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How to manage waitlists effectively at your swimming pool
With restrictions easing across the country, swimming pools are slowly resuming operations. There’s excitement aplenty at the thought of diving in to beat the heat. But with only a little over 40% of all Americans having been fully vaccinated so far, the risk of infection is still in the air. Literally!
During this time, it would be best for your pool facilities to continue to function at a limited capacity to ensure safety. But with more people eager to step out of their homes and head for a swim, it can be difficult to manage an ever-growing waitlist and adjust wait times! Diminishing wait time is one crucial way to provide a seamless experience to your pool members and manage both schedule and space.
Here’s how you can cut through the waiting clutter and set up a convenient waitlist management process for your pool customers.
How to simplify waitlist management at your swimming pool?
- Manage bookings with technology
- Maintain optimal pool capacity
- Automate your waitlist management
- Update members with automated notifications
The right application of technology to your waitlist management can help you optimize operations and keep an eye on cancellations and waitlist movement in real-time. Here's a closer look at how you can do this.
1. Manage bookings with technology
At a time when managing numbers can be an intricate and laborious task, what you need is a sustainable capacity management solution. Using pool reservation software, operators can limit the capacity online and ensure the safest pool experience for their members.
A swimming pool booking software will also make it easy for swimmers to book their time at the pool through their computer or smartphone. This solution is convenient for swimmers and your staff. It eliminates the need for staff to attend phone calls for bookings and allows them to see the current bookings at a glance on the dashboard.
2. Maintain optimal pool capacity
Capacity management using technology will ensure that only a stipulated number of people are present – be it in the reception lobby, changing room, or in the pool. This will go a long way towards ensuring social distancing within the facility during sessions. The pool staff can anytime share key information to members without a hitch, making sure they have all the information about availability they need before leaving for the pool.
Pool scheduling software is simple to operate, and your staff can create multiple time slots spread out across the day for visitors to choose from. It will also allow admins to set up limited access and manage the number of people who can attend any given session.
3. Automate your waitlist management
Start by selecting a scheduling software that incorporates waitlist data into the system. Next, your staff will be able to view all the members on the waitlist through the system. Finally, when any member cancels, the next member on the waitlist will be automatically allotted to the relevant slot.
When you automate your waitlist management, you ensure that your pool slots are always full. Even with all the last-minute cancellations and changes up until the session, you can make sure nobody misses out and your pool is at maximum capacity every time.
4. Update members with automated notifications
Online scheduling software will also help fill in even last-minute cancellations as it instantly notifies waitlisted members by automated emails. Automated waitlist management also helps members access slots and minimize no-shows at the pool and streamline the appointment process.
The swimming pool booking software has inbuilt features, including equipment booking, payment, and notification options. It helps them avoid worse queues and long waiting hours.
Also, Read How Auto-Emails can help improve customer experience.
What are the advantages of automating waitlist management?
Automating your waitlists can make a huge difference to your interface with members. It would also make your pool management easier, while ensuring your pool slots are always full. Let's take a closer look at the key advantages of automating waitlist management at your pool.
- View waitlists in real-time
- Simplify tracking
- Increase waitlist efficiency
- Improve fair access
1. View waitlists in real-time
When pool season comes by, it’s a given that everybody wants to head for a swim and cool off, but with limited slots, you’ll have to maintain an ever-growing waitlist. Managing this manually can be a cumbersome process, especially for seasonal activities like swimming, where you’ll see demand rise or fall sharply in a matter of weeks!
This means it’s all the more important for your facility to get this right! Waitlist management software solutions are designed to respond to waitlist changes in real-time and before you know it, the next person on your waitlist is already updated and ready to fill the slot. You will be able to view changes to your waitlist as and when they happen and stay on top of the process with little to no effort on your part!
2. Simplify tracking
When you have a number of people waiting for a slot, it can be difficult to keep a track of each person on your waitlist. If you need to reschedule a particular member’s booking slot, then it would otherwise mean retrieving their information manually and changing the calendar before informing the next person on your waitlist and moving forward.
With waitlist management software for your pool, you can avoid this drawn-out process and track your waitlist along with any related information with just a click or two!
3. Increase waitlist efficiency
Going through a manual booking process means managing slots on your own. Now, in spite of your diligent efforts to ensure that all your data is on point, there’s always the risk of skipping a name in the slot that might lead to you adding the next person on the waitlist. The process gets even weary with how many people might be in line.
You can avoid double-bookings and make your pool scheduling immediately efficient with the right use of technology. A waitlist management solution will automate data collection and guarantee to wipe out any possibility of errors once the data has entered the system.
4. Improve fair access
As much as you’d like to manage capacities at your pool facilities, it’s also important to remember that ultimately you have to make sure everyone has a good experience at your facility. This means thinking about their needs right from the moment they try to book a slot.
Providing fair access can be trickier than it sounds. If you are not able to organize your waitlist effectively, then you may not be able to allot slots to the right people when there’s an opening. With waitlist management software, you can automatically book slots for the next person on the waitlist as they open up and avoid any confusion in the process.
If you would like to deliver a better swimming pool experience to your community after the difficult year that was, harness the right technology to schedule better for your facility! Streamline your waitlists, optimize your booking operations, and clean up cumbersome processes effectively with Omnify’s comprehensive booking and scheduling platform. Learn more about our solutions with a FREE TRIAL today!
Related Readings:
While you operate your swimming pool at a limited capacity this season, here’s how you can simplify your waitlists with the right waitlist management software!
