What we shipped: 21 new features and counting
The 21 most interesting new features we launched the past month.
One of the values we live by here at Waitwhile is that shipping is our heartbeat. This encapsulates our belief that shipping is just the beginning; that getting features in your hands is the quickest way to get feedback to learn and improve!
So without further ado, here are the 21 most interesting new features we launched the past month.
Bookings and scheduling 📅
Waitwhile now lets you manage appointments alongside your waitlist. With our powerful booking feature your customers can book available times online and get reminded with SMS and email. Turn on Bookings!
1. Online booking scheduler
Let your customers book available times online on your Waitwhile Online Booking scheduler. You can embed it on your website or under your Facebook page.
Find your booking link under Booking Settings.
2. Staff member calendars
One of the awesome things with Waitwhile Bookings is that each of your staff members gets their own calendar and can be booked separately.
Check out your booking calendar.
3. Let customers reschedule bookings online
Trying to reschedule a booking with a customer over phone is a pain! Waitwhile removes the need for that by letting your customers easily reschedule their appointments straight from their phone.
When they're booked for an appointment, they get text with a booking confirmation where they can see and manage their time themselves!
4. Keep your staff informed of booking changes
Waitwhile automatically sends Emails to your staff to let them know if a customer cancels or reschedules an appointment. No need for them to keep checking the calendar!
Turn this on under Settings > Email > Bookings > Staff alerts.
5. Allow many spots for every time slot
Do you want to let 5 people sign up for the 10:00-10.30 time? Or maybe 60 people?
You can now allow as many spots per time slot as you want! Just update this under the Booking settings.
Messaging and alerts 💬
One of the best parts with Waitwhile is our powerful SMS and email messaging functionality. Here are some new awesome features in this space!
6. Sign up to your waitlist with SMS
You heard right, your customers can now sign up to your waitlist by just sending a simple SMS! If you thought your online Check-In was easy, wait until you see this:
- Turn on "Allow sign-up to your waitlist via SMS text" under Waitlist Settings
- Try texting “add [waitlist id] [name]” to +1 (415) 702-4476.
- Check out your waitlist! Do you see how you auto-magically got added?
For example, "add klemmermans John Smith" would add John Smith to the waitlist "klemmermans".
Let your customers know about this super simple way of signing up to your waitlist and they will think you’re a genius (and you are).
7. Send your customers a “Thanks for visiting” text 🙏
Waitwhile now comes with a new "Completed text" that send automatically when your customer’s visit is over. This is awesome for thanking them and sharing a survey. Turn it on under SMS Settings!
8. See what happened with your SMS
When you send an SMS to someone, a ton of unexpected things can happen. It may be blocked by the recipients carrier, the number may have been misspelled or it was a landline, or it just got lost along the way. But hopefully it successfully landed in their inbox!
With Waitwhile, we now should you exactly what happened with each SMS you sent out - straight in your waitlist.
9. Introducing SMS reply triggers
Want to know if your waiting customer has arrived? Or if their appointment is confirmed? Or how about if they're running late?
With Waitwhile Reply Triggers you can now let your customers reply any trigger word via SMS and it will show up in your waitlist.
Here is an overview of the trigger words we are supporting by default:
It gets better - you can even add your own Reply triggers!
Analytics & Insights 📈
10. Get a list of customers you served today
Need to keep your books straight? Or make sure your staff members aren’t cheating you?
Now you can quickly see who you served today, yesterday or any day. See your Served Today report.
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You can even print and export to Excel with a click!*
11. See your analytics by date range
Your waitlist analytics just got powered up!
With the new Date range feature you can select any day, week, month or year to see your stats. Compare trends over time and learn about your peak hours.
Opening hours and availability 🕒
We've been busy at work to give you more control to set when your waitlist and bookings are available for your customers to use.
12. Set your hours by date
Do you have different hours during the holidays or are you taking some time off in October? You can now set detailed opening hours by dates with our Detailed Hours setting.
Just go to your Business Info page and click on "Set detailed hours by date" under the Opening Hours section. This will open up a detailed calendar view where you can click on any date to set the hours for that date. You can even select a range of dates and update them all at once!
13. Set different hours for your waitlist, bookings and general business
Just because your store is open, maybe you don't want people to sign up to your waitlist or book appointments? Now you can set different hours for each!
Just click on "Edit opening hours" under your Business Settings to get started!
14. Support for different timezones
We now have a handle on different timezones (they are very confusing!) and our system will need keep everything syncronized across all the timezones of the planet!
Make sure that your timezone is correct under the Business Info page.
15. Date and time settings
Do you want times to show in AM/PM or 24 hour time? Do you like dates to be displayed 9/6/2017 or 6/9/2017? Or maybe you'd like your day names to show up in Swedish (måndag-fredag)?
Whatever your fancy, you can now set your preferences under Business Info page
Integrations and API ⚙️
We always wanted Waitwhile to be part of a bigger ecosystem of tools. We do an awesome job at solving your queuing needs, but don't want to replace your Point of Sales system or CRM. Rather, we want Waitwhile to play together with your other systems in a beautiful harmony!
That's where our integrations come into play.
16. Connect with our Waitwhile API
API is just a fancy way of saying that Waitwhile can now be connected with all your other tools. Want your Point of Sale system to send new customers directly to your waitlist? Or upload your Waitwhile customers into your CRM? You now can, plus so much more! Get started with the API.
17. Embed Waitwhile on your Facebook page
Let your Facebook visitors book an appointment or sign up to your waitlist. See how to get Waitwhile connected with Facebook under the Integrations page.
18. Track AdWords conversions
You do online marketing, right? If you do, then you probably use Google AdWords to drive visitors to your website or waitlist check-in.
We now let you track how many of your AdWords ads lead to customers signing up to your waitlist or book appointments. So you can make intelligent marketing decisions, like a pro!
Set this up under the Integrations page.
19. Add your waitlist to your website
We've now made it super easy for you to embed your waitlist and check-in directly on your website. You can even add neat "Get on Waitlist" buttons!
Check out the instructions under the Integrations page.
Customization 🔧
20. Add your policy
If you want to stay legally sound or just be informative about what your rules are to your customers, you can now set your Business Policy that will show up under all your customer-facing pages (e.g. check-in, public waitlist, booking scheduler and more).
21. Autofill customer data
Now when a new customer is added to your waitlist we will prefill all their information once we find a match. For example, if John Smith has visited before, once you enter his full name his email and phone will be completed.
You can turn this feature off under Settings > Waitlist > Advanced
Hope this was helpful! We promise to keep shipping improvements every day and we would love to learn from you what you want us to ship. Just send us an email on hello@waitwhile.com with your ideas!
Happy waitlisting!