Never lose a potential booking again due to a fully booked schedule. The Bookly Waiting List add-on is an essential tool for service-based businesses that want to maximize their revenue and maintain high customer satisfaction. By allowing clients to join a waiting list for fully booked time slots, this plugin ensures that when a cancellation occurs, your empty spot is filled automatically or with minimal effort, keeping your calendar productive and your clients happy.
Key Features
- Automated Waiting List Management: When a specific service or staff member is fully booked, the plugin automatically offers visitors the option to join a waiting list for that slot.
- Customizable Notifications: Send automated email or SMS notifications to waiting list members the moment a spot becomes available, ensuring they are the first to know.
- Flexible Booking Options: Choose between manual booking by the customer or automated systems where the first person to respond secures the newly opened spot.
- Seamless Integration: Designed specifically for the Bookly Pro booking system, it integrates perfectly with your existing booking workflow without requiring complex configuration.
- Staff and Service Specific: Manage waiting lists granularly by individual staff members or specific services, giving you complete control over how your availability is handled.
- Client Engagement: Reduce bounce rates by giving customers a clear path forward even when their preferred time is unavailable, rather than simply turning them away.
Use Cases and Who It’s For
The Bookly Waiting List add-on is designed for any professional who relies on an appointment-based business model where demand often exceeds supply. If you find yourself frequently telling clients that you are fully booked, this tool is for you.
Medical and Dental Practices: Busy clinics often deal with last-minute cancellations. A waiting list allows you to fill those gaps instantly, ensuring that your medical staff remains productive and patients get the care they need sooner.
Salons, Spas, and Barbershops: High-demand stylists and therapists often have months-long waiting lists. This plugin automates the process of filling sudden openings, preventing lost revenue from no-shows or late cancellations.
Consultants and Tutors: For professionals with limited hours, every slot is valuable. Instead of manually emailing a list of people when a client cancels, the system handles the communication for you, allowing you to focus on your work rather than administrative scheduling.
Setup and How It Works
Getting started with the Bookly Waiting List add-on is straightforward, as it is built to function as a native extension of your existing Bookly environment.
- Installation: Install and activate the add-on within your WordPress dashboard, ensuring you have the core Bookly Pro plugin already active.
- Configuration: Navigate to the Bookly settings menu where the new waiting list options will appear. Here, you can enable the feature for specific services or staff members.
- Customization: Configure the notification templates. You can personalize the email and SMS messages that waiting list members receive, ensuring your brand voice remains consistent.
- Client Experience: Once enabled, when a customer attempts to book a time slot that is already at capacity, they will see an option to join the waiting list. They simply enter their contact details, and they are added to the queue for that specific slot.
- Automatic Alerts: When an appointment is cancelled, the system triggers the alert process based on your settings, notifying the waiting list participants that a spot has opened up.
Similar Plugins
While various appointment booking plugins exist in the WordPress ecosystem, the Bookly Waiting List add-on is unique because it is purpose-built for the Bookly ecosystem. Other booking solutions like Amelia or LatePoint offer their own proprietary waiting list functionalities, but they are generally not cross-compatible. If you are already committed to the Bookly framework, this add-on provides the most stable and integrated experience for managing your capacity.