Waitwhile uses a dynamic system to provide accurate wait time estimates, helping you manage customer expectations and streamline operations. These estimates are continuously updated based on real-time data, ensuring customers stay informed and reducing uncertainty while they wait.
How Waitwhile calculates wait time
The system leverages historical and real-time data to predict the estimated wait time. Several key factors contribute to this calculation:
Service Time History:
Waitwhile analyzes past wait and service times to understand average service durations.
The more data collected over time, the more precise the wait estimates become.
Current Queue Size:
The system monitors how many customers are currently waiting and how many are being served at any given moment.
As the queue changes, wait times adjust dynamically.
Resource Availability:
Waitwhile considers staff or resource availability, such as employees on break or service stations in use, when calculating the wait.
Reduced resources may increase estimated wait times.
Customer Position in the Queue:
The system tracks each customer’s spot in the queue and updates their individual wait time estimate based on movement within the line.
Service Types:
If your business offers multiple services with varying durations, Waitwhile factors this in to better predict how long the wait will be.
Wait time estimation methods:
Waitwhile offers two (2) different wait time estimation methods
Intelligent
Classic
Classic wait time estimation
When activating Classic wait time estimation, you need to configure the settings correctly to have an accurate estimation. At the most basic level, this method uses your inputs to determine the expected time to service each individual in line and then together for everyone in line to get to the estimated wait time.
For this reason, service durations play the most important role in predicting the wait time of a queue, in addition to serve capacity. There are two types of duration input options to choose from:
Historical duration: Estimate the current wait time based on your historical visit durations. This works best when you have 50 logged visits or more.
Manual duration: Estimate the current wait time based on your services configured durations. For services without a set duration, you can manually add it here.
Learn more about historical and manual durations with Classic wait time estimation.
Intelligent wait time estimation
Intelligent wait time estimation takes the millions of data points captured in Waitwhile when guests wait in line to train a machine learning model to learn the patterns in wait times. Our model will learn from many data points attached to a visit such as time of day, the number of servers available, party size, and more.
The Intelligent model learns wait time patterns using hundreds of locations similar to yours. No configuration required by you!
Learn more about Intelligent wait time estimation.
Have additional questions or need assistance? Reach out to us via chat or at support@waitwhile.com.