Brilliant! Finally a replacement for restaurant pagers
Jed | May 8, 2008About a year ago I wrote a blog post about why I thought restaurant pagers were dumb. The main point of the post was that everyone has cell phones nowadays, so why not use those instead of limited-range, bulky pagers. This has been a pet peeve of mine for quite some time. So imagine how excited I was to be alerted (by a comment on that post) to a new company that is trying to do exactly that.
Qless (pronounced, I assume, “Queue-Less”… very clever) sells a hosted software service (SaaS is so hot right now) which lets companies notify customers via their cell phone when it’s their turn in line. The system even supports text messages if cell coverage is not great in the area of use.
Originally pitched as a way to reduce long airport lines (see 1 and 2) it looks like they’re reaching out to more places where lines are common - theme parks, restaurants, even casinos (does the hot Blackjack table automatically call you when a seat opens?).
I think this is a great idea. Imagine being able to walk to your local super-hip restaurant, get in the queue, and then go shopping or even go home and watch a quick show. Ah, the future is glorious.
The website doesn’t explain how their hosted, web-based system will integrate with companies’ POS systems. But hopefully they’ve worked all that out and it we’ll see something like this at a restaurant near us soon.
