Waitlist

Don’t turn away potential customers who are interested in reserving an experience that is currently sold out. If there’s a cancellation, fill those newly opened slots automatically from a waitlist. If a visitor is interested in an experience and has flexibility for when they can attend, allow them to join the waitlist for a block of time to keep all of your experiences reserved to capacity.

If Waitlist is turned on for a given experience, customers will be presented with the option during checkout to “Join Waitlist” when an event time does not have enough open spots to accommodate them.

You can also manually add a customer to the waitlist from your Xola Dashboard. 


What's covered in this article:


How to enable Waitlist

  1. Locate Waitlist in the Xola App Store and select it.
  2. Click INSTALL > Agree > Finish

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Configure waitlist for an Experience

  1. Navigate to Products → Experiences and select the pencil icon to edit your experience
  2. Select Waitlist from the left side menu.
  3. Toggle Enable Waitlist for Back Office and/or Enable Waitlist for Checkout
    • For Checkout Only: Either use the default or custom checkout message that is displayed to your customers when there is an event time available for waitlist. 
  4. Decide if you want to send invites to customers automatically when there are enough open spots to accommodate a waitlisted group
    • All waitlisted groups that can fit the open spots
      • Ex. Send an email automatically to any customer that fits into that event time and the number of seats that just opened.
    • Groups whose waitlisted quantity would fill up at least X % of open spots
      • Ex. You have set the percentage to 50%, and there are two waitlisted groups -- one with 5 guests and another with 2 guests. If 6 spots open up, only the group of 5 will be invited.
      • This helps prevent smaller groups from taking up spots that larger groups could have potentially used.

Ensure email notifications are enabled for waitlists (go to Settings → Notifications and check Join Waitlist). If this setting is disabled, customers will not receive an email when they join a waitlist.

Waitlist - Notifications.png 


Waitlist Example

If you configure the waitlist for your experience like this:

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And your event has 10 spots open up due to cancellation or due to your increasing the event capacity from the roster.

Then any waitlisted groups of 10 or fewer will receive the following email:

Waitlist - Spots available email.png

 

Waitlist: Front End Checkout

This text will display to your customers inside of checkout when they have selected an event time that does not have enough open spots to accommodate the number of guests entered in the Quantity section during checkout.

You can customize the text customers see in the waitlist configuration for the experience. 

Screenshot_2022-12-07_at_2.42.41_PM.png

 

What the Customer will see

Say that a customer wants to book the 6:00 PM time slot on June 12th, but it is already at capacity. That customer would see the following at checkout:

Waitlist - Front end checkout.png

Once they've entered all of their contact information, they can click the JOIN WAITLIST button to join the waitlist.

A customer has the option to give a flexible time range they would be able to visit.

  • If they opt-in they will be put on the waitlist for the time range they entered. If the spots open they will receive an invitation to book via email.
  • They will also be presented with other event times that are open if in the time range they enter.

Waitlist - Checkout available timeslots.png

Customers who successfully join the waitlist will see this message, along with the option to continue shopping:

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They'll also receive an email notifying them they are on the Waitlist.

Make sure that you go to Settings → Notifications and click the box next to Join Waitlist.
If this setting is not on, a customer will not receive an email when they join a waitlist.  

Waitlist: Back Office

If Waitlist is turned on for a given experience, you will be able to waitlist a customer from your Xola dashboard. 

When the waitlist for the back office is enabled, for all events with 0 availability (future events only), you will see the Join Waitlist button. 

Note: The Waitlist is directly correlated to reservations that come in and consume the capacity set for an event. That being said, capping or blacking out an event will disable Waitlist functionality for that event in back office and front-end checkout.

Dashboard - Enter waitlist.png

Should you click the Join Waitlist button, a pop-up window will ask you to gather additional information from the customer to join the waitlist

Waitlist - Dashboard Join.png

You have the option to give a flexible time range they would be able to visit.

  • If the customer opts in they will be put on the waitlist for the time range you entered. If spots open for an event within the specified time range, the customer will receive the email to book.

The customer will receive an email notifying them they are on the Waitlist. 

 

View Waitlisted customers

When on your Dashboard, you can easily see in all views (List, Day, week, and Month) how many waitlisted guests you have for each time slot. Waitlisted guest counts will show under your reserved guests. 

Waitlist - Dashboard Reserved view.png

You can also filter by Waitlisted customers, to easily see which event times have customers waiting to join. Navigate to your Dashboard , Next to the Reserve view, click on the Waitlisted view.  Now you will see only event times that have waitlisted guest. 

Waitlist - Dashboard.gif

From the roster, you can select the 3-dot menu to the right of a waitlisted group to see available actions.

Waitlist - Roster view.png

The confirm option will not show if the event does not have capacity. If you click confirm you will be given options for how you wish to collect payment.

The invite to book button will also only be displayed if the event has capacity. Once you choose this option, your customer will receive an email inviting them to confirm and pay for their waitlisted reservation.

  • If they have a flexible time they selected during checkout, you will be given the option to choose which time slot you want to invite them to:

The remove from waitlist option will always be available and allows you to remove a customer from the waitlisted group if they wish to be removed.

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