Waitlists are one of the most important elements of managing a fitness business. Empty spots in classes you are obligated to operate regardless of turn out is revenue you could have generated and customer satisfaction you could have created.
Clovo offers 3 different modes of waitlist.
- Automatic – clients are automatically booked, in the order they joined the waitlist, when a space becomes available.
- Offer – all waitlisted clients are notified of the opening and the first to book wins.
- Manual – most control, least convenience.
Note that each class can have a different waitlist mode selected. So you can choose to have some classes operate an automatic waitlist, with others set to offer or manual modes.
Automatic
This is the typical waitlist style that most are used to. When a class is full, the waitlist will be opened and all clients are able to add themselves to the waitlist instead.
When somebody cancels their place in the class, the waitlist processes and the first person who joined the waitlist is added to the class, so long as their pack or membership still has credit.
If they no longer have credit or they cancel the booking, the place is offered to the next person on the list after them, and so on.
This mode is great for studio staff because it is completely hands off, requiring no input from staff at all. However, a common issue with this kind of waitlist is no-shows. Bookings are often cancelled at the last possible moment, and then next person in the list might not cancel their booking in time if they no longer want the spot.
We recommend starting with this mode and then progressing to ‘Offer’ or ‘Manual’ depending on the evolution of your community and how hands-on your management style is.
Offer
First in, best dressed. The early bird gets the worm. Round robin. You could call this mode by any of these names, but we call it ‘offer’.
When a spot becomes available in a class, the class is first locked to bookings only by those on the waitlist, then each client on the waitlist is notified by email and push notification – the first to respond and place their booking gets the spot.
This waitlist type solves the issues of no-shows that can be seen with automatic waitlists because clients need to explicitly place their booking.
The trade-off compared to automatic is that some clients may feel the process is unfair if they joined the waitlist early but were unable to respond to the notification before another member who may have joined later.
Manual
This option is for those who want fine grained control over their classes and waitlists.
In this mode, when a spot becomes open in a class, the studio staff is notified that the waitlist needs processing. Studio staff will need to choose a client from the waitlist to add to the booking, with information about date/time of joining the waitlist and in what order compared to other clients available.
This is the most hands-on approach to waitlist management offering little automation.
Waitlist FAQs
What happens if a client joins the waitlist with a membership and uses their class allowance before becoming eligible to come off the waitlist?
In general, Clovo gives more leeway to membership customers than credit packs. Membership clients will continue to be booked into their desired class if they come off the waitlist and the credit will be taken from a future period on the assumption that the client’s subscription will be resumed. If this behaviour does not suit your business, please disable waitlists and contact Clovo support.
What happens if a client joins the waitlist with a credit pack and uses their class allowance before becoming eligible to come off the waitlist?
Clients who have joined the waitlist on a credit pack and subsequently used all their credits will not be moved from the waitlist if they become eligible. When the waitlist is processed, the client will be assessed as a candidate for booking into the class based on their position on the waitlist. If they are selected but no longer have credit, their waitlist will be marked as failed, they will not be booked and the waitlist process will continue on to the next person in the list.
In this case, staff and client are both notified of the failure.
If there were no other clients on the waitlist, the waitlist lock will be removed from the opening, and made available for booking by all clients.
In this way, if the client receiving the notification of the failure due to credit pack exhaustion wants to purchase a pack and book the opening, they can providing another client doesn’t beat them to it.
Can I manually move somebody from the waitlist to a class?
Yes, you can choose to move a client from the waitlist into the class at any time, including in the case that doing so would cause an overbooking.
Can I remove somebody from the waitlist?
Yes! You can remove a client from the waitlist without adding them to the class.
The Waitlist Lock
The waitlist lock restricts booking of an opening to clients who are on the waitlist.
Once an opening accumulates a waitlist, the opening will become “Waitlist Locked” when the first cancellation occurs that results in the waitlist being processed. The waitlist lock is particularly important in manual and offer modes, but it is also applied in automatic mode as a safeguard against the class being booked by somebody who wasn’t originally on the waitlist.
You can manually remove the waitlist lock at any time, though it is unlikely you will ever need to do this.
Waitlist Limitations
Additional Profiles
Due to the unlikely nature of not one but two free spots becoming available in a class, at the exact same time, additional profiles cannot join a waitlist.
Super Credits
Super credits cannot be used to join a waitlist.
