A popular feature in Waitwhile is the ability to automatically send your staff members an SMS, Email, or Push notification whenever someone is waiting for them on your waitlist or booking calendar.
Configuring team notifications ensures your staff stays informed about important customer actions and operational updates, reducing the need for manual check-ins. Follow these steps to customize notifications according to your business needs.
Steps to configure team notifications
1. Access notification settings
Log in to your Waitwhile account.
Go to Location settings > Team Notifications to configure what you want the notifications to say.
2. Select notification events & triggers
To make tracking the guest journey intuitive, all internal team notifications and customer messages are automatically organised in chronological order rather than alphabetically.
Each notification is named to accurately reflect the actual state of the visit (for example, the notification for an alerted guest is listed as Waitlist visit alerted).
Choose the events and precise triggers relevant to your operations:
New Customer alerts: Notify staff when a customer joins the waitlist or books an appointment.
Arrival notifications: Alert the team when a customer has checked in and is ready to be served.
Visit changed updates: Get granular control over when a change notification is triggered. You can choose to send alerts only when specific properties change, including:
Party size
Service
Resource assignment
Date
Duration
Cancellation notices: Inform staff when a customer cancels so they can adjust schedules.
Appointment changes: Alert staff about rescheduled bookings to prevent missed appointments.
3. Use conditional logic
To boost staff efficiency and cut down on SMS costs, you can use conditional logic to control when staff receive notifications. This delivers the right information from the right location at the right time based on your workflow.
4. Enable notifications for resources
You can send notifications directly based on resource assignment. This allows staff members to get an instant alert when a guest is assigned specifically to them.
Managing staff permissions & settings
By default, team members can turn on their own ability to get messages under their personal notification preferences. However, Waitwhile provides granular admin controls to centralize this setup.
Granular user setting controls (Admin Only)
Admins can lock user profile fields like Name, Email, or Notifications to prevent staff from changing them themselves. Restricting staff from altering notification preferences gives management sole authority over communication, ensuring critical team alerts are locked in and never turned off.
Note: To manage these permissions, navigate to Account Settings > Users.
Individual staff setup
If the admin has granted update permissions, staff members can manage their channels manually:
Navigate to User Settings > Notifications.
Choose to send notifications via SMS (available only on Business and Enterprise plans), Email, or Push.
Adjust preferences to receive alerts for all customers or customers assigned to me only.
Note: For real-time updates while actively working in the platform, staff can also toggle on Show in-app notifications to receive 8-second pop-up alerts across any page.
Have additional questions or need assistance? Reach out to us via chat or at support@waitwhile.com.