What your customers see
The status page
Once somebody has joined, the status page is their copy of the ticket. It is the page that lets them leave your shop and go and do something else — which is the thing customers actually want from a waitlist.
What it shows
- Their position in line, updating live as people ahead of them are served.
- An estimated wait — the same figure your team sees, so nobody gets two different answers.
- Which branch and queue they are in, and what they asked for.
- Whatever actions you have allowed them.
It updates by itself. Somebody watching the page sees their position count down without refreshing, which is worth more than it sounds — it is the difference between trusting the wait and standing in the shop to check.
The foot of the page links to Queue Join’s terms, privacy policy and SMS policy.
Once the visit is over, and if you have a survey on for that location, the page shows a “How was your visit?” card that opens it. See surveys.
What the customer can do
Which of these appear is up to you, under waitlist rules:
- Leave the line — cancels their visit. Worth allowing: somebody who has changed their mind and cannot tell you just becomes a no-show and a wasted call.
- I’m here — tells you they have arrived, without replacing their place in line.
- I’m running late — flags a delay on your list so you can call somebody else first.
- Still coming — confirms they have not wandered off, which is what you want after a long wait.
- Correct their details — a mistyped mobile number is fixable by the one person who knows the right one.
The link, and why it is safe
The link in a customer’s messages is a short one, such as qjoin.co/aB3x9Kp7, which opens the status page. Both the short code and the address it opens are random: not guessable and not sequential. Anybody holding the link can see that visit; nobody can reach it by altering somebody else’s. The short link stops working 30 days after the visit.
The live position updates travel on a channel any visitor to your join page may legitimately listen to, so what goes over it does not contain ticket links, names or phone numbers — only enough for each phone to work out its own position. Somebody watching the channel learns how long the queue is, which is public anyway, and nothing about who is in it.
It works from any device
There is no account and no sign-in. A customer who sends the link to a partner waiting in the car has given them the ticket, which is usually what they meant to do.
Finding it again
Customers close tabs. The link is included in the messages you send them, so the confirmation message is worth having switched on for exactly this reason — it is how somebody gets back to their place after their phone locked. Where a message can point somewhere, you choose whether it goes to the status page, the booking details or the branch home page.
When it is their turn
Two buttons on your waitlist do different things here:
- Alert sends the message that it is their turn. The page itself does not change — they are still in line until they reach you.
- Start serving switches the page to “It’s your turn!” It sends nothing, because by then they are in front of you.
The alert is the moment the whole product exists for, so it is worth being deliberate about which channels you use — see channels and fallback. The wording of the message is Queue Join’s and is not editable.
While the page is open on their screen it tells us they have seen it. If a backup text or a delayed phone call is waiting to go out after an alert, it is dropped — they already know, so there is nothing left to tell them.
If they have opted out of texts
A number that has replied STOP to a Queue Join message gets no texts from any business on Queue Join, not just the one it replied to. So that they are not left waiting for a message that is never coming, the status page tells them: “You’ve asked us not to text this number, so we won’t send you updates about your place.” It asks them to keep the page open to follow their place, and gives the number to text START to if they want messages back.