Wednesday, January 29th, 2020 .

‘Tis the season for fresh powder and freezing temperatures. This winter, ski towns across America are riding high on the sort of snowfall that would make Frosty proud. As the inches accumulate—and ski bunnies flock in droves—the small businesses that keep these high-altitude towns running are awash in customers.

How are they turning out consistently excellent customer service? They’re downloading Waitlist Me, the intuitive waitlist and reservation app designed for restaurants, retailers, and all sorts of businesses in-between. The service makes interacting with your customers a cinch from the first day the slopes open to the very last snowfall.

Not sure how your business can use Waitlist Me to improve customer service and make overall operations more efficient? Take a peek at how these winter businesses are leveraging the app to win over customers and boost their bottom line.

Food and beverage businesses

From fine dining to dive bars, American ski towns are awash with excellent eateries. Here’s how businesses are using Waitlist Me to score customer service points:

– Wrangling the queue for a popular downtown bar

– Managing the constant waitlist at a teensy locavore dining hot spot

– Arranging behind-the-scenes tours and tastings at a brewery

– Letting guests sip wine while they wait for a table

– Squeezing in a pre-run breakfast 

Resorts and hospitality-focused establishments

No matter how visitors are spending their days, they all have one thing in common: They require some serious rest-and-relaxation. Here’s how an assortment of hospitality businesses use the app to help their guests chill out:

– Booking private, slope-view hot tubs at a resort spa

– Scheduling a moment of zen with yoga classes

– Offering walk-in appointments for chair massages

– Reserving luxe recovery amenities

Retailers and recreational outfits

Niche small businesses are what turn tiny towns into delightful vacation spots. Waitlist Me enables business owners to deliver spectacular service to their customers and clientele. Here’s how they’re using it:

– Prep for incoming customers at a bike rental shop 

– Arranging private tours for parties large and small at a historical site 

– Booking beginner spots in ski school 

– Saddling up for sleigh rides 

– Scoring space on a slopes-bound shuttle 

– Fitting skis and gear on newbies at a shop 

Want to see how your business can benefit as well? Contact us for a free trial and see how Waitlist Me can change business-as-usual for you today! 

Thursday, October 26th, 2017 .

For customers who can’t tell a carburetor from a catalytic converter, it’s customer service that makes an automotive retailer or service business shine. Your under-the-hood expertise lets them trust you. But the way you treat the folks walking through your door? That’s what’s gonna keep them coming back when they’re shopping for a new vehicle, replacing a flat tire, or detailing out their investment.

Waitlist Me is an app that ensures your customers are treated like VIPs every time they’re in your waiting room. Here’s how it could help your business get a jump on your competition.

Keep customers on your lot

Car shoppers want to go from browsing to trying to buying on their time, not yours. Watching later arrivals jump the line? That’s a definite no-no—and so is tapping their toes on the sidewalk while they wonder when it’ll finally be their turn. Waitlist Me keeps things more orderly (no skipping!). Add shoppers to it when they first arrive to show them you care, and let them browse your inventory while they wait for the next available sales associate.

Bonus! When you use Waitlist Me, you can allow your customers to add themselves to your list from wherever they are. That means they put their name on the waitlist while they’re in transit—and you’ll be ready to help them the minute they pull up to your curb.

Let customers escape your waiting room

It doesn’t matter if they’re waiting for the finance department or for a patched tire: Nobody likes to hang out in a waiting room. Waitlist Me’s text notification feature sets your customers free. The app allows you to send them a quick text when it’s their turn. If they’re farther away than the water cooler, it lets them notify you that they’re on their way.

Bonus! Drop-offs keep you busy without packing your waiting room. Waitlist Me makes drop-offs better for everyone, thanks to our public waitlist feature. Customers can check their place in line to get a better idea of how much longer the wait will be, so they don’t have to keep asking about it.

Easily manage appointments and walk-ins

Most systems let you schedule appointments or walk-ins. Waitlist Me lets you do both. The app’s simple visual interface lets you scan your day’s bookings and quickly figure out where you can squeeze in drop-in customers. You can even color code different types of appointments—say, an oil change or a detail—to help you better manage your resources.

Bonus! Your employees should spend time working, not fumbling through difficult computer programs or messy appointment books. We designed Waitlist Me with ease in mind, making it a cinch to train new staff members and use every single day.

Monday, September 6th, 2021 .

Due to significant fee increases from US mobile operators for sending text messages, we will no longer be including unlimited notifications in the subscription prices of US plans. Instead, we will include a bundle of notifications each month and the ability to pay separately for messages sent above this monthly allotment. These changes will affect all new signups from September 6, 2021 and apply to existing customers from Oct 4, 2021.

Our goals continue to be to offer the best value in waitlisting and scheduling services, while providing the flexibility for different businesses to send as many notifications as they need. It is important to note that the increases in mobile carrier fees affect all services sending text messages, and we believe that even with our latest plan updates that Waitlist Me will continue to be the price and value leader in its category.

The Premium plan includes 1,000 notifications per month, Pro includes 2,500 and Platinum 5,000. For businesses with heavier messaging needs, additional text and call notifications can be sent at a rate of $0.02 per notification, deducted from a prepaid balance. 

Monthly notifications reset when monthly subscription payments are processed. For users on annual plans, they reset every 30 days starting from the original payment date. Payments for adding to the prepaid balance can be made from the Account area of the Waitlist Me website, and there are settings to make it easy to auto-refresh the balance when it gets low.

Most businesses currently using our services would not hit these notification limits, and thus would not be affected by this update. Waitlist Me has several settings and options for sending notifications, so businesses can control when they don’t need to be sent. There are ways to monitor the usage of both the notifications that are included in the plan each month as well as the ones that are charged separately. The number of monthly text and call notifications sent can be viewed in the Settings area of the apps or in the Account area of the website. The website also shows a record of messages sent and the associated costs in the Messaging Costs area of the Billing History. 

Thursday, May 15th, 2014 .

scottys brewhouse

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.

SWBar

 

 

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.

Thursday, January 10th, 2019 .

Got, say, 15 minutes to kill before your train pulls in? How about a couple hours while you wait for the new donut bakery’s latest flavor? Or maybe an easy 5 for the next available operator?

Whether you’re waiting to talk to a manager or to grab a table, these 27 factoids about the lists we love to hate will keep you occupied. Happy toe-tapping!

You’ll spend an average of 2 years of your life waiting in line. Sorry in advance. https://www.therichest.com/shocking/15-weird-and-depressing-facts-about-waiting-in-line/

You’ll feel less anxious if there’s a single line rather than multiple lines. It feels fairer that way, but you’re still going to worry about line-cutters. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/27/what-you-hate-about-waiting-in-line-isnt-the-wait-at-all

Americans hate the DMV the most. Honorable mention: customer service hotlines.

But Americans love waiting for some things. Like event tickets, delicious food, and Splash Mountain.

And the more something costs, the longer people are willing to wait. See: iPhones, Hamilton tickets, and Splash Mountain.

The key to keeping waitlisted customers content: Distract them. Give them something to do, watch, or read while they wait.

In New York, you wait “on line.” Sorry, grammar nerds. http://mentalfloss.com/article/82257/12-impatient-facts-about-waiting-line

It takes a lifetime to get Green Bay Packers season tickets. Only 90 or so are released every year. With a waitlist of over 130,000 fans (many of whom were added by their parents when they were born), you’re talking about decades of playing wait-and-see. https://247sports.com/nfl/green-bay-packers/Bolt/Green-Bay-Packers-season-ticket-wait-list-at-133000-people–113926844/

Good news: approximate wait times make lines seem shorter! It gives you something concrete to look forward to.

Bummer: Statisticians have noticed an increase in “waiting culture.” Trendy neighborhoods and affluent cities are seeing an influx in no-reservations policies at hip new restaurants, which means waits are becoming the norm in some areas. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/upshot/the-upside-of-waiting-in-line.html

You’ll always see waitlists hit the nightly news on Black Friday. Throw a gaming system in the mix, and all bets are off.

The Netflix queue was created by chief product officer Neil Hunt. He’s British. In August 2013, Netflix ditched it’s infamous “instant queue” in favor of the “my list” feature. https://newrepublic.com/article/116996/netflix-queue-and-history-british-word-america

The Netflix thing makes sense when you know that the word “queue” is super British. It’s so British, it’s included in citizenship tests.

Well, the actual word “queue” is French. It was defined to mean “a line” in 1837 by Thomas Carlyle, who likened the line-up of people he saw outside shops in France to a man’s ponytail, which the French called “a queue.”

The most iconic British queue is at the bus stop. Forget about snapping selfies in front of a phone booth. Pull up a piece of pavement, instead. http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-23087024

The politest queue of them all is for Wimbledon’s final matches. Tennis whites suggested but not required. http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-23087024

You’re least likely to see a queue at the local pub. And, alas, it’s probably where it would most come in handy, too. Anyone for a pint?

The quintessential queue joke: “What is this queue for?” “I don’t know, but I’ll find out when I get to the front!” Seriously, people say this.

There’s also a legend about the people who study the psychology of waiting. It goes something like, “a lawyer, a secretary, and an ad exec are waiting for an elevator…”

Canadians use the term “lineup.” Turns out they kick butt at merging in traffic.

And Canucks are better than Brits at some queues—er, lineups. When waiters need to organize their own lineups, like at building entrances or street-front ATMs, Canadians are the champs.

If you want an even more polite lineup than those found in Canada, head to Japan. http://nationalpost.com/news/canada/everyone-line-up-canadas-tradition-of-orderly-queuing-foreign-and-strange-to-many-newcomers

Also: Canadians hate line-cutters. Tourists beware!

If you cut in line, you stand a 10-percent chance of getting shoved. Don’t say we didn’t warn you. http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170320-we-hate-to-admit-it-but-brits-arent-the-best-at-queuing

Australians wait the longest for new iPhones—and they get them first. That’s because the sun rises in the east, of course. In 2015, Lindsay Handmer camped for 2 days to get the iPhone 6, and he did it to bring awareness to the homeless who sleep on the streets nightly. YouTube star Mazen Kourouche camped for 10 days…and then the launch event was delayed. Whoops! https://www.pymnts.com/apple/2017/iphone-release-iphone-sales-news/

You have to wait in line on Mount Everest! So much for that “alone at the top of the world” feeling. Also: Sometimes people die in line. Yikes.

The longest line in the world is the Haaj. This religious pilgrimage to Mecca takes place every year in Saudi Arabia.