The Front door tablet

A tablet at the entrance where each customer signs herself in. Everyone who walks in is counted, even if she doesn't buy, so your close rate is honest.

Set up the tablet

1. On the tablet, sign in as an owner or manager the usual way, with your email code.
2. Open Settings, Appointments & rooms, and find the Front door card.
3. Press Make this tablet the Front door, give it a name (like Front door) and confirm.
4. You are signed out on that tablet and it opens to the welcome screen. That's it.

The tablet keeps its own key. It is not anyone's sign-in, it only works for this store, and it can only sign customers in: it cannot read anything. If the tablet is lost or replaced, press Turn off beside it in the same card and it stops at once. Setting it up needs a full email sign-in, not a PIN, and BridalIQ support can't set it up for you.

Keep the tablet on the welcome screen

Lock the tablet to the welcome screen so nobody can leave it:

• iPad: open Settings, Accessibility, Guided Access and turn it on, set a passcode. Then open the welcome screen and triple-click the top (or home) button to start Guided Access. Triple-click again and type the passcode to leave.
• Android tablet: turn on Screen pinning (Settings, Security or Biometrics and security, Advanced, Pin windows). Open the welcome screen, open recent apps, tap the app icon and choose Pin.
• Add it to the home screen so it opens full screen: in Safari or Chrome, choose Share or the menu, then Add to Home Screen. Do this after setting it up, while you are on the welcome screen.

Also turn off auto-lock (or set it long) in the tablet's display settings, and plug it in.

What she sees

A welcome screen: Welcome! Please sign in. With big buttons she types:

• first and last name and her mobile phone;
• her email and her wedding or event date (both optional);
• what she is here for (your appointment types, or Something else) and how she heard about you;
• a box, never ticked for her: Text me about my visit. Under it she reads We'll text you once to confirm. Leave it unticked and we don't text her.

Texts never turn on at the tablet itself. Anyone at the door could type someone else's phone number, so when she ticks the box your store sends her one text from its own number: Your Store: Reply YES to get texts about your visit. Reply STOP to opt out. Texts turn on only when a YES comes back from that same phone within 7 days (YES, Y, yes! and Yes please all count). We keep the wording she saw, the time, and that it came by Reply YES in her history. No reply means no texts.

• A number that texted STOP is never sent the confirmation, and STOP always wins. To get texts again after a STOP she texts START (or UNSTOP), as before.
• A YES on its own, when no confirmation was sent to her, doesn't turn texts on. Turn them on in her record once she tells you, or tick the box at the tablet so she gets the confirmation.
• If your store's texting isn't approved yet, nothing is sent. A note on her record and her visit asks you to check it is her own phone before you turn texts on yourself. Nothing is sent later on its own.
• A number gets at most one confirmation every 24 hours.
• The confirmation goes out right away between 8 AM and 9 PM store time. At any other hour it waits until 8 AM.
• If texts are already on for her, no confirmation is sent.

Then she sees Thanks, Sarah! Someone will be right with you. and the screen clears itself after a few seconds. A half-filled form clears itself after two minutes. The tablet never shows other customers, appointments, prices or any other screen, and has no way to leave the page.

Pressing the button twice makes one visit. If she is on today's calendar and not checked in, she is checked in on that appointment; if she is already checked in, nothing new is made. Otherwise a walk-in is made for now with no consultant, and a customer record if she is new. She is matched by phone number first, then email, only inside your store.

The tablet never changes a customer you already have: it doesn't write over or fill in her email, phone or name. If she typed a new email, or her name is spelled differently, a note on her record and her visit says so, for you to confirm with her. Her Thanks screen is the same whether she was found or is new, so the tablet can't be used to find out who your customers are.

Each tablet takes up to 100 sign-ins an hour, and the same phone number up to 6 an hour (enough for a mother signing in her daughters). Past that it asks her to wait a few minutes.

What your team sees

• On the Calendar the visit shows Walk-in, waiting with the time she arrived. Open it and press I'll take her: the visit becomes yours. If someone got there first, you are told who has her.
• A phone alert, Sarah Jones just checked in at the front, goes to people who have phone alerts on. Each person can turn it off, and it waits for quiet hours.
• A front-door check-in counts as came in the close rate, the same as checking her in at the desk.

The end-of-day question

When a manager closes the drawer, BridalIQ asks Any walk-ins today who weren't checked in? Type a count for each consultant who helped someone who never signed in, or press Skip. It is optional, and managers can change it later from the End of day screen.

These counts are kept apart from real visits. On the Consultants table they show as Walk-ins not checked in (from end of day), and a separate column, Close rate including end-of-day walk-ins (under More), adds them to the people who came. The main Close rate is never changed by them.