire tablet in a pinch, but we don’t recommend these devices due to performance limitations for more than basic waitlist management for places with lower usage. They are comparatively low-end devices designed more for consumers to use for reading e-books and other forms of entertainment.