Under Settings > Waitlist Settings, you'll now find a tab for Appointments where you can:
• allow customers to join a waitlist for an appointment; and
• choose to be notified when a customer does
• decide whether to automate your waitlists or add customers manually
With Automations you no longer have to manually add a waitlistee to a recently cancelled appointment. You can now choose how your customers are automatically added from the waitlist. Learn more here.
What does each setting mean?
'Manual' allows staff to reach out to waitlistees when an appointment is cancelled.
'Double Opt-in' will text the first person on the list and give them some time to respond before texting the next person on the list. You choose how much time is given.
'Fastest fingers first' texts all waitlistees for that appointment at once. The fastest to reply gets the appointment.
What's the customer experience?
When a customer is looking for an appointment to book, an hourglass symbol indicates an appointment slot is taken but that a waitlist spot is open.
If the customer clicks a taken time a warning displays to help the customer understand that they're joining a waitlist and not booking an appointment.
The customer is not charged to join the waitlist. After joining, they'll see this.
On mobile, customers will see a 'join waitlist' option. And if customers need to leave the waitlist later on, they'll see an option on both mobile and desktop to do this.
Where can staff access the waitlist?
Waitlistees will live here, under Appointments > Reservations > Waitlist.
This is the initial release of this feature -- more improvements are on the way to make it even easier to use.
We'll soon introduce automatic triggers for interacting with the waitlisted customers to add them in, but for now the list lives here, where staff can manually reach out after cancellations occur.
If staff click this dropdown menu, then 'Book Appointment, the details of the customer and Appointment they're waitlisted for will be pre-populated to expedite checkout.'
Can staff add customers to waitlists from the schedule page?
Yes, if they click any open white space as if they were about to book an appointment, they'll see this option at the top to add a customer to the waitlist.
