The pandemic has changed many aspects of business and everyday life, and the importance of customer convenience is absolutely not going anywhere. Consumers have become used to almost every interaction being as fast, simple, and convenient as possible, and this trend is encompassing every industry in our lives.

Grocery shoppers are still doing curbside pickup, ordering an entire household’s supplies with the tap of a few buttons.

The routine of getting a haircut includes reserving a time slot online at a salon or joining the waitlist at a barbershop.

Getting your car worked on at the dealership can now include them sending you a text when that brake job is done.

Society is quickly learning that this isn’t a fad like the Atkins diet in the early 2000s. This way of doing business is here to stay, and businesses that fail to adapt are simply going to get left behind. Customers are done with wasting away in a lobby or waiting room when they could be relaxing in the café down the street.

Here’s a quick 10 second thought exercise: Let’s say you bring your dog to one of two groomers that are right next to each other in the same strip mall. These groomers are nearly identical, and there is about a one hour service time for both of them. The only difference between the two? One of them has an electronic service that will text you when Fluffy is ready, allowing you to grab a milkshake at your favorite burger joint down the street. The other groomer has a lovely waiting room that offers the luxurious aroma therapy of wet dog scent, and the tranquil sounds of a dozen dogs that very much do not want to be getting a bath. Which would you choose?

Everyone has to wait in life, but not everyone has to wait the same. Processes that were previously mere conveniences have turned into must-have features across many industries, with wait times and crowds being two of the main factors that need to be optimized.

Keeping customers waiting can have a devastating impact on any business. They might spend less, leave a bad review, or walk out your door, never to return. Waitlist Me is an app that keeps customers happier while they wait.

How do we do that, exactly? It’s a breeze. Waitlist Me brings your waitlist from a crowd in your lobby to an easy-to-manage digital interface. Our app makes it simple to see waiting customers at a glance, provide accurate wait estimates that are tracked in real time, and notify customers with a text or automated call message when their table is ready. It also has a number of other features like reservations, table/resource management, and the ability for customers to add themselves from a kiosk, your website, Google, or even a QR code. Letting customers join the list before arriving and skip waiting in the lobby is a great recipe for customer happiness, which can also lead to higher revenues and better reviews.  

Your boutique packed with shoppers? That’s a dream come true. Your store monopolized by a line of customers waiting for a dressing room? Now, that’s a nightmare.

Long lines for changing rooms can make people walk right out the door without giving your store—or your products—a chance. Don’t lose potential sales (or risk annoying loyal customers). Waitlist Me is a waitlist app that can help you manage traffic better and improve shopping experiences. Here’s how you could use it:

Keep customers shopping, not waiting

Browsing beats out waiting every single time, and Waitlist Me helps you let your customers do exactly that. Our text notification feature makes it easy for shoppers to take another look around your store without worrying about giving up their place in line. When you add them to the waitlist, they can check their place in line from their phone or just wait for you to text them when it is their turn.

Create an in-store kiosk

Worried about seeming pushy? Enter Waitlist Me’s kiosk mode, which lets customers add themselves to your waitlist without the help of a sales associate. All you need is a mobile device, like a tablet that runs iOS or Android, and a sign, and you’re ready to go! Bonus: Kiosk mode will free up your sales associates, too, making it easier for them to focus their energies on customers.

Turn shoppers into VIPs

There’s just something nice about a sales associate knocking on your waiting room door and saying, “Sam, can I get you a different size?” rather than, “Hey, you! How ya doin’ in there?” Waitlist Me lets you personalize your customer service from your very first interaction. We even offer a notes feature, which lets associates add brief details to each customer. Shopping for a semi-formal? Got it!

Offer a personal shopping service

A boutique-level offering can elevate any store—and add to your bottom line. With Waitlist Me, you can offer personal shopping alongside the more typical DIY variety and allow customers to book the service directly from the app. Our at-a-glance visual interface lets staffers quickly see who’s waiting for what and if you need to allocate more associates or dressing rooms to one area or the other.

Track your dressing room usage

Do you have enough dressing rooms available for your customers? Could you improve your store layout or your staffing to increase turnover time without sacrificing sales or the customer experience? Waitlist Me Pro’s analytics capabilities let you track how much time customers spend in dressing rooms, which helps you make informed decisions about your store’s future.

Whether you run a four-star fine dining establishment or a seasonal fish fry favorite, the tools you use have the potential to make your restaurant…or break it.

Forget the grease pens of yore. Forget the phone ringing off the hook during dinner service. Forget the harried servers with too-full sections (and the bored ones with too little to do). Waitlist Me Pro is the tool you need to upgrade your table, resource, and reservation management.

Here are four ways the Waitlist Me Pro app can transform your restaurant business:

Divide and conquer

Tradition belongs in your food, décor, and customer service, not in your floorplan. Waitlist Me Pro scraps the laminated restaurant layout and multi-colored grease pens in favor of an at-a-glance resource management system that shows hosts instantly what tables are available, what tables should be flipping soon, and which sections should be prioritized.

The pro-level resource management features let you create different sections in your restaurant depending on the time of day, staffing, holidays, special events—anything you can think of that would change the way you allocate your tables and your servers. Save your section layouts and enlist them with a swipe of the finger. Done!

Keep waiting customers happier with better wait estimates

With Waitlist Me Pro, even the greenest of hostesses can give an accurate quote to a customer waiting for a table. The app tracks the current amount of time a groups have been at a particular tables and makes it easy to see what tables have upcoming reservations or have been assigned to waiting customers. This visibility helps hosts predict exactly when waiting customers can expect to be seated.

Bonus: Sorting by time within sections makes it easy to see which sections have more available tables and which tables have been occupied the longest and are most likely to open up soon.  Additional statistics at the top of each section show the available tables and seats as well as the percentage of tables filled so it is simple to know where to seat the next customer.

Know your numbers

Don’t just guess how many staffers you need on hand for happy hour or holiday parties, or if you should change your sections or table layouts around.  Waitlist Me Pro offers resource utilization reportsto help you make better decisions.

The app tracks your usage data, so that you can creates reports based on various parameters. How quickly are you turning over tables? How many sections should you have on a Saturday night? Can you get away with one less server during brunch? Waitlist Me Pro’s reports will help you answer these types of questions and more.

Build your brand

When competition is stiff, you need to leverage every opportunity to differentiate yourself and your dining experience from the other restaurants in your area. Waitlist Me Pro offers you a chance to stand out from the very first point of contact.

The app’s pro subscription level allows you to add your branding to the web widget, public waitlist, and customer notifications. The public waitlist personalization, in particular, includes options to change the color scheme, status messages, and personalize the HTML at the bottom of the page so you can suggest loyalty programs, list daily specials, or display other information.

Want to improve your queue? Whether you’re looking to shorten lines or lose fewer customers, you need the science behind waiting to be on your side.

Luckily, there’s an expert for that.

His name is Richard Larson, although he also goes by “Dr. Queue.” Larson is recognized world-wide for his research on queuing theory—and before you ask, yes, that’s a real thing. He’s one of the handful of scientists who look forward to the hour-long lines as amusement parks rather than the rides themselves.

Dr. Queue wiles away wait times by puzzling over what makes waiters content to queue. Larson explores what kinds of waiting environments keep customers happiest, what systems best manage traffic flow, and what causes queuers to bail rather than wait out a long line.

We designed Waitlist Me with queue theory in mind. Take a look at how you can use our app alongside the psychology of waiting to make your customers happier.

Distractions make waits appear shorter

You know the old saying, “a watched pot never boils”? It’s not quite true. The pot always boils; it just seems like it takes longer when you’re staring at it. The same can be said for any sort of wait. It’s why doctor’s offices invest in magazines and restaurants let you hang out at the bar.

Whether you manage an eatery, a store, an office, or a gym, Waitlist Me lets you notify customers when they reach the front of the line. Our text notification feature sets your queuers free, allowing them to find their own distractions until you’re ready for them.

Anticipation improves customer satisfaction

Is the food at a four-star restaurant better than the food at a neighborhood pub? Maybe. But built in to that four-star restaurant’s rating is the anticipation. Whether they’ve been awaiting their reservation or reading review after review, customers are already primed to enjoy their dining experience.

With our public waitlist feature, Waitlist Me lets you keep your diners salivating even if the bread basket is 20 minutes out of reach. You can sync the public waitlist to a TV in your waiting area and include enticing photos and videos along with daily specials.

Managing wait-time expectations leads to happier guests

Calling the cable company has gotten less painful over the last few years, yet we dread doing it. Why? Because we still remember the interminable minutes of hold music with no end in sight. The waits might still be long, but they’re much less tedious now because the companies let you know how many people are in line ahead of you.

Guests want to see a finish line no matter where or when they’re waiting. Waitlist Me’s wait time estimates and comparisons of actual and quote times help hosts and receptionists quote accurate wait times based on real-world data. And, after customers are added to the waitlist, they can check their place in line right from their smartphone.

Social fairness limits anxiety and stress among queuers

The first to arrive in line should be the first served—that’s social fairness. While it’s nice in principle, it doesn’t always make sense for businesses. Sometimes, a two-top that just walked in the door of a restaurant can be seated before a party of four that’s been waiting for 30 minutes.

Waitlist Me offer the appearance of social fairness that guests are looking for. Because our features free your customers from your waiting area, no one’s the wiser about which guest has been queuing the longest.

At Waitlist Me, we are always working on making the service better. We aspire to help more businesses improve wait experiences and customer service, and ultimately improve their business results. And we hope to help more of their customers save time, have a better day, and be happier.

It is a challenge for any company developing software or apps to know and execute on the most important ways to build a great product and service. There is no single correct path to take, but for us we think it takes a talented team, a focused mission, a lot of passion and hard work, some luck, and a few other things.

For a peek into the history and culture of Waitlist Me, check out this article. Waitlist Me CEO, Brian Hutchins, was recently interviewed as part of The Charleston Digital Corridor’s Leadership Profile Series, which is focused on the individuals who are driving the Charleston tech scene forward.