Configuring your wait time in Waitwhile ensures customers receive accurate estimates, improving their experience and operational efficiency.
How to configure your wait time estimation:
Step 1: Access Settings
Login into Waitwhile and go to settings
Under Customer Journey, select Waitlist
Click on Wait time estimation
Step 2: Define serve capacity
Capacity limit lets Waitwhile know how many customers or parties you can serve simultaneously to better estimate the wait times. Wait time estimations will decrease as you increase the Max Simultaneous Served Visits.
Example:
If you always have two (2) cashiers working, you can serve two (2) customers at a time
If you are using Resources, this setting will be unavailable, and Waitwhile will automatically use the active resources to determine the serve capacity for booked appointments. For walk-ins, the wait-time estimator relies on live conditions such as queue size, resource availability, and historical durations.
Step 3: Pick an estimation model
Waitwhile offers two (2) different wait time estimation methods
Auto configuration: This model learns wait time patterns using hundreds of locations similar to yours, without any configuration required by you.
Custom configuration: This model uses historical or manually set visit durations to determine the expected time to serve each individual. Under this model, you can configure the following sub-settings:
Visit duration: Match this to your service duration.
Service duration: Enter your target service duration (e.g., the average time to serve one customer).
Max simultaneous served visits: Set this to your actual concurrent capacity (e.g., the number of customers you can serve at once).
Step 4: Display as range
Determine how you want to display your wait time. You can provide an exact estimated time (e.g. 5 minutes) or as a range (e.g. 5-10 minutes).
Enable the check box if you want to display your wait time as a range.
Note: When configuring a location's wait time estimation settings, you will see an overview of which resource categories are included in that location's calculations.
By properly configuring these elements, Waitwhile ensures more accurate wait time predictions, enhancing both customer experience and operational flow. Regular reviews of your wait time data will help you further refine these settings over time.
Have additional questions or need assistance? Reach out to us via chat or at support@waitwhile.com.