A cancellation an hour before the visit is not just the specialist's lost time. It is also the client who asked two days ago "let me know if something frees up" and whom the administrator forgot in the rush. The waiting list takes that job off the person.
How a client gets on the list
An administrator or specialist creates the request in the CRM: the client called or wrote, there is no free time, and you put them on the list. Clients cannot join the list from the public page on their own. That is deliberate: an empty queue nobody manages is worse than no queue.
A request has:
- a date range, by default from today for two weeks ahead;
- a time of day: any, morning before 12:00, afternoon 12:00 to 17:00, evening after 17:00;
- a service and a specialist, both optional: "anyone for a manicure" is a request too;
- urgent and priority for those worth moving ahead;
- a comment.
When a slot is offered
A slot frees up when a booking is cancelled or marked as a no-show. At that moment the system looks for candidates on the list: the date range fits, the time of day matches, the service and specialist are either the same or unspecified.
The queue is built like this: first those who asked for this particular specialist, then higher priority, then whoever joined the list earlier.
There is one limit. If fewer than two hours remain before the freed slot, it is offered only to those marked "urgent". A person who planned to come sometime this week will not get ready in an hour, and the offer would only waste their 30 minutes.
30 minutes to answer
The offer goes to one candidate, not everyone at once. The client gets a message with the date, time and a link, and has 30 minutes to take the slot. The message goes through the same channels as reminders: the Telegram bot, email, or SMS if you connected it.
At the link the client sees the slot and a "Take it" button. If they made it in time, a booking is created and the request on the list closes. If someone booked that slot the usual way in the meantime, the client sees it is already taken.
No answer in 30 minutes, and the request goes back to the list while the slot is offered to the next candidate. The client loses nothing: they did not refuse, they just did not make it, and next time they get an offer again.
What the administrator sees
The waiting list section shows every request with its status: waiting, offered, booked, expired, cancelled. For offered ones you can see until when the offer is valid and for which slot. Requests whose date range has passed are closed by the system.
A request can be removed with one click: it is not deleted but marked cancelled, and the history stays.
What to do
Create the request right away while the client is on the line, and mark "urgent" for those ready to come today. The system does the rest: you learn the outcome when a booking with the comment "From the waiting list" appears in the calendar.
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