How Digital Waivers Help Share Adventure

We’re pretty passionate about adventure. In fact, WaiverSign was originally conceived to help Western River Expeditions and Moab Adventure Center provide a better guest experience to travelers looking for adventure on the water or in the desert.

That’s why we were so elated to hear that our digital waiver system was helping Chalo Africa offer once-in-a-lifetime experiences to guests eager to experience the beauty of Africa. It’s the kind of success story that just begs to be shared, so we’re putting it here where everyone can see.

The Digital Waiver Factor

So how does WaiverSign fit into all of this? Well, we answered a very critical need. Tanvi explains:

“Prior to discovering WaiverSign, we at Chalo Africa struggled with ensuring all our guests had signed our Terms & Conditions and Waivers. We received an innumerable number of documents in various formats: hard copies, soft copies, PDFs, JPGs, and even email attachments.

“It had become very difficult to consolidate and keep track of all our guest documentation, and guests too found it very cumbersome to go through our documentation. WaiverSign was the online waiver solution to solve this.

“We now send one link to our guests and we are done! Guests can easily put their signatures to the documents online, we get immediate updates as to who has signed the documents, and tools like IP tracking ensures that everything is secure.”

Chalo Africa finds the same value in the digital waiver process that we did from the very beginning: a smoother customer experience, and thus, much happier guests.

“There is definitely an uptick in ease of use,” Tanvi says. “This best part of the digital waiver signing process is the fact that we have had no complaints from our guests! It has made the lives of our guests simpler, and in turn, made our lives much simpler.

“Also, due to the turmoil COVID has caused, we have had to constantly update our Terms & Conditions as well. WaiverSign makes it easy to update T&Cs without updating complicated PDFs.”

When we asked her what she and her team liked best about the service, Tanvi had this to say:

“What we love about WaiverSign is the ability to combine different documents into a single link. Guests can sign each document separately which ensures legal validity, but the format itself is so straightforward that everyone loves it. We also love the fact that guardians can sign on behalf of children in a very easy manner.”

Looking Forward To The Future

Legal documents like waivers and terms and conditions are an integral part of the business for those in the travel and tourism industry. Most couldn’t survive without them. But the burdens and frustrations that come with paper waivers are just about the worst part of the job. They slow processes, irritate guests and staff alike, and ultimately, present a significant bottleneck when trying to scale the business.

At WaiverSign, we feel very lucky to be part of the global tourism community, and nothing makes us happier than getting to work with brands like Chalo Africa (and maybe make life just a little easier for them).

Just as Tanvi’s team will certainly be pressing forward toward new adventures and new opportunities, we’ll be here, doing our best to make life as easy as it should be, for them and

businesses like them.

Paperless. Contactless. Hassle-less. That’s WaiverSign.

The Backstory

For such an adventurous endeavor, Chalo Africa has some pretty humble beginnings.

It all started with an exciting road trip back in 2012. While family members and future co-founders Smita Srivastava, Sangeeta Prasad, and Tanvi Srivastava were “losing ourselves on unknown roads,” they were having the time of their lives. Amidst all the fun and laughter, an idea was formed: “We loved spending time with each other,” recalls Tanvi, “So why not work together?”

The decision was made quickly, and unanimously. But what kind of business needs a zoologist (Smita), a multi-lingual interpreter (Sangeeta), and a recently graduated design and technology expert (Tanvi)? As it turns out, finding common ground was easier than you might expect.

“We had complementary skills,” states Tanvi, and indeed they did. Smita and Sangeeta both brought ample wisdom from their own fields—the former had been teaching for several decades, and the latter had been visiting Africa for years. Tanvi, meanwhile, brought her tech skills to the table—something they would definitely need to run a business in the digital age.

They decided to focus on things that really mattered to them. “We had a passion for wildlife, travel, and the continent of Africa,” says Tanvi. So they decided to share those passions with the world. There was only one hitch...

“I'd like to say we had some grand plan before we started Chalo Africa,” admits Tanvi. “But the truth is that we fell headlong into it, knowing very little about the travel industry.”

It didn’t keep them from pursuing their passion. They founded the business and began offering their one-of-a-kind experiences to international travelers, their knowledge-base growing as business boomed and their team grew. “When Malvika joined us a few years later with actual experience in the tourism sector, it was quite a relief!” Tanvi says.

It also helped that Sangeeta had been laying the groundwork for the business for years with her regular treks across the vast continent.

“Sangeeta, who happens to be my aunt, was spending all of her time and most of her income on planning African safaris,” Tanvi explains. “My uncle, somewhat exasperated, suggested that she might as well take this up as a full-time vocation, little realizing how seriously his words would be taken.”

So how are they doing now?

“The stars somehow aligned,” Tanvi says, “And we have created a successful brand that focuses exclusively on African safaris and expeditions. Here we are, almost a decade later, battling COVID with our spirits high, knowing that we are strong together and we will come out on the other side with more ground to cover, more experiences to gain.”

How They Do It

Chalo Africa’s story isn’t just inspiring because of how they got started. In fact, the most impressive part is how they continue to forge onward every day in spite of serious challenges.

So, how do they keep the ship afloat amid adversity? “To be honest, when we started out, it was not easy,” Tanvi says. “We didn't have any external funding.” That hasn’t stopped them. They just rolled up their sleeves and went to work “[creating] a travel brand through our own sweat and determination.”

Today, they continue to provide amazing experiences to all of their guests. “We are an intimate family-run organisation and we like to treat our guests as though they are a part of our family,” says Tanvi. “We know that an African safari is an experience of a lifetime for many of our guests, and hence every interaction with a member of our team represents a future memory, something that needs to be cherished.”

Setting Themselves Apart

In the past eight years, the team at Chalo Africa has applied hard work and tenacity and has accomplished a great deal as a result. But that’s not the only reason they stand out. In fact, there’s quite a bit that makes Chalo Africa a unique tour operator, even among African safaris.

Here’s what Tanvi has to say:

“We specialise in near-impossible expeditions to the remotest parts of Africa: from the deserts of Ennedi in Chad to the interiors of Gabon. These expeditions are difficult to organize with little to no tourism infrastructure. We therefore consider ourselves pioneers in bringing a connection between such pristine wilderness and our guests, hoping that with tourism, conservation to such regions will flourish.”

Tanvi, Smita, Sangeeta, and the rest of the team at Chalo Africa are doing more than pioneering exotic safaris. They’re also championing conservation efforts, supporting local African businesses, and they’re leading by example when it comes to employment for women.

“Being a business staffed entirely by women,” Tanvi says, “we appreciate the dual lives that women lead: as homemakers and mothers, but also as talented women with skills to showcase to the world. We offer flexible hours, extended maternity leave policies, and love it when a baby pops up on a video call during our team meetings!”

At its core though, the company is a family operation, one that thrives on the close connections they all share.

“Working together as a family also has its challenges but an innumerable number of advantages. It's a lovely way to bond across time zones and territories.”

Do you have participants or guests that show up onsite and need to sign a Release of Liability waiver or other important documents prior to engaging in an event or activity? Then you’ll appreciate WaiverSign’s built in kiosk functionality which helps facilitate those types of in-person signing experiences. This is just one of the many ways that you can leverage WaiverSign to gather required signatures.

Created with the customer experience in mind, WaiverSign efficiently guides the user through the signing process, all while anticipating the potential real-life scenarios that could creep in and draw someone’s attention away from completion.

The normal signing process in WaiverSign, which a guest would experience before arriving onsite, allows them to take as much time as they need to read the document, add their required information and details to the form, and then agree to and apply their signature to the document.

When the signing process is accessed through KIOSK-MODE, onsite at your business, a built in timer is added which automatically restarts the signing process if there is 20 seconds of inactivity. Before restarting, a modal pops up asking the signer if they need more time. A simple click of a button allows them to continue, but if there’s no response from the user, back to the beginning it goes. This is important for two reasons. First, it provides a better user experience for the next guest, and perhaps more importantly, it removes any sensitive personal information that the previous user may have entered on the screen.

In addition to WaiverSign’s built-in digital waiver kiosk functionality, you also can also use it in conjunction with any number of downloadable kiosk applications built specifically for tablets, such as Kiosk Pro for iOS devices, or Kiosk Browser for Android. These applications allow you to lock down your tablet so the user is unable to surf the internet using your device.

Keep in mind, if you ever need to make updates to your document, the fact that it’s being accessed through KIOSK-MODE or a kiosk application won’t affect anything. You’ll simply log into your WaiverSign account through your web browser, make the necessary updates to your document, and then save and re-publish. The next person that signs that document will see the updates that you made.

Gone are the days of searching hopelessly through piles of papers, stacked up in boxes, in some musty old barn or basement. Finding a PDF copy of a signed waiver couldn’t be easier with WaiverSign’s built in waiver location features.

Collecting signatures from customers and guests is usually about protecting the interests of your company. Working with a qualified lawyer, who can draft the proper wording you need is important, but finding a waiver, should you ever need to, will be just as important in protecting your assets.

WaiverSign’s document retrieval system was built to be flexible, meaning you can leverage many different pieces of information to search for, find, and produce a document. First Name, Last Name, Email Address and Phone Number, among other things, can be used to find the personal info and document you need. Almost instantly, you could find and produce a signed document that would have potentially taken you hours to find, if not weeks, back in the old days of files and boxes.

WaiverSign also takes finding a waiver to a whole new level with Event Management functionality that most other systems don’t even consider. Many of WaiverSign’s clients have a single document that all of their customers or guests sign. Sometimes, however, they have a particular event or activity, such as a ‘fun run’ or group activity, that they need to keep track of as a single signing group. A unique signing link can be generated and shared with a large group of people. Then all the people who sign a document using that link will be organized into a single, searchable group.

Event coordinators love this feature! It not only provides a convenient way to find and export an up-to-date list of signers, it also comes with a notification feature which lets the coordinator of that group know every time someone signs. Additionally, the coordinator has access to a live up-to-date list, which shows the name of everyone that has completed the signing process for that particular event. This is an invaluable tool that our clients simply can’t live without!

The world is filled with software solutions that help you manage everything from grocery lists, to taxes, to who your friends are and what pictures you want to share with them. But an underlying question, it may be important to remember, when leveraging some of these solutions, is who owns the data?

At WaiverSign, the data, along with the signatures you collect, is 100% yours to own and manage how you see fit. Just like the wording in the document you present to your customers and guests, we simply provide tools to help you manage it.

We don’t believe in long-term commitments or contracts here at WaiverSign. We believe that if you have a product that provides the service you need, you’ll continue to use it. If at any point you want to download and store the information and documents you’ve gathered from your signing guests, or print paper copies of the PDF document itself, we believe that you should have the right to do that.

Our Contact Information Export pulls all data gathered about both participants, as well as guardians, and exports them in an easy to store .csv file. Copies of the documents are exported as .pdf files, organized together in a .zip file.

While it’s certainly much easier to search for and find a particular document using the tools already built into WaiverSign, many of our clients prefer to also have copies of their documents stored locally on a hard drive for personal or legal reasons. For this reason, each individual PDF has a title that includes the signer’s first and last name, as well as the date and time the document was signed.

Bottom line, the information you gather from your signing guests is your data, and you have access to it whenever, and wherever, you need it.

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