Reserve Hold Monitor

Shows which books held for customers have been sitting too long, so somebody actually picks up the phone and rings them.

Who this is for

Prashant Tikekar has run Gyan Book Depot in Dharampeth, Nagpur, for nineteen years. Two people behind the counter, one shelf of held books beside the till, sixty or seventy reserves in a good month. The moment is a Tuesday at half past eleven, when a customer asks for a Marathi novel and Prashant knows there is a copy on the hold shelf that somebody promised to collect three weeks ago and never came back for.

How the job is done today

A pencil slip goes inside the front cover. Name, phone number, sometimes the date, sometimes not. The book goes on the hold shelf and everyone forgets it. When a customer rings to say they are coming on Saturday, that gets said out loud to whoever is at the counter and nobody writes it down. Twice a year, usually before Diwali, the shelf is emptied out and the old holds go back into stock, and every single time there are three or four books that a customer did want and gave up on. The shop lost the sale twice. Once by holding the book, once by letting it go.

The screens, in order

1. Waiting too long — The screen the app opens to, showing only the holds that have crossed their agreed days, longest wait at the top, with the customer's name and number large enough to read across the counter.
2. Put a book on hold — Takes down the customer's name, number, the book and how many days they asked for, in the twenty seconds available while the customer is still standing there.
3. One hold — Everything known about a single held book, so that after ringing the customer you can mark it collected, give it more days, or send it back to the shelves.
4. Find a name — For when a customer walks in and says they had asked to keep something aside, and nobody remembers what.

What it keeps track of

• Holds — which book, who asked for it, their number, the day it went on the shelf, how many days they asked for, still waiting or collected or returned
• Customers — name, phone number, how they usually pay, whether they have left books uncollected before
• Calls made — which hold, who rang, which day, what the customer said, whether they promised a new date

The one decision that matters

The real choice is whether the main screen lists every hold in the shop or only the ones that have waited too long. Listing everything feels safer and it is what a register would do, but seventy holds on a phone is a list you scroll past without reading, and within a week nobody opens it. Only the late ones should show. Six or seven lines, no scrolling, and when nothing is late the screen says so in plain words and stays empty. An empty screen is the point. It means the shelf is clean. The full list still exists behind the search, for the customer who walks in asking.

What to leave out of the first version

Leave out automatic reminder messages. It is tempting to have the app message the customer on day eight and save the phone call, but a wrong message to a regular of eleven years is worse than a book sitting a week longer, and the shop cannot see whether the number was old or the book was already collected by a family member. A person should read the flag and decide. Also leave out linking holds to shop stock. The hold shelf is a physical shelf and counting it twice will only make the two counts disagree.

How you would know it worked

The hold shelf beside the till stops overflowing. By the next Diwali clear-out there are four or five books on it instead of thirty, and nobody has to tell a customer that the book they asked to keep aside was sold to somebody else.

Build it

Paste this in and let it run.

I run a bookshop and we keep books aside for customers who ask us to hold them. I want a phone app for me and the two people at the counter, where we add a hold with the customer's name, number, the book and the day we put it on the shelf, along with how many days they asked for. Then the app should watch those dates for us. When I open it I want one screen with no scrolling, showing only the holds that have waited longer than agreed, oldest first, name and number big enough to read across the counter, and a way to ring the person straight from there. Let me mark a hold collected, give it more days, or send it back to the shelves in one tap. If nothing is overdue, just say so plainly. I also want to search an old customer's name when they walk in.