Muslims around the world are entering Ramadan, the holiest time in the Islamic calendar. No matter what type of business you run—a big-box retailer or boutique, a restaurant or bar, a gym or studio, a salon, a spa, or a resort— you may see changes in your business traffic during this time.  Here are some tips for using Waitlist Me to improve customer service during the month of Ramadan.

Take walk-ins and reservations

Ramadan observants fast during daylight hours, but once the sun sets, they’re all about big family dinners packed with delicacies. If you run a restaurant that doesn’t usually take reservations, Waitlist Me makes it easy to start—or to take them when you need them, like when a large party is ready to dig in.

Bonus! Our Free-level version lets you take same-day reservations, and our Premium-level app offers more robust reservation features, like a calendar view and a web widget.

Use waitlists to accommodate every client, every time

From haircuts to yoga classes, urgent care visits to mani-pedis, if your business is in a Muslim community, you’ll probably see more foot traffic after dinner. Waitlists can help you keep up with the changing traffic patterns and ensure that you keep all of your customers happy, day-in and day-out.

Bonus! The Premium-level Add Yourself Web Widget lets customers join a waitlist for a particular service or piece of equipment from wherever they are, whether that’s the office, a restaurant, or the next block over.

Post special offers, events, and changes to your hours where everyone can see them

Whether you’re offering celebratory 2-for-1 appetizers or are starting trivia a little later this month to accommodate your Muslim guests’ daylight restrictions, Waitlist Me’s public waitlist view lets you keep all your guests in the know on how busy you are.

Bonus! With Waitlist Me Pro, your public waitlist is completely customizable. Add your brand colors, your logo, even a silly video. It’s up to you!

Manage multiple locations from one account

There’s no need to sign in and out of different accounts, or to check up with your store managers to ensure they’re on the ball. Our Multi-Location Management feature lets you make whatever changes you want to your public waitlist, feedback surveys, and business hours.

Bonus! Curious to see if your changes are making an impact? Multi-Location Management lets you see how your businesses are fairing in real time and check each location’s traffic analytics.

Get feedback in a snap

Are your customers loving your changes? Is there something you could be doing better? Waitlist Me Pro lets you send a link straight to your guests’ smartphones after their visits so they can leave a rating and tell you how much you rock (and what you can do better in the future).

Owning or managing a business today is significantly more stressful than it was 10 years ago. So is being a human living in 2019.

We’re more stressed now than we’ve ever been before. Blame it on politics. Blame it on the economy. Blame it on your zany Aunt Maude. Regardless of the numerous places our stress is coming from, we know one place that can use some improvement in the stress department.

The bustle! The noise! The tight squeeze! There are all sorts of ways your waiting room could be skyrocketing your customers’ stress levels. Want to prevent walk-outs and increase customer loyalty? Here are three stressful problems in your waiting area and easy, inexpensive ways to fix them today.

A wall-to-wall wait

Achieving the right level of fullness is an art. An empty parking lot at 7 p.m. on a Friday night sends the wrong signal to hungry diners. But a jam-packed foyer? That sends a message, too, one that might intimidate a walk-in.

Stressor: The line is so long! I’ll be waiting forever!

Quick fix: Vacate your waiting area just enough by using Waitlist Me to notify guests when you’re ready for them. This leaves them free to explore the area while they wait—and keeps new customers feeling like they won’t be waiting an eternity.

“Was that me?” worries

A little background music, ordering drinks at the bar, nodding along to a conversation—it doesn’t take much to distract guests from a long wait. However, those little distractions come with their own problems.

Stressor: Did they call me already? Did I miss my table?!

Quick fix: Replace bulky buzzers and hovering hostesses with text notifications through our waitlist app. That way, your guests will be notified in a manner that suits them best. Plus, our public waitlist feature allows customers to check their place in line on a TV display in your waiting area or directly on their phone. That reduces the anxiety over how-much-longer ETAs.

Invisible customer syndrome

Hey, mistakes happen! But when you’re using a messy grease board or a hard-to-read, handwritten appointment book to keep track of your waitlist, mistakes happen far more frequently than if you brought your business into the 21^st century.

Stressor: Um, excuse me? Did you forget about me? I’ve been waiting an hour!

Quick fox: Nobody wants to feel invisible, and nobody wants to hang out in a foyer for 25 minutes before realizing they’ve been skipped by accident. With a digital waitlist, you can cut down on those negative experiences. Waitlist Me is straightforward. Think: One easy-to-read list and zero confusing scribbles. With a single glance, hosts can see exactly who’s waiting for what sort of table, how long they’ve been tapping their toes, and when you can get them seated.

Want to do more with Noshlist? Now you can. More features are now available with NoshList Premium, the expanded version of our restaurant waitlist management app for iPad.

NoshList Premium features the same capabilities as NoshList, including unlimited SMS text and automated phone call notifications to diners, while new services have been added to increase functionality and provide diners with the ability to interact directly with the restaurant via text. NoshList remains free, while NoshList Premium is priced at $49 per month per restaurant.

NoshList Premium features include:

• Unlimited Two-Way Texting
• Table Number Assignment
• Large Party Functionality
• NoshGuest Auto?ll
• In-App Statistics
• Designated Local Phone Number
• 30-Day Exportable Analytics
• Weekly Email Summaries

“With NoshList Premium, we get an expanded set of features that help us deliver an even better guest experience including unlimited two-way texting that our customers really like, as well as a designated local phone number,” said Garrett Schmidt of Buffalo Wild Wings. “We benefit greatly from analytics and in-app statistics, which allow us to measure our waitlist performance in real time relative to past shifts. NoshList has made managing our waitlist much more efficient and given us valuable insight into an aspect of operations we never had before.”

NoshList notifies diners via text messaging that their tables are ready and improves their dining experience by replacing paper lists, microphones and alert buzzers with text messages sent directly to their cell phone. Since the February launch of the free service, nearly 4.5 million diners have been seated with NoshList.

Red Robin fans, we have great news. The NoshList waitlist app has now been successfully integrated into all Red Robin International, Inc. company-owned restaurants nationwide.

Red Robin International, Inc. currently operates more than 330 company-owned Red Robin® restaurants and chose NoshList based on its industry-leading proprietary telephony technology. Similar to other multi-unit restaurants, Red Robin traditionally used pen-and-paper waitlists and microphone systems to address diners waiting to be seated. Prior to using NoshList, the casual dining chain experienced significant surges in both the front and back of house relative to guest flow during peak times. In February, Red Robin deployed NoshList to 50 locations, quickly rolling out to the remaining company-owned restaurants within 60 days due to the remarkable results.

“Beyond the benefits of waitlist management and improvement in guest experience, restaurants where NoshList had been deployed realized increased seating efficiencies and improved ticket flow through the kitchen making the decision to deploy NoshList to our other locations a no-brainer,” stated Chris Laping, Senior Vice President of Business Transformation and Chief Information Officer for Red Robin International, Inc. “For diners, this translates to shorter wait times, as the time that tables sit empty between parties is minimized to less than 30 seconds in some cases, and improved ticket times, as order flow through the kitchen is steadied.”

Red Robin also selected NoshList as its preferred front-of-house, guest management technology platform because of its simple and intuitive interface, which allows restaurants to implement quickly. The ability for restaurant operators to implement and train staff within minutes minimizes the resources that restaurants typically have to allocate to the introduction of a new piece of technology. Restaurants are better equipped to forecast expenses without worry of increases relative to changes in diner traffic.

Understanding that deployment of technology for multi-unit restaurants is no easy feat, NoshList, through a partnership with iPadEnclosures.com, has designed a “push-button” distribution strategy that can provide restaurants with up to 500 fully provisioned iPads within 7 days. “During phase one of our roll out to Red Robin, NoshList was able to provide 125 fully provisioned iPads to 55 Red Robin locations in a number of days,” says Cody Rose, Director of Restaurant Solutions for Firespotter Labs. “iPads arrived at each specified location provisioned with NoshList and preconfigured with a number of additional options including corporate 3G and/or wifi connectivity settings, screen protectors, a protective iPad Enclosure complete with mounting mechanism, and a free multi-device management solution (‘MDM’) for a truly out-of-box solution that allowed each restaurant to be up and running with NoshList within minutes.”

If you’re just getting started with Waitlist Me Pro or Platinum, you’ll want to go through these steps to set up your tables, sections, and layouts.

Set up tables – In the settings, navigate to Assignments. (In the app this will be under the gear icon > Manage Assignments.) Enter in the names of all of your tables, as well as their sizes. Each account defaults with assignments 1 – 30; delete any you do not need.

Name sections – When you’re done with the Assignments, go back to the previous screen and then choose Sections. Add the names of every section you will be using in any layout.

Name layouts – Enter the name of all the layouts you have. For example, Weekday Dinner & Weekend Dinner, or 4 Servers, 5 Servers & 6 Servers. If your sections never change, simply create one layout and name it something like Main or Dinner. 

Set up layouts – For each layout you’ve named, press Edit to set it up. Put a check in the box for each table that belongs to your first section. Then press the +Section in the middle of the row, and assign that section. If you want to use the color coding for your sections, choose the color at this time too. Continue this process until you’ve assigned all of the tables to the sections that belong in that layout. (You don’t have to use every table in every layout.) Then go back and repeat the process for other layouts. 

Once finished, Pro users can see more on how to utilize the grid view for table management here.

Place tables in rooms – With a Platinum subscription you’ll be able to create a spatial floor plan. To do this, go back to the main waitlist screen and then press the circle with the line in it on the upper left. From here, follow along with this video tutorial to set up your room(s) and place your tables: