Don’t let Amazon’s billion-dollar bank account make you close up shop. Sure, ecommerce is gaining traction, but that doesn’t mean retail is dead. Far from it!

It’s time for a retail revolution. It’s time for boutiques, mom-and-pop shops, and big-box stores alike to delve deep into the one frontier ecommerce institutions can’t touch: one-one-one customer service. Make it your No.-1 selling point, and you’ll turn walk-ins into loyal customers, and loyal customers into raving fans.

Keep reading for our best tips on how to improve your retail store’s customer service today with a little help from Waitlist Me, a waitlist and appointment app.

Ax the long check-out line (and turn returns into exchanges)

As the holiday season comes into view, we can look forward to swelling lines and swelling tempers. Instead of forcing customers into wait in endless serpentines or a series of parallel lines, try using a waitlist. When customers leave fitting rooms or start heading toward the register, add them to the list. While they wait, let them wander…and maybe add another item or two to their basket.

Set customers free from dressing room lines

What’s worse than a long line? Easy: waiting in one with hangers digging into your forearm. For those shoppers who know they’re going to try on a closet’s worth of clothes, Waitlist Me’s kiosk mode makes it a cinch for them to hop on line for a dressing room as they rifle through your clothing racks. A fitting room attendant can call them over (or text them!) when they make it to the front of the line.

Offer appointments for special shopping trips

Whether they’re hunting for 52-inch HDTVs or formal dresses, there are all sorts of different occasions where shoppers walk into stores looking for assistance. Using a simple appointment system, like the one built in to Waitlist Me, allows these customers to arrive knowing that they’re going to get VIP treatment from a sales associate who can help them find whatever it is they want to open their wallets for.

Transform complaints into kudos

When there’s only one manager on the floor to handle everything from returns to complaints about that one employee who’s having a bad day, everyone feels frustrated. A waitlist is a simple solution to keep guests happy and staffers on their A-game, and thanks to Waitlist Me’s multi-device sync feature, every employee has access to it. It makes for a smooth customer service experience (and far fewer ruffled feathers).

Create a complementary personal shopper service

Personal shopping isn’t just for jet-setters! Any retailer, from luxe boutiques to thrift stores, can bring superior service to every single customer who wants it, simply by giving them the option. Waitlist Me offers a same-day reservations feature. Shoppers can book a time that works for them and leave a note with what they’re looking for, and you can staff up (and set aside a dressing room) accordingly.

With Memorial Day Weekend behind us, it’s all tourists, all the time, for restaurants in vacation destinations. Are you ready for the crush?

While the boom can be terrific for your bottom line, a mid-summer dinner rush can be a nightmare situation for your host. And the only thing worse than a frazzled host is an unhappy vacationer. Avoid the panic and frustration with Waitlist Me, a waitlist and table management app that’ll help you run things more smoothly and bring more smiles to your customers’ faces.

Here’s our step-by-step guide to nailing your summer service:

Step 1. Greet ‘em with a smile—and an accurate wait-time

The one thing diners hate more than walking in to a wait-time is being given a wait-time that doesn’t pan out. Waitlist Me provides smart wait-time estimates that adjust as you use the app—and you can check ‘em in a glance.

Bonus! Since the app displays actual wait times right next to the estimated wait times, your team can see how they are doing and adjust as needed for lulls and surges in traffic. This simple feedback loop makes it easy to quote times more accurately.

Step 2. Ask if your guests need anything special

A highchair? Crayons for the kiddos? An accessible spot for Gran’s wheelchair? Waitlist Me allows you to make notes for every party you add to your waitlist, ensuring that no detail is forgotten.

Bonus! This is also the perfect time to ask if they’re celebrating a special occasion. If the answer is a big Y-E-S, give your servers a heads-up so they can make the groups experience at your restaurant one to tell the world (and Yelp) about.

Step 3: Encourage them to explore the area while they wait

Text notifications mean your diners don’t have to hover around the hostess stand. Once they’re added to your waitlist, they’re free to check out nearby shops or stroll down the block ‘til their table is ready.

Bonus! As soon as you add a party to your restaurant’s waitlist, they’ll receive a text confirmation with a link to your public waitlist. Let them know the link is there and that they can use it to check their place in line directly from their phone.

Want to see how other restaurants are using Waitlist Me to manage their summer rush? Click here.

Renting shoes and perfecting the art of bowling-without-bumpers is a favorite memory of Waitlist Me’s app developers, and we’re thrilled that our favorite outing of old is back in favor with everyone from teens to millennials to families with kids.

Seeing a surge in your clown shoe-clad customers? Waitlist Me is a waitlist and reservation app that can help you smoothly manage the increase in traffic—and turn new customers into loyal fans.

Here are 3 ways our app can help any bowling alley gain new business (and improve customer service) today.

Prevent walk-outs when there’s a wait

A line at the door can make any strike-happy group turn tail and hit up a pizza parlor or movie theater, instead. Waitlist Me helps you keep customers regardless of your wait time. How? By making that line disappear.

Thanks to unlimited text notifications for users in the U.S. (and pay-as-you-go texting for Waitlist Me’s international plans), you can add groups to your waitlist and then let them roam free until a lane becomes available. They could grab cheese fries and a pitcher of beer at your snack stand, shoot pool and play PAC-MAN in your arcade, or window-shop their way down the street. When they’re first in line, you can send them a heads-up via text.

Perfect for:

– Bowling alleys with limited staffing (or a small waiting area)

– Checking in large groups during peak business hours

– Bowling alleys facing lots of local competing attractions

Give large groups a great time

You brought in snacks and arcade games to serve your bowlers better. But those add-ons don’t have to be after thoughts. Now, with large groups looking for impromptu hang-out spaces, your bowling alley is primed to offer a variety of fun options for everyone, including the non-bowlers in the bunch.

You can use Waitlist Me to give everyone a chance to do whatever it is that floats their boat…without making ‘em stand around in long lines by themselves. How? Waitlist Me is flexible enough to be used for people waiting for lanes, your in-house food area, or even popular games like air hockey.  Text ‘em when it’s their turn, ensuring that they’re never sacrificing quality time with friends and family to hold their place in line.  You can manage lines for different activities with status colors or even set up a separate waitlist for areas that have regular waits.

Perfect for:

– Booking birthday parties, office outings, and other celebrations

– Special events, like trivia nights and karaoke

– Attracting big crowds for bowling league competitions

Make it easy for customers to choose your bowling alley

Who wants a hassle for what should be a fun happy hour outing? Not your guests! That’s why it’s essential to make it a cinch for your customers to decide to shoot the breeze at your business rather than another spot down the block. A parking lot and food specials are a great way to get ‘em coming in your door. Another tool to have in your back pocket: Waitlist Me.

The app is built to handle waitlists and reservations side-by-side, so you can forget about that mess of sticky notes cluttering up your front counter. Customers can call before they come, walk right in, or even add themselves to your waitlist or make a reservation online. And, thanks to the public waitlist feature, they can check your ETA from wherever they are, whether that’s the water cooler, the bar next door, or the parking lot.

Perfect for:

– Catering to the after-work crowd

– Offering pop-up events

– Handling holidays and rainy summer afternoons

The worldwide coronavirus pandemic has demonstrated just how important it is for businesses to manage what we used to consider minor details: the spaces we occupy, the items we touch, and the people we come into contact with.

But for manufacturers, distributors, and logistics professionals, there’s no detail too small to be optimized—and that’s been true for far longer than the modern world has combatted highly contagious illnesses like COVID-19, SARS, or Swine Flu. Since the 1960s, supply chains and production lines around the globe have adopted a leaner operation. It’s called just-in-time manufacturing, or JIT. 

What is JIT?

Just-in-time manufacturing is built on the principles popularized by Toyota’s production processes in Japan. It’s also known as continuous-flow or demand-flow manufacturing.

No matter the name, its goal is the same: JIT seeks to make production more efficient by ensuring that materials and finished products are always in transit rather than sitting around, waiting to be used. This decreases business overhead because goods in this system require less storage space.

It also makes for a smoother production process. Raw materials arrive the moment they are needed. Finished goods are shipped out as soon as they’re completed. There’s no lag time, no costly delays, and no square footage going to waste.

How to use just-in-time principles to fight COVID-19 (and improve your customer’s waiting experience)

Other businesses, from retail stores to restaurants, doctor’s offices to mechanic shops can put the principles that power JIT to work for both their bottom line and the overall safety and satisfaction of their customers. Watilist Me is a simple tool to make some of these concepts easy to implement.

Here are five ways your business can use Waitlist Me today to smooth out the kinks in your waiting process:

1. Let customers wait elsewhere. Waitlist Me makes it simple to text customers when ready for them and see their replies. That means you customers don’t need to be crowded in a waiting area. They can wait in their car or somewhere nearby. 
2. Keep queuers in the know. Our public waitlist feature lets your customers check their spot in line from their smartphone. With just a few taps, they can see their ETA and plan their arrival at your business just in time to be served.
3. Add guests on the go. With the add-yourself web widget, individuals can hop on your waitlist from wherever they are, whether that’s home, in transit, or in the car in your parking lot.
4. Educate customers on pick-up policies. When you add someone to your queue, Waitlist Me can send an automatic text confirmation. You can customize the information in this text to include coronavirus-specific instructions, like how to facilitate your no-contact pick-up service.
5. Confirm details using two-way texting. Waitlist Me Pro and Platinum allow businesses to send custom text responses to their customers. You can use this feature to clarify orders, pick-up instructions, or any other questions guests may have.

The public waitlist page is a unique URL for a web page that is assigned to your account, and has a number of features and benefits. Whenever a customer is added to the waitlist in the Waitlist Me application, they get a text message confirming that they have been added to the list. There is also a link to the public waitlist so the customer can check their place in line from their phone. They will see a status message at the top of the page and their initials will be highlighted in the list.

The public waitlist makes it easy for people to estimate their remaining wait without having to ask, and saves you time. It also helps them track when their turn is getting closer so they can be nearby when you are ready for them.  If a customer decides they aren’t coming, they can press on the Cancel link to let you know and a message will appear in Waitlist Me so you know to remove them from the list.

We have added some additional features to Waitlist Me Pro for personalizing the public page even more to your brand by editing the status messages and changing the colors of the page.

Color Scheme – Personalize the page look and feel by changing the page and table colors.  With control of the color of every element on the public page, it is easy to create a look and feel that fits your brand.

Here is an example of the public waitlist in default colors and with customized colors

Status Messages – The messages that display at the top of the page make it easy for customers to check their place in line, know when it is their turn, and cancel if they decide to go elsewhere.

Waitlist Message – This shows when a customer is in a waiting state and the default message is “You are number [order] on the waitlist, and have waited [time_waited] minutes” (where [order] is their place in line and [time_waited] shows the minutes waited)

Ready Message – Once you notify a customer, their public page changes to “We are ready for you! Please come by as soon as possible” and gives them options to indicate they are coming or cancelling.

Finish Message – Served – After you have checked a person off the list the message changes to “You are no longer on the waitlist” and the list of customers waiting disappears.  You could customize this message to add something about enjoying their meal or suggest leaving a positive review on Yelp.

Finish Message – Removed – If you remove a customer from the list, meaning they didn’t end up joining you, the default message is also “You are no longer on the waitlist” but you could change it to something related to being sorry they weren’t able to join.

Response Links – If you don’t want people to be able to cancel or indicate they are on their way through the public waitlist, you can remove these links