What the CRM app is
NOWAITN CRM is the customer-record backbone for the rest of the platform. Instead of each app — Queue, Reservations, Printing, HCM — keeping its own copy of the same person, every app reads and writes against one shared contact, account, and deal record in CRM. The guest who joined your waitlist at 7:12 PM is the same contact your host called this afternoon, the same account on the reservation confirmation print, and the same record your manager is about to log a follow-up note against.
If you’ve ever had to reconcile a reservation system against a separate loyalty database against a separate email list — that class of problem goes away when every app points at the same customer table.
How customer data flows
Every customer interaction — a walk-in to Queue, a booking on the Reservations widget, a print job generated from HCM — flows through the same three stops:
+ activity log
Arrows run both ways between spoke apps and CRM: apps publish events (a reservation was confirmed, a ticket was closed) and CRM consumes them to move deals forward; CRM also publishes events (a new contact was created, an account was merged) that apps downstream subscribe to.
The three primitives
- Contact — a person. Has a phone, email, and notes. The guest who joined the Queue. The diner who booked the table. Every other app references a contact when it needs to “who is this?”
- Account — a company, household, or organization. Groups contacts together. A corporate account with ten diners on the same reservation is one account with ten linked contacts.
- Deal — an opportunity moving through a pipeline. Has a stage, a value, and a primary contact. Catering inquiries, private-event holds, enterprise renewals, sales follow-ups — anything with a will they / won’t they.
Apps that read from CRM today
- Queue — when a guest joins the waitlist, CRM attaches their name and phone to the existing contact (or creates one). Next time they walk in, the host already knows they’re a regular.
- Reservations — confirmations pull the guest’s preferred name and dietary notes from the CRM contact record. Bookings become deals in the pipeline when large enough to care about.
- Printing — profile-card prints at the host stand (
crm.profile_cardtemplate) render from the live contact record so servers recognize regulars on sight. - HCM — customer-facing contractors and vendors are CRM contacts with an
is_contractorflag; HCM joins the two views. - Any future app — a single API call (
GET /api/platform/v1/{orgId}/contacts/{id}) fetches a contact; a webhook subscription puts every contact change on your event bus.
Tiers at a glance
| Tier | Adds |
|---|---|
| Core | View contacts, accounts, deals. Edit your own records. Log calls, notes, meetings. |
| Advanced | Team pipelines, reassignment, bulk campaigns, CSV export. |
| Admin | Automation rules, REST API, webhooks, external integrations (Gmail, Outlook, phone). |
For pricing, see nowaitn.com/pricing or contact us.
Campaigns and AI enrichment draw from the same shared notification and AI token pools every other NOWAITN app uses — no separate SendGrid, no separate Twilio, no separate OpenAI account to provision. See NOWAITN Platform Tokens for how the shared pool works.
Your first 15 minutes
- Activate the license. Hub > Settings > Licenses → CRM → choose tier → assign seats.
- Import a seed list. CRM > Contacts → Import → upload a CSV or connect Gmail/Outlook.
- Build your first pipeline. CRM > Deals → Pipelines → New Pipeline. Define your stages (e.g., Inquiry → Hold → Confirmed → Served).
- Wire up the first event. From Automation (Admin tier) → choose a trigger like reservation.confirmed → pick a deal stage → save. Your next large booking will advance itself.
See Getting Started with NOWAITN CRM for the step-by-step walkthrough.