If there’s one thing social media has shown us, it’s that skincare, makeup, and hair products aren’t going out of fashion. Everyone wants to look good and feel good in their own skin, and this niche helps them do exactly that.

There’s great news for cosmetics retailers, too. While other industries are beating back e-commerce competition, beauty counters, branded boutiques, and local bath and body shops alike have a major advantage: their customers crave professional advice and want to try before they buy. That advantage keeps shoppers walking through doors rather than logging in online. The best way to keep them coming back, though, is to wow them with stellar customer service.

Want to gain an edge on your local cosmetics store competition? Check out Waitlist Me Pro.

First, let’s talk about waitlists

Waitlists are more common in restaurants than in retail stores, but Waitlist Me is changing that one customer experience at a time.

The thing about waitlists is that they make every situation during which customers might encounter a queue smoother and more positive for everyone involved. Whether they’re in a makeover line or need the help of a sales associate to make a decision about a product, waitlists let stores cut frustration out of the equation (along with the line-cutters that drive customers nuts).

At its most basic level, our app lets businesses add customers to a waitlist and text them when they reach the front of the line. Except with a digital waitlist, there is no line! Guests are free to roam about your store and look at different products they might be interested in, or to walk down the block and return when a sales associate can focus on them one-on-one.

Read more about how cosmetics stores can use waitlists here.

Why Waitlist Me Pro 

Superior customer service is more than a guessing game. To gain insights on how to improve your business, it helps to have data to back up your gut instincts. That’s where Waitlist Me Pro comes in.

The Pro-level app, which is compatible with Apple, Android, and web-based devices, comes with several valuable reports. Just by using the app you’ll be saving information in the background while you and your employees are working. When you’re ready to create new schedules, you can quickly download these reports to see when you need more help and when you can get away with less.

Waitlist Me Pro helps you track your customers from the minute you add them to a waitlist to when they walk out the door. That makes it easy to see where you need to allocate time and resources, and how you can improve your store’s efficiency and productivity.

The countdown is officially on. For Lent observers, 40 long days of fasting are almost over. But for you and your restaurant, Sunday marks the beginning of a brand-new holiday season.

Push away those last-minute worries, boss, because everything really is gonna be all right. Waitlist Me is the app you need to ensure your holiday brunch, lunch, and dinner services run smoother than a hand-dyed egg rolling down a grassy hill.

Go ahead and put on your Easter best. We’ve got your holiday rush completely under control. Here’s how we’re helping you improve your customer service today:

Nixing MIA reservations

The worst problem customers face on big holidays like Easter Sunday is lost reservations. When your restaurant relies on overstuffed date books and grease boards, though, hostesses get used to saying, “What was the name again? I’m not seeing it in the book.”

Your guests deserve better, and Waitlist Me Premium helps you stay organized and manage your reservations in one location that you can access from multiple iPads or Android tablets.  You can even login from your home computer or your smart phone to keep tabs on your reservations.

Setting guests free

Kids stuffed into khakis and sun dresses as the sun rises on Easter morning aren’t the best at standing quietly in a restaurant lobby. And with spring in full bloom and sun in the forecast, adults don’t want to be cooped up, either.

That’s why Waitlist Me let’s ‘em run wild. The text notification feature does away with diners’ worries about losing their place in line. Now, they can wander. Whether they choose to window shop, walk down the block, or hang out in the car, one quick text lets them know when their table is ready.

Decluttering hostess stands

Remember those high school presentations where you stood at the front of the class and fumbled through your speaking points? Yep, that’s what it feels like to be a host who is drowning in sticky notes and chicken scratch while a hungry crowd looks on.

Luckily, those days are behind us. Waitlist Me’s intuitive interface makes adding and seating dining parties a cinch. With just a single glance at the app’s home screen, hosts can see who’s waiting and what reservations are walking through the door, no squinting or second-guessing required.

Offering on-the-go waitlists

For every lucky duck that slips in your door ahead of the rush, there’s the slew of folks behind them grumbling about why they didn’t leave sooner. Now, bad traffic or treks from far-flung parking lots don’t have to impact wait times.

By adding the Waitlist Me widget to your website or social media page, you can allow your guests to add themselves to your waitlist on their own time. It doesn’t matter if they’re just leaving church or hunting down one last Easter egg. In a few quick swipes, they can hop on line from a pew, a parking lot, or a park.

Distracting guests while they wait

There’s something about pulling out a smartphone while waiting with the family on Easter Sunday that’s a little bit awkward. But that doesn’t mean your diners want to stare at the floor until their name is called.

Waitlist Me lets you put your business on display, right in your lobby. It offers a completely customizable public waitlist feature that can show your brand colors, logo, upcoming events, or current holiday specials, while they check their place in line. You can even include graphics and videos. Pull it up on any TV or monitor, and you’re good to go.  Guests can also check it from their phones, through a link in the confirmation notification.

Over the last decade, the restaurant week concept has found its way to communities across the United States. Conceived by restaurateur Joe Baum and Tim Zagat of the Zagat Survey, restaurant week has led to huge gains for the food and beverage industry. Some restaurants have seen as high as a 40-percent increase in customer volume during the promotional period.

Because many restaurant week customers are first-timers, this period is also the ideal time for dining establishments to capture repeat business. Ready to score some new regulars? Here’s how to wow everyone who walks through your door during restaurant week.

Land a great first impression

In Waitlist Me HQ’s hometown, Charleston, S.C., restaurant week is a twice-yearly event with additional, neighborhood-specific weeks thrown into the mix as well.  Many a hidden gem have earned stand-out word-of-mouth rep thanks to excellent restaurant week showings.

Earning that sweet referral business starts the moment your guests walk through the door. Comfortable seating, warm lighting, and plenty of heated or cooled space for guests to stand upon entry are vital. If you’re planning on making any upgrades, do so before the week is set to start—and if you’re painting or doing anything odiferous, schedule your refresh with plenty of time to air out any lingering fumes.

Craft a memorable menu

One restaurant week bummer we hear about regularly is this one: Chefs create delectable special menus, but they’re devoid of house specialties that new customers are hoping to try during the promotion.

Depending on your restaurant’s price-point and the promotional restrictions enforced by your restaurant week’s organizer, it might not be possible for you to offer all the goodies that are must-haves for your regular menu. We encourage you to try to find a way to bring popular picks to this more limited menu, too. Appetizer portions and tasting platters are two possible ways to make this happen.

Get the word out early

Large-scale community events are typically coordinated by a local chamber of commerce or another business-oriented organization. For restaurant weeks, food and wine festivals, and other tasty opportunities, these orgs tend to put together event guides or listings. To maximize your customer volume, it’s essential that your business be included in these publications.

Figuring out what you need to do to get your restaurant on the map, so to speak, is a cinch. Some tech-savvy chambers will offer orientation-style information online for restaurant owners and managers. However, you can always call your chamber to find out what information you need to send to the right people. Remember, they’re there to help!

Upgrade your customer service tech

Of all the bad times to have a waitlist snafu, restaurant week is one of the worst. We created Waitlist Me so that your restaurant doesn’t have to worry about getting your guests from your waiting area to your dining room; our tech helps you quote more accurate times and prevent walkaways.

Waitlist Me is a simple waitlist and reservation app that you can implement today. With a single glance, your host can see how many people are in line, how long they’ve been waiting, and when they’ll make it to their table. You can also easily add our web widget to your restaurant’s website and let your customers hop in line from wherever they are.

NoshList continues to be used by more industries beyond restaurants. From urgent care centers to educational businesses and bowling alleys, the wait list app is forever changing how businesses interact with their customers. To make the experience even better, WaitList has just released a number of new features for customizing the waitlist and notifications process.

Customized Waitlist View

Many places serve individual customers rather than large groups or parties, so we have included an option in the settings that will simplify the waitlist view and flow for adding customers to not show party size. Similarly, many places will assign customers to a person or something that isn’t numerical like a table number, so we have made it easier to add and display longer descriptions. For example, a salon can assign customers to the name of a salonist rather than a number. There is more space in the waitlist view to display names and you can enter all the people or resource names you want to assign customers to in the “Manage Assignments” part of the settings. We still have the old view for any restaurants or places that track group sizes, and you can change this in the “Customize Waitlist” part of the settings. You can also change the display of the “Reservations” section if your business makes appointments rather than reservations.

Example of waitlist for individuals, with no parties column and more room for assignments:

Example of waitlist for parties, with group size column:

Customized Notifications

We have had the ability to customize text and phone notifications from the NoshList website, and now we have also added that to the settings in apps. Just go into the Settings and choose the “Manage Notifications” option.

View for customizing text notifications:

View for customizing phone call notifications:

Simpler Waitlist

Instead of having separate buttons to seat and remove customers, we have combined these into a single check button for checking people off the list. When pressing on that you can choose to “Check off” the people that have been seated or served or you can choose to “Delete” them if they canceled or walked away before it was their turn. To make the waitlist history easier to find, we have changed the toggle for displaying history to appear below the waitlist, where the history will actually appear rather than in a button in the upper left that was often missed in our user testing.

All of these updates are currently in the latest version of the NoshList Waitlist app and in the online waitlist on www.Waitlist.me and the customizable waitlist is in the Android app. Changing the notifications and the new history view will be coming to Android soon.

The public waitlist page is a unique URL for a web page that is assigned to your account, and has a number of features and benefits. Whenever a customer is added to the waitlist in the Waitlist Me application, they get a text message confirming that they have been added to the list. There is also a link to the public waitlist so the customer can check their place in line from their phone. They will see a status message at the top of the page and their initials will be highlighted in the list.

The public waitlist makes it easy for people to estimate their remaining wait without having to ask, and saves you time. It also helps them track when their turn is getting closer so they can be nearby when you are ready for them.  If a customer decides they aren’t coming, they can press on the Cancel link to let you know and a message will appear in Waitlist Me so you know to remove them from the list.

We have added some additional features to Waitlist Me Pro for personalizing the public page even more to your brand by editing the status messages and changing the colors of the page.

Color Scheme – Personalize the page look and feel by changing the page and table colors.  With control of the color of every element on the public page, it is easy to create a look and feel that fits your brand.

Here is an example of the public waitlist in default colors and with customized colors

Status Messages – The messages that display at the top of the page make it easy for customers to check their place in line, know when it is their turn, and cancel if they decide to go elsewhere.

Waitlist Message – This shows when a customer is in a waiting state and the default message is “You are number [order] on the waitlist, and have waited [time_waited] minutes” (where [order] is their place in line and [time_waited] shows the minutes waited)

Ready Message – Once you notify a customer, their public page changes to “We are ready for you! Please come by as soon as possible” and gives them options to indicate they are coming or cancelling.

Finish Message – Served – After you have checked a person off the list the message changes to “You are no longer on the waitlist” and the list of customers waiting disappears.  You could customize this message to add something about enjoying their meal or suggest leaving a positive review on Yelp.

Finish Message – Removed – If you remove a customer from the list, meaning they didn’t end up joining you, the default message is also “You are no longer on the waitlist” but you could change it to something related to being sorry they weren’t able to join.

Response Links – If you don’t want people to be able to cancel or indicate they are on their way through the public waitlist, you can remove these links