Make your table management more efficient by viewing the waitlist on the same screen as table assignments. Split screen mode, currently available for iPads, will allow you to handle the waitlist while simultaneously managing table turnover.

Press the circle icon on the top left of the waitlist to go to the table management or assignments view.

Press Open in the footer bar to show the waitlist in the bottom half of the screen.

The waitlist, as well as today’s reservations, will now be visible. Drag the bar up or down to adjust the height of the waitlist to fit your needs.

From this view you can still add parties to the list, notify guests when you are ready for them, and check parties off the list. All of the waitlist view features are available without leaving the table management view.

Waitlist Me makes table management simple and effective. Our unique approach to section and resource management provides an intuitive tool that restaurant staff can pick up in a few minutes and enjoy using.  If you haven’t set up your sections yet, you can see how to do that here.

Check out more ways to get the most out of Waitlist Me by visiting our Knowledge Base.

Want to better remember seating requests for waiting customers? Or note which visitors are celebrating special events? NoshList lets you enter any notes you like, and they can be easily scanned from the waitlist view so you can better stay on top of things. They can also be viewed in the customer history view and the downloadable reports.

With the new Quick Notes feature, you can define as many pre-set notes as they would like to appear when a party is added to the waitlist. It’s great for common events, such as birthdays and anniversaries, or popular customer preferences, like dietary restrictions. They can even be used for tracking popular items people might order or specific things you may want to track in analytics.

The nice thing about QuickNotes is they speed up the process of adding parties because they can be selected from a list rather than typed out. Also, they make it easier to standardize how people enter important information across time and people.

You can edit QuickNotes in the app settings individually:

Or you can update them all at once in the settings on the WaitList website. If you have multiple devices the changes will synch so they are the same across all devices, but you will need to just go to the settings page on the other devices to trigger the sync.

What’s the secret to transforming a run-of-the-mill retail experience into one customers flock to? It’s all about the customer service. Waitlist management apps are a not-so-obvious way to one-up your competitors and wow your customers. Here’s how you can use an app like Waitlist Me in any retail setting:

Cell phone store

Selecting a new smartphone is a blast. Sitting through the activation process, though, is less than thrilling. Waitlist Me lets you set them free. Our public waitlist feature allows you to display your waitlist and an estimated time of completion on a screen in your store, which means they can wander around, play with other devices, and shop accessories while they wait.

Electronics store

Laptops, cameras, home entertainment systems—shoppers making big-ticket purchases in these departments depend on your sales associates’ expertise. But let’s face it: When customers compete to flag down help, nobody wins. With Waitlist Me, you can greet shoppers when they walk in, add them to your waitlist, and assign them to the staff member or department that can help them best.

Jewelry store

When people are making emotional purchases—say, when they’re buying engagement rings or anniversary gifts—they want to forge a personal connection with sales associates. Waitlist Me allows stores to check shoppers in (and add them to a waistlist), send them off to browse, and give them your full attention when it is their turn. Bonus: Waitlist Me manages reservations, too, making by-appointment shopping an easy option.

Athletic store

Specialty equipment requires specialty knowledge. Whether your team are helping moms pick out their kid’s first pair of cleats or long-time athletes dive in to a new sport, the education you’re giving them is what makes sales happen. Leverage that knowledge base by offering your customers a waitlist experience to ensure that they get one-on-one assistance—and walk away with the perfect product for their needs.

Clothing boutique

Short on dressing rooms and jammed with customers? Waitlist Me lets you handle a busy afternoon with ease. The app allows you to create a waitlist for your dressing rooms and display the public waitlist feature on a screen in your store. Customers can see where they are in line in a glance, and keep shopping while they wait.

Consignment store

A loyal clientele is your bread and butter. Keep them coming back with their best items to consign by streamlining your valuation process. Add them to a waitlist and encourage them to run errands, head to work—whatever it is they need to do! Waitlist Me’s text alert features lets you instantly inform your clients when their product estimates are ready.

Department store

Specialty services like personal shoppers and in-store tailoring are assets that your retail business ought to make the most of. Using a waitlist app to manage these services will give customers a VIP experience while also improving your efficiency. Because the Waitlist Me app syncs across multiple devices, customer service desks can field personal shopping requests while sales associates and cashiers can add guests to tailoring waitlists.

Home design studios

When custom orders are the norm, long check-out times come standard. Once your design consultants have the details down, there’s no need for customers to remain chained to a desk. Instead, add them to a waitlist and let them wander through your showroom while your associates put together the order details. Waitlist Me’s text alert feature lets you bring them back to swipe and sign, and then send them on their way.

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.”

Being sick is no fun for anyone. And when you are sick, one of the top things on your mind is how to get better as soon as possible. It isn’t surprising that having to wait to talk to a physician can be a frustrating experience, but ProHealth Care Medical Associates found that using Waitlist to give patients a better sense of their wait made patients and physicians happier.

ProHealth Care Medical Associates is an award-winning regional specialty and primary care system with services throughout Southeastern Wisconsin. As part of the ProHealth Care program, the system has an integrated network of closely aligned independent physicians. Services encompass nearly all aspects of health care and includes hospitals, medical clinics, home care and hospice, integrative medicine, well-being and fitness centers, and more.

The centers have eight urgent care facilities within a 25-mile radius and see patients on a walk-in basis, which means wait times to see doctors can take anywhere from 60 to 90 minutes.

“One of the things we were hearing from our patients is that they weren’t happy with our wait times,” said Kelly Tolson, Director of Operations at ProHealth Care. “During cold and flu season, it can be anywhere from a 90 minute to two hour wait. Two hours is unacceptable.”

Tolson and ProHealth site leader, Maureen Sensiba, were looking for a way to make wait times easier to manage for patients, when they were approached by a patient who had seen the NoshList wait list app in use at a local restaurant.

“One of our patients had been added to a waitlist and notified when their table was ready at a Red Robin restaurant, and she said it was an awesome feature,” Sensiba said. “She raved about it. So afterward, I did some research on my own and contacted NoshList to see how we could make it work for our situation.”

The customer was specifically pleased with how the wait list app gave her the ability to shop while she waited for her table at Red Robin. That also caught the attention of Tolson and Sensiba, since it would be nice for patients to not have to be constrained to the waiting area.

Before getting started, the app had to be shown to the company’s patient experience officer and corporate compliance officer attorney to ensure the app wasn’t in violation of any patient privacy issues. Because the app only shows patient initials, it does not violate HIPPA rules or any other privacy rule, and Tolson was given the ability to then launch the app at the Medical Associates Brookfield, Wisc. location.

“Brookfield was a great place to start because it’s a small community. People could go home, have lunch or run errands while they waited to be seen by a doctor and get back in a short amount of time,” Tolson said. “It has worked so well that we have expanded it to another location and have plans to roll it out to the remaining six within the next six months.”

How it works

When ProHealth first started using NoshList, it was more popularly used as an iPad app, so they had to be a little creative in getting to fit their needs for an urgent care waitlist from a computer. Tolson and Sensiba realized that they could customize the public waitlist web page and the Add Yourself feature that restaurants normally use to allow diners to add themselves to a list, and they adapted this functionality for their staff to enter the information.

The patient names are put into a computer once they arrive at the center, and they can check their place in line from a phone or computer. When other patients look at the waitlist to determine where they are in line, only the patients’ initials are visible. Then when it is a patient’s turn, the ProHealth staff uses the regular waitlist view to trigger the text and call notifications and remove people from the list.

Since that time, NoshList has added the ability to do everything in one place in the browser, and early adopters like ProHealth Care that started using the system in new ways and sending feedback helped drive these product improvements.

“It was very smart how Tolson and Sensiba figured out how to use the NoshList public waitlist page, which was designed for other purposes, to serve as a simple entry form that could be used by multiple people on computers,” said NoshList CEO, Craig Walker. “We were all very impressed at NoshList, and have been building more and more improvements into our service to make it better for cases like these and for solving the wait problem everywhere.“

While the facility operators have yet to determine how the app has impacted wait times, customers appear to be happy with the solution.

“I don’t know if their wait times have decreased, but patients are more satisfied because we are being more respectful of their time,” Sensiba said. “We know they have other things they could be doing and we’re giving them an opportunity to do those things if there is a long wait.”

The physicians also are happier.

“We expected the patients would appreciate the new waitlist options, but we didn’t anticipate that the physicians would also be happier, because the patients are happier when they get into the room,” Tolson said. “That has been a very nice surprise.”