Every watersport operator knows how important waivers are. Hopefully, you never have to use them, but when you need to it’s important to have them organized and accessible. Reams of paper have been the standard since waivers were introduced. Not only are paper waivers annoying to store and sort through but they are frustrating to fill out, easily damaged/lost, and expensive. In this article, we’ll explore the key benefits of swapping from paper waivers to digital waivers and cover some ancillary benefits that you may not have considered.
Waivers are both customer facing and operationally important to your business, so let's discuss the benefits related to both sides of that coin.
Customer Facing
Picture this: A beautiful Summer day, a customer who booked online last week arrives and is ready to get on the water and enjoy themselves. Not so fast; you have to provide them with a clipboard, pen, and multiple sheets of paper to fill out prior to starting their day. After wind blowing the paper around and the customer frustratingly writing their family’s information into inconceivably tiny sections on the paper, they are ready to finally get on the water… not the best experience, right?
Digital waivers can sidestep that whole process. Upon booking the order, the vacationer gets an email with their waiver link where they can fill it out and forward it to the rest of the party. The waiver is easily filled out on their phone or computer, no pen and paper hassle.
But you ask; “What happens when they don’t fill out the waiver beforehand!”, good question, as many folks don’t. However, now with the email/text link on hand, you can resend them the waiver hours before the trip, so it’s top of mind, or they can simply fill out the waiver at your location like old times, but they do it quickly and efficiently on their mobile device. Regardless of how or when the waiver is filled out by the customer, it’s a vastly improved process that they will appreciate.
Operator Facing
Operating a watersports business is rife with challenges; from refueling time constraints to weather issues, there’s always something to contend with. Which means any opportunity to improve the workflow and reduce frustration for your staff is a big win. Removing stacks of paper from their day-to-day can free up a lot of time and aggravation. They can easily search and see who signed waivers, send emails/texts with the waiver links to customers who haven’t, and no longer need to worry about clipboards, pens, and lack of waivers on hand.
If you’re like most operators, you have a storage shed somewhere with bins upon bins of paper from years past, ugh! No one believes that is a good system, period. With digital waivers, you can store all your documents in the cloud and have them easily searchable, it’s a game changer. Additionally, you don’t have to scramble and print more when you’re low and waste funds on printer ink, paper, storage, etc. — there’s really no downside besides having to find new bonfire material.
Ancillary Benefits
I don’t believe an operator needs any more reasons to switch to digital than the above, but there are a few more. With paper waivers, unless you have an employee designated to take down emails and add them to a list, you’re missing out on marketing opportunities.
With digital waivers, the names and emails of your customers, regardless of who booked the trip, are all available digitally. This means you can exponentially build your email list and remarket to many more potential customers down the road.
You’re also free to add in additional questions in the waiver form to gain all sorts of information about your customers that would have been frustrating to do via paper/pen. It’s a marketing win/win.
Bottom Line
It’s never been easier and made more business sense to switch to digital waivers than it is now. If you’re interested in transitioning to digital waivers, we recommend Wherewolf, we’ve worked with them for many years, and WaveRez directly integrates with their product. Please reach out if you have questions about WaveRez or Wherewolf and how both softwares can improve your business and help it grow, and learn more about Wherwolf Integration with WaveRez.
About the Author
Greg Fisher
