Make waits feel shorter and get customers, patients, and visitors happier using your digital signage for queue management.

Customer experience has become a critical differentiator in today’s competitive and hyperconnected marketplace. How long people wait for a service, and what they’re doing while waiting, makes part of their experience, and they expect to be WOWed by brands because they really hate to wait.

Impatience is human nature and increased digitization has built a culture of expecting instant gratification. This makes really hard for brands to improve customer service, especially when it comes down to making their customers wait because sometimes it’s simply impossible to trim down the actual wait time.

Hospitals and healthcare professionals can instead focus on managing the customer’s perception of how long they’re waiting by leveraging the power of digital signage.

The waiting room that has no wait really exists

Digital signage is a great tool to improve customers, visitors, and patient flow and satisfaction by letting them schedule appointments online, wait from anywhere and get notified when it’s their turn. Enter Waitwhile + OptiSigns.

Waitwhile is a great platform to display and manage your in-location waitlist and more. Customers, patients, and visitors can sign up for a waitlist by scanning a QR code or by text message even before they arrived. Then you can use OptiSigns to display this waitlist on your digital signs.

OptiSigns digital signage clients have achieved to cut down perceived wait times by 21% and businesses that use Waitwhile have saved +100 million customers more than 10,000 years of waiting. Impressive, right?

Let's take a deep dive into how you can improve and reduce wait times with digital signage and Waitwhile:

Make it easy for patients to check in from anywhere

Help patients feel more in control by letting them add their name to your hospital or clinic waitlist from virtually anywhere: from home, from your website, on a tablet in your lobby, or by simply sending a text. No app is required. Whether your business is first come first served, appointment-only, or both, you can adapt Waitwhile to your needs and use your digital signs to display this waiting list.

Allow patients to wait for their appointments from anywhere

Knowing when your turn will really alleviate the anxiety of waiting for an appointment in a crowded hospital waiting room. Keeping your patients in the know gives them the opportunity to do other stuff while they wait, like going to the coffee shop, taking a stroll, or simply making a phone call outside the waiting room. They’ll get a text message to let them know you’ll be seeing them soon and they can also follow the waiting list queue on your digital signage screens, across the hospital or healthcare facility.

Display precise wait times

Keep things flowing smoothly with accurate, AI-powered wait times. You can choose how your virtual queue displays on patients’ devices and on digital signage screens in your waiting area. Waitlist uses machine learning to estimate wait times and they’re tailored to your business’ unique waitlist management needs, eliminating the chance of human error. If anything changes, estimates are updated in real-time and your guests are automatically notified.

Merge appointments and walk-ins into one queue

Help staff get a more accurate picture of their day – even as it changes. With Waitwhile’s powerful queue management system automatically syncs all appointment types into one stream in real-time, so you can display on your screens real-time information all the time.

Improve hospital operations and increase patient satisfaction

Waitwhile can also help you identify and solve operational roadblocks with its easy-to-use analytics. You can see average wait times, when your facility is busiest, which employees are fastest, and more. Automate post-visit communications to thank patients and gather feedback.

Learn how to use Waitwhile app with OptiSigns here.

OptiSigns digital signage not only helps you reduce wait times in waiting rooms using Waitwhile but you can combine it with our split-screen feature to display other forms of entertainment such as:

• Playing any kind of video related to the business, or movies and documentaries for entertainment during particularly long waits.
• Display a building directory, menu, sales flyer, or practically any other information that can be conveyed with graphics and sound.
• Rotate crucial health warnings regarding viruses such as the flu. Plus you can reassure patients that they will see a doctor as soon as possible.
• Guide visitors through the steps necessary to sign up, check-in, or make a purchase.
• Offer discounts for customers, patients, or visitors who check in on social media.

It’s best to combine a few different types of content in one feed to keep customers, patients and visitors entertained and make waits feel shorter, because if you display the same content all the time, customers may find themselves annoyed when seeing the same content or message.

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