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.

For businesses looking to automate more of the reservation acceptance process, Waitlist Me has new ways to restrict how many reservations you accept by day and by hour. With a Waitlist Me Proo subscription, you can set reservation limits on the number of groups and people that you’d like on an hourly and daily basis. For example, if you don’t want any more than 4 groups to schedule themselves per hour, you can quickly set up that rule.

Simply press the gear icon in the app and head to Add Yourself > Scheduling Rules. Choose a day and you will be able to set the maximum number of people and groups you’ll allow by day and by hour.  There are four different options, but you can pick and choose the ones that work for your goals in managing capacity at your business. You can avoid having too many people schedule at the same time without all the work of tracking the usage of every single table at your restaurant or resource at your business. You can use the Copy Rules button at the bottom to apply these rules to every day, or set up each day separately.

That’s it! Your rules will apply to self scheduling done through the Web Widget and Kiosk, where customers will see a message when there isn’t availability for a particular time or day.  They wouldn’t be able to book that time, but could still check other times.

The rules will also trigger warnings within the Waitlist Me app if you try to schedule above the limit to make it easier to know when you might be overbooked.  Though it won’t block you from scheduling above the limits for cases where you know you can handle the booking.

When a customer who is on the waitlist or has a reservation sends you a text, you are able to see their text reply.  This helps you know when a customer decided not to come so you can remove them from the list, if they are on their way so you can hold their table, or if they have something else to ask or tell you.  With a Pro subscription, you can send open text replies to customer texts for more flexible communications.

Another Pro feature we have recently added is the option to enable an audio alert or visual highlighting when customers send you text messages.  Normally you would see a note in the customer row when they send you a text, and the full details of texts sent and received when tapping on the customer row.  The new alert features make it easier to know when a customer replies and which customer replied by playing a sound and flashing the area of the notes to attract your attention to the right spot to look.

Here’s how to set these up. If you use Waitlist Me in a computer browser, make sure you’re using the new version (there’s an option at the top of the waitlist to switch to the new version). Then on the top right of the main waitlist page click on the Settings gear icon  and go to Custom Behaviors > Receiving Texts. Here you can turn on options to play a sound and/or highlight the section of the waitlist that has the text response alert for a customer. These settings will apply to any devices using the web version.

In the Waitlist Me apps, the Custom Behavior settings are device-dependent, so you can choose whether to have them on or off for each different tablet or phone you’re using. In the app, go to the gear icon > Customization > Custom Behaviors > Receiving Texts to edit these options. Once turned on, you would hear a chime and see the highlighted area when you have the app open on your device.

Using a paper floor plan has been common in the restaurant industry for a long time, and many software applications have incorporated spatial floor plan concepts into their designs.  Floor plans are deceptively complex to use, however, and can cost you time and money in ways you may not expect.  Waitlist Me CEO, Brian Hutchins, was recently featured in an article published on RMagazine, and goes into detail about 5 main reasons that floor plans are more complicated than they seem.

1) Key information is scattered in different directions

2) Comparing apples and oranges is difficult

3) Tables are static, but demand is not

4) Bad decisions lead to unhappy customers and frustrated employees

5) Measuring and improving results is difficult

Read  the article on RMagazine for all the details or watch the Waitlist Me video on table section management.

Aromatherapy facials, deep tissue massages, seaweed body wraps—all things R&R are on our radar this summer.

While your guests sip champagne and slip into jacuzzi tubs, we’re setting aside our cucumber slices. Why? Because dare-to-bare beach season is here! We’re revving up our waitlist and management app to help you handle the hustle and bustle of weekend trips, girls’ getaways, and long afternoons of head-to-toe pampering.

Here’s how Waitlist Me can help spas and salons crank up their customer service.

Balance walk-ins and reservations

There’s no need to fuss over the different types of clients you serve! Waitlist Me lets you handle them all with ease—and see where you can squeeze in a walk-in among a slew of reservations.

Keep tabs on multiple locations

Waitlist Me ensures that owners and managers of multiple locations don’t have to twiddle their thumbs wondering how business is going or tie up the phone lines. Our Multi-Location Management lets them check in 24/7/365 from wherever they are.

Let guests check themselves in

A line at your check-in desk can turn customers off. With Waitlist Me, though, you can quickly set up a Self Check-In Kiosk where guests can DIY instead of stand in line (and get to the R&R part of the visit way faster).

Offer accurate wait times

No more hazy estimates about how long it’ll take to finish up those French tips. Tracking actual waits next to estimates helps your staff learn to quote waits more accurately and know when things are running behind.

Ensure that every front desk attendant is in the loop

Forget about sharing a single reservation book with three hosts! Multi-Device Sync lets you put Waitlist Me on as many devices as you want, letting you ramp up staffing (and dial it down) whenever you need to.

Check availability at-a-glance

Waitlist Me is designed to be intuitive to use. That means your front-of-house staff can spend more time on customer service and less time scrolling through a zillion complicated screens.

Enable guests to wander while they wait

When a customer reaches the front of the line (or their masseuse becomes available), Waitlist Me lets you text them for free to let them know. And if they’re a few minutes away? No sweat. They can text back (and never have to worry about losing their spot).

Allow customers to make appointments on the fly

A spontaneous pedi? Why not! Our Add Yourself Web Widget is a second-tier feature that lets guests add themselves to your waitlist from wherever they are, no phone call necessary.

Offer a public waitlist

With Waitlist Me, there’s no need for toe-tapping impatience. Pop the public waitlist feature on a monitor or TV screen in your lobby, and guests can see for themselves where they are in line.

Track your ROI on-demand

Our app’s Pro-level analytics run in the background 24/7, making it easy to spot trends in the popularity of your services or employees.