We're releasing a new UI update in Waitwhile 3.0, aimed at enhancing the staff experience with a more intuitive, lightweight user interface. 

• Enjoy a cleaner and more efficient workflow with new icons, tab styles, and typography.
• Easily distinguish different sections with a gray background for board view lanes and fresh color schemes.
• Focus on your tasks without any clutter, as all your favorite features are retained and improved.

A number of changes to look for: 

• The design refresh throughout the Staff experience includes updated typography, button appearances, color scheme, icons, and board background on both desktop and mobile devices. None of these changes should impact current functionality.
• The tabs on the Visits page have been replaced by clickable headers, which will take you to the respective sub pages.
• The header has been standardized across all pages in the Staff experience.
• Non-primary actions across all pages in the Staff experience have been moved behind the ellipsis menu in the top right corner. For example, in addition to to Display settings, Print, and Go to registration, you can now also find Serving and Waitlist overview, Open and Close registration, as well as Table view in this menu on the Visits page. 

We are excited to announce the launch of the Waitwhile Salesforce integration, a powerful solution designed to transform your enterprise customer flow management and personalization capabilities. This integration offers customizable two-way data synchronization between Waitwhile and Salesforce, allowing you to seamlessly access and leverage Salesforce data within Waitwhile, all without leaving the Waitwhile platform.

The data is unanimous; personalization is non-negotiable. 62% of consumers say they not only want but expect personalization, and that a brand that doesn’t offer a personal experience could lose its business (up from 45% in 2021).  

Personalization and clienteling tech bring huge gains. In this data-driven era, a CRM integration isn't just beneficial; it's essential for retail success. Our Salesforce integration opens up new levels of clienteling and customer personalization - and increased sales! Once installed and configured, you’ll be able to:

• Look up walk-in clients in Salesforce directly from Waitwhile in real time. If they are current customers or prospects, they’ll show up as a suggested hit. If clicked, your data fields will be auto-completed, saving you a lot of time. 
• Have important client info at your fingertips. Once a connection has been made with a Salesforce contact, this data will show up, easily accessible in a Salesforce profile box attached to the client’s visit making it easier than ever to customize their time with you.
• Create new leads in Salesforce from Waitwhile visits. If a customer does not exist yet, a new contact will be created in Salesforce with the information you’ve entered. This means you can automatically enroll them in sequences without even leaving Waitwhile.

And this works both for when your staff is adding the visit themselves, or if the client is signing up via phone or on your website.

This integration is highly configurable and will be set up to the exact specifications of your organization, to fit seamlessly into your current tech stack and ways of working!

Learn more about the Salesforce integration in this help article.  

To streamline the process of assigning Resources to customers, we've introduced searchable dropdowns for Resources and Services. 

This means that you can:

• Quickly find and assign the right staff member, reducing time spent scrolling through a long list.
• Efficiently search with partial name inputs, enhancing the speed of resource allocation.
• Experience an improved interface, especially helpful when dealing with a large number of resources or services.

Our recent improvement in visit details now includes more comprehensive information and actions, making it easier to track visit histories and interact with customers.

This means that you can:

• Validate guest claims accurately with timestamps for tag applications or state changes.
• Prioritize and process customers more effectively, knowing the exact times of their interactions.
• Contact guests via email or phone with just one click, from within the visit details.

We're excited to introduce our revamped and enhanced customer-facing pages, taking your customer interactions to the next level. 

The Streamlined Registration Flow offers several key benefits:

• Provide a more streamlined journey for your guests by combining waitlist and booking flows, simplifying their interaction process.
• Increase business conversion by enabling guests to join a line immediately or schedule for later with MicroBookings.
• Improve user experience and accessibility, ensuring a more intuitive and user-friendly interface for all customers.

The Waitwhile rescheduling flow has received an upgrade, with the new "Visit Changed” messages now available for both waitlists and bookings. While previously you could send out a new booking confirmation once a booking was rescheduled, there is now a dedicated message type for this - available for you to customize! 

This new message type triggers automatically when a customer's visit has been rescheduled or otherwise updated. Whether it's a change in service, party size, resource allocation, or adjustments in booking time/duration, you can now send a tailored message to keep your customers informed.

You can access this by going to your Waitlist or Booking messages.

Note: If you have been using our Rescheduling feature before, the previously used Confirmation message will be copied to this new message type.

Waitwhile 3.0 is the new generation of Waitwhile and we’ve begun the rollout after years in the making. It’s blazingly fast, with a sleek new interface that makes managing your customer flows easier than ever.

Waitwhile 3.0 is completely rebuilt from the ground up with new platforms for Guests, Staff members, and Administrators. It still has all your favorite features and several new ones. Among other things, Waitwhile 3.0 ships with:

• The all-new Visits Management interface, which is a unified mission control for all your customer flows with a new board layout - and more! 
• Our brand-new Appointment Management experience, which sets new standards of usability and speed.
• New guest-facing public pages that unveil web notifications as a new communication channel, and even greater styling and customization capabilities.
• A new Analytics & Reporting engine to help you optimize your business.

Read all about the updates in this blog post, authored by our CEO, Chris Klemming. 

When do I get access to it?
Current users will get the opportunity to access Waitwhile 3.0 starting the week of June 26th. We will then conduct a partial rollout over the coming months and let users know once they can start using it. Please reach out to your CSM or our support team if you'd like early access!

We're thrilled to announce the URL shortener for SMS messages. We understand that the links in your customer communications can be quite lengthy sometimes, making SMS messages longer than necessary. This, however, increases the risk of hitting the character limit, leading to more (unwanted) messages and higher costs.

To tackle this challenge, we’re introducing a URL shortener specifically for SMS. Now, you can share your status page links (or other links!) using shortened URLs, ensuring your messages stay within the character limit and optimizing your SMS communication efficiency. Say goodbye to lengthy texts and hello to streamlined messaging!

When do I get access to it?
We are currently conducting a partial rollout, where the plan is to have all accounts updated by the end of August. Please feel free to consult your CSM if you’d like early access to this feature.

Important note! All URLs with an http(s):// prefix will be shortened. If you prefer to not shorten a specific URL, simply leave the prefix out. For example, write waitwhile.com instead of https://waitwhile.com to prevent URL shortening for a specific URL.

We are thrilled to unveil some highly exciting new features to enhance your communication capabilities. We are introducing an entirely new message channel - “Chat”. This empowers your frontline staff to engage in real-time conversations with customers or guests, fostering seamless and personalized interactions. As a staff member, you’ll see this addition as a “Send as Chat” option when crafting messages to your guests. 

The best part of all this? It’s free! We know SMS can be quite costly, which is why we believe this is going to be a game changer for your business - both from a financial and user perspective!

When do I get access to it?
You can start enjoying this time-saving and cost-effective feature very soon - as soon as you start using Waitwhile 3.0. We are currently conducting a partial rollout, where the plan is to have most accounts updated by the end of August. Please reach out to your CSM or our customer support for early beta access.

We are delighted to introduce an exciting new feature that takes customer flow management to the next level. Say goodbye to silent waitlist updates and generic chimes, and say hello to personalized customer announcements using text-to-speech technology.

With this enhancement, your waitlist will dynamically announce the name of the next customer on the waitlist. Experience a more engaging and immersive environment as your customers' names are vocalized, creating a seamless transition and improving the overall customer experience.

When can I start using it?  
Text-to-speech is available now for all accounts, as long as “Sounds” is toggled on in Settings > Public > Display waitlist. You can then switch from “Chime” to “Speech” by clicking on the cog wheel on the public waitlist page. For those that still prefer the chime, we have updated the sound to be more pronounced.