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 excited to announce a significant update to our iOS and Android apps, designed to enhance the experience for your frontline staff and make handling multiple visits a breeze. Our aim is to provide consistent functionality across platforms while ensuring a seamless user experience. Here's what's included in this update:

Press-and-hold multi-select
We have introduced a convenient press-and-hold multi-select feature. By simply pressing and holding on a visit, your staff can activate the bulk action mode. They can then choose multiple visits on which to perform actions. With a tap on the purple button, they can effortlessly select the desired action, improving efficiency and productivity.

Serve and alert buttons
To maintain consistency with our web app, we have replaced the current swipe actions with dedicated serve and alert buttons. Your staff will now have familiar, easy-to-use buttons for serving or alerting customers, ensuring a seamless experience across platforms.

Additionally, we have removed the three dots menu for streamlined access to additional functionality. Users can now access these features directly from the visit or customer profile, making it quicker and more intuitive to access the information they need.

Give it a go and let us know what you think!

We are thrilled to announce a series of updates that will elevate your customer experience on the Waitwhile platform. Get ready to showcase your brand with style and make a lasting impression on your guests with logo optimization, waitlist improvements, and enhanced theming. Here are the details:

Logo optimization

We have optimized the logo display in the customer registration flow to make it more prominent. The header has been removed, allowing your logo and content to take center stage in a sleek white box. Plus, if you have a logo set, the default "Welcome" text will gracefully step aside to give your brand the attention it deserves (you can of course set the welcome text to be whatever you'd like still!). 

Please note that if you have a white logo with a transparent background, take a quick look at your public page to make sure it's what you expect! If you need to update your logo, you can do so here.

Waitlist improvements

Your waitlist now also enjoys a fresh new look! The waitlist will be elegantly displayed inside a dedicated box, allowing your background image to shine through, if you've chosen one. It's a visually stunning way to keep your guests engaged and excited.

Enhanced theming

We believe in providing you with complete control over your customer-facing pages. That's why we're introducing enhanced theming options to take customization to the next level:

• Layout options: Enjoy more layout options for your welcome pages. With greater flexibility, you can design a unique and personalized experience for your customers.
• Button border radius: Select from a range of border radius options for your buttons, including the option for square buttons with a radius of 0. It's all about presenting your brand in a way that resonates with you.
• Font options: We're expanding our font library to offer you more choices. In addition to the existing Helvetica and Poppins options, you'll have access to a wider selection of fonts. From Google Fonts to custom fonts via upload, you'll have the freedom to create the perfect visual identity for your brand.

We can't wait to see how you bring your brand to life with our enhanced public pages!

Stay tuned for more exciting features coming your way soon. Thank you for choosing our platform for your customer flow management needs!

The ability to add a policy when your customers sign up is very important to many users. As part of our vision to create a continuously more seamless and customized experience for your guests, we are now introducing it as an input field type, rather than having it be a separate section.

With this new feature, you can fully customize your policy to fit the needs of your specific business, link to an external policy, or choose which policies should be displayed for which services. You can also create multiple policies if you’d like!

We understand that policies can play a crucial role in setting the tone for the customer experience, and we're excited to offer this new feature to help you create a seamless and consistent experience for your guests.

Input fields are data-capturing fields that you can choose to display to your guests in order to collect the right kind and amount of information from them to help provide a truly personalized experience. In addition to Policy, other types of input field options include Text Field, Text Area, Number, Selection, Date, Checkbox, and URL. You can read more about Input Fields and other customer-facing settings here.

To add a new policy input field, simply go to: 

→ Settings > Customers: Input fields

To improve the experience for your frontline staff and your customers, we have added automated appointment booking messages!

With these new message types, you can now easily and automatically communicate with your customers when they schedule an appointment. The first message type, Booking Request Confirmation, lets your customers know that their appointment has been requested and will be confirmed (or rejected) soon. The second message type, Booking Request Rejected, informs your customers that their request has been declined and suggests alternative options.

These messages are fully customizable in our easy-to-use editor and can be sent automatically, saving you time and improving your customers' experience. Plus, with the ability to send these messages directly from Waitwhile, you can easily manage all your customer communications in one place.

Try out our appointment booking message notifications today and enhance your customer experience even further! Set this up at: 

→ Settings > Messages > Bookings

Please note: You need to have Booking approvals activated to see this feature.

To further improve the user and employee experience regarding booking approvals, we have added a new set of user notifications, that can be triggered when a customer requests a booking or an appointment. 

With these new notification options, you can stay on top of all your appointment requests in real time. Whenever a customer submits a request, you'll receive a notification directly in your Waitwhile account (or via text or email), letting you know that there's a new appointment to manage. You can then quickly and easily respond to the request and approve or reject the booking, all from within Waitwhile.

You can of course choose how and when you receive these notifications. Plus, with our user-friendly interface, you can easily manage all your appointment requests in one place, giving you greater control over your customer flow management.

Enable booking request user notifications by going to: 

→ User settings > Notifications

Please note: You need to have Booking approvals activated to see this feature.

We take the security and privacy of our users and their customers very seriously. To further enhance our commitment, we've introduced a new automatic logout setting. This setting will log a user out of Waitwhile after a certain period of inactivity, ensuring that customer data is protected more stringently. As an admin, you can very easily choose how long you wish the timeout period to be. 

You can now focus on running your business with peace of mind, knowing that sensitive information is kept safe. Try it out today and experience an added layer of security for your customer data!

Enable this feature here: 

→ Account > Security & Data

Waitwhile is happy to announce an extremely powerful feature update for automation of the guest check-in flow: QR Serve! This functionality has been around for a while, but has been revamped and improved to better help you provide the most seamless customer or guest experience possible. 

With this improvement, you can streamline your operations by immediately moving guests to the “Serving” state from the Waitwhile app by scanning their QR code. This allows you to move your guests through the customer flow automatically, and easily track which guests have been and are currently being served, all while keeping your focus on providing excellent customer service.

QR guest serving is just one more way that Waitwhile is helping businesses manage their customer flow and enhance the customer experience. We are committed to providing the best tools and features for our customers, and we can't wait to see how this new feature will improve their operations.

This feature is available for all users on Starter, Business, and Enterprise plans. Set up your QR Scan Action and start automating your customer flows by going to:

→ Settings > Location: Serving

We are glad to present a new addition to an old feature for Waitwhile that makes it easier for cafes and coffee shops to manage their waitlists and improve the customer experience. Starting today, companies with the business type "Cafe" in Waitwhile can now enable a new option that allows their guests to join the waitlist directly from Google Maps or Google Search.

This feature was previously only available for companies with the business type "Restaurant", and we're thrilled to now offer it to cafes as well. By enabling this option, cafes can provide an even more convenient and streamlined experience for their guests, and reduce wait times for their customers.

We understand how important it is for cafes to create a positive customer experience, and we believe that this feature will help them do just that. As always, we are committed to providing the best tools and features for our customers, and we will continue to explore new ways to improve the customer experience. 

Enable this by by first making sure your business type is set to “Cafe” or “Restaurant” here: 

→ Settings > Location: General > Business Info 

And then toggling on the feature here: 

→ Settings > Public: Waitlist

We're excited to announce an update in our Developers section - Status tags for webhook requests! Now you can easily track the status of your webhook requests with just a glance. Tags show the current status of each endpoint URL - whether it's Active, Failed, or Disabled - making it easy for you to quickly identify any issues and take action.

With this update, you'll be able to manage your webhook requests more effectively, and have more control over your workflow. 

We're always striving to find new ways to improve our user experience and we believe that this feature will make your experience with Waitwhile more efficient and hassle-free.

This feature is available for users on our Enterprise plans. Check it out by going to: 

→ Settings > Developers: API & Webhooks