As the calendars roll over to a shiny new year, your fitness business is approaching wave after wave of busy seasons. With January comes the New Year’s resolution crowd, followed by the spring breakers and the bikini body-seekers. Make sure you have the right tools to optimize your memberships and customer service when things get busy.

Waitlist Me is the app that can help you run your gym or fitness studio better this new year. Its core features are a great place to start—learn more about them here—and here are a few additional benefits of what Waitlist Me Pro has to offer:

Get the most out of your special equipment

Specialized equipment like massage chairs, red light therapy, and tanning areas can be a big investment. Waitlist Me’s resource management feature helps you get a better return on that investment by using it more effectively.  You can set up your equipment, rooms, or special services as resources, and assign customers to those resource.

Our resource management features allow you to easily track what is in use and for how long, so you can give your customers better time estimates for availability and improve your utilization rates.  Combined with our built-in analytics system, you can get a better sense of your usage patterns.  Not sure if you should invest in another purchase? The data the app gathers automatically can help you make decisions based on facts, not guesses.

Maximize your people resources

Experts on your staff, like trainers and massage therapists, are assets you want to make the most of. Chances are you can boost their productivity—and the value they add to your gym’s customer experience—by tweaking their scheduling or the way they interact with your clientele. Waitlist Me helps you do that.

While the regular version of the Waitlist Me app lets you schedule appointments and add customers to the waitlist to meet with different members of your staff, the pro-level follows customer activity once they get off the waitlist. The downloadable reports chart the data over time, and lets you see when you need to increase (or decrease) staffing levels and if a certain specialization or individual is in high demand.

Let customers make appointments and reservations on their own time

A waitlist is all well and good, but what if your customers could go straight from the locker room into a session with a personal trainer? With Waitlist Me Pro’s appointment widget, they can.

The web widget is an easy-to-install addition to your website that lets customers send appointment requests for staff or reservation requests for special equipment or rooms. The widget allows you to set business hours for the appointments—perhaps you only want to take them during typically quiet hours, or maybe you want to use them during peak workout periods. And, unlike old-school reservations that tether an employee to the front-desk phone, Waitlist Me Pro reservations are available online 24/7, freeing up your staff and making life convenient for your clientele.

Promote specials and events

Hosting a competition? Running a sale on merchandise? Running a bring-a-friend special? Let your customers know! Waitlist Me Pro’s customizable public waitlist feature lets you display custom messages and promotions when they check their place in line.  You can bring your branding to your waitlist and include graphics, coupons, discount codes, announcements, videos—just about anything you can think of.

Let your customers check themselves into your waitlist or reservations from your website or when they arrive at your restaurant.  It is convenient for customers and will save your business time and money.

Waitlist Me makes it as simple as pasting our widget on your website or using a unique page we host for you.  And it is seamlessly integrated into our waitlist and resource management service that has been proven to reduce walkaways and improve customer satisfaction.

We have had our add yourself features available for some time, but we recently added some new features, simplified the customization and settings, and created this new video to show how it all works:

Here is an example of how it can be used for self check in at your business

Or it can be easily integrated into a website like in the example below

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.

Waitlist Me has a couple options for allowing customers to add themselves to the waitlist and reservations.  It also offers variety of ways to customize the process to the needs of different businesses.

A few months ago we released a web widget that businesses can easily add to their websites.  Many businesses told us how much they liked the new widget.  As part of the feedback we received, we found ways we could make implementing and using the new widget even simpler, and we added an option to use the widget on a hosted page.

The new widget page allows businesses to just link to their unique URL from a website, blog, email, or whatever.  The widget page is easier for less tech savvy businesses, and there is no need to involve a web developer to make sure it is added correctly to the website.

The widget page is also especially well-suited for businesses that allow people to add themselves to the list when they arrive at the business.  All you have to do is put the URL into the browser of any tablet and you have your own check-in station.  By setting the widget option to only show the “Add Yourself” screen, and not the estimated wait you might show on a website, it simplifies the page even further. You can also add custom instructions and images to the bottom of the page for more clarity.

When asking customers to enter themselves, the simpler you make the interface, the less chances there are for mistakes and frustration.  The hosted widget page makes it easy for your customers to add themselves, which makes it easier for you.

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.