what other steps could a business take to reduce the frustration customers experience while waiting?

Worth the wait: queue management done right

All over the world, businesses are grappling with the novel challenges of operating during a global pandemic. Organizations accept long been aware of the benefits of a well-organized queuing system. All the same, the benefits of reducing time spent waiting in a queue are even more pronounced due to recent events.

For instance, the six-foot dominion means many customers prefer not to expect in a long queue, in shut proximity to others. Accordingly, brick-and-mortar stores are putting measures in identify to help maintain that distance and emphasize their commitment to customer health and wellness. These measures include painting circles on the floor, erecting plexiglass barriers, requiring masks, and offering hand sanitizer.

However, not all solutions are physical. Virtual queue management can requite customers peace of mind by offering transparent wait times and the control to decide where they wait, and how they choose to social distance. Organized, well-managed queues can reduce client anxiety, alleviate client frustration, and create positive brand experiences.

The benefits of well-organized queue management

Over the past few months, online and mobile cyberbanking have go more widely adopted with the use of mobile cyberbanking, up by 85 percent in the spring. In add-on, online retail has understandably surged during lockdown. In both cases, the reopening of concrete locations has seen an increase in foot traffic.

It's likely, yet, that customers will be even more impatient nigh having to wait. So on the one hand, long lines at an institution suggest desirability and tin even increase purchase quantity. On the other hand, people hate feeling like they're the last in line, and a visibly long line can deter customers altogether, while generating concerns about overall wellness and rubber.

With this in mind, retailers and banks can use optimized queuing systems to amend their businesses in iv key areas.

1. Safe

In these days of COVID-19, a store or depository financial institution's clear adherence to CDC guidelines for wellness and social distancing goes a long fashion toward reassuring customers and ensuring repeat business. For example, virtual queues allow customers to avoid physically lining up at all. This frees them to browse the shop or even wait outside or in their cars until they can exist seen.

A contempo survey of 2,000 banking customers conducted by Shikatani Lacroix showed that 45.6 per centum of respondents would welcome a mobile feature for customers to book appointments. Similarly, 44.1 percent thought banks should implement a system assuasive customers to queue via mobile app rather than in the branch. In other words, these banking customers were hoping for virtual queuing and appointment scheduling.

2. Customer experience

While safety is currently an peculiarly crucial office of making customers feel welcome, the psychology of queuing has some fascinating effects on the overall customer experience. While information technology sounds dramatic, research from the Northridge Group suggests 72 percent of customers are tempted to switch companies subsequently simply i negative service experience. Additionally, our own research on consumer banking suggests that 44 percent of consumers who visit their banking concern'south branches reported that a long wait in line was the chief reason for their dissatisfaction with the feel.

All this suggests that waiting in line (whether for a service or to make a purchase) has a significant effect on customers' overall perceptions of a make. In part, this is because waiting is a static and solitary experience, one that tin can get out customers feeling ignored.

Optimized queue management systems aid improve customer menses, reduce or even eliminate lines, and let staff to focus on customer service.

3. Acquirement touch on

Queues are not inherently problematic. In fact, sometimes a longer await gives customers fourth dimension to add together things to their basket and even induces larger customer purchases. As researchers from the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University note, "This is driven past mental accounting: A larger purchase allows people to kickoff the stock-still toll of the long expect."

This same research project suggests that offering customers interesting diversions (such as informational displays or reading material) can meliorate the queuing experience and go along people from abandoning their purchase and the establishment. The key seems to be clarity. If customers sympathise why they must wait and can make a reasonable judge of how long the wait will be, they're more likely to be patient. Inexplicably long lines (or a sense that the club in which people are seen is unfair) quickly erode customer goodwill.

4. Operational efficiency

A well-managed queue has a positive impact not just on customer feel and acquirement simply too on operational efficiency. The correct queue direction organization offers valuable and actionable data, such as

• boilerplate wait times,
• relative traffic on different days and times, and
• variable await times for different services.

These metrics tin can guide staffing decisions, opening hours, and service lines. Sophisticated queue management systems should as well allow a company to test different types of queues to learn which work best for their specific needs.

Waiting times—perception and reality

Thirty-7 billion hours—that is the approximate amount of time Americans spend waiting in lines every twelvemonth. The actual time spent in lines is non really the trouble, though. MIT professor Dr. Richard Larson, 1 of the earth's foremost experts on queuing theory, told the New York Times that people typically overestimate how long they've waited in a line by almost 36 percent. This means that the actual await time, no matter how brief or well managed, is not the result. The real consequence is perceived wait times - how long people feel like they are waiting.

Equally importantly, enquiry from Columbia Business School shows that the number of people in line affects customer behavior more dramatically than how quickly the line moves. Customers seem to prefer more lines with fewer people in each line than one long line that feeds into multiple tellers or cashiers, even if the latter is in fact the more than efficient system.

Thus, the optimal solution is a organisation that reduces both the perception and the reality of wait times.

6 ways to reduce queue waiting times

The question is therefore this: How practice businesses ensure their queues are both organized and effective? These six queue management strategies tin can assistance to shorten expect times (both bodily and perceived) and amend the customer experience.

one. Implement a queue management organisation with both in-location and virtual queue options.

Choosing and implementing a queue management system is an ideal offset pace. That'south considering these systems enable a retailer or depository financial institution to collect the information they need to drive beneficial immediate and longer-term decisions.

For example, a skilful queue management system can help customers by facilitating cocky-service through a real-time concierge interface. Simultaneously, information technology tin can aid staff by managing customers' arrival times and assuasive staff to focus on providing the best-possible service during their in-person interactions with customers.

2. Be transparent and go on customers informed.

Customers mind waiting more than when they don't know how long their wait volition last. For instance, a bank client may come up into a local branch on her lunch hour, hoping to get in and out and head back to work. If she comes in and there are other people in line ahead of her, she might try to guess how long her look volition exist, and that guess will affect her decision to stay or get.

In contrast, if she knows she will become service earlier her dejeuner hour is over, she is much more likely to stay. Banks tin can avoid wait time doubt by making await times public. A clearly visible display board showing approximate wait times helps keep customers informed. It as well helps forestall customers from possibly misjudging a long line and leaving.

When using virtual queues, businesses should also proactively notify customers of their place in line. If customers have to continue checking their await time themselves, the virtual pick may crusade just as much tension equally waiting in person. But if they receive convenient notifications that they are "moving up" in line, they are less likely to go frustrated.

3. Offering appointment scheduling.

Another excellent way to reduce client incertitude in relation to wait times is to offering appointment scheduling. Open-access scheduling, besides known as advanced-access or same-solar day scheduling, allows customers to cull the time that all-time works for them. This ways that when a client arrives, they can immediately get the service they need.

This advance scheduling as well gives staff members the opportunity to prepare for the customer's visit. They can look at the information they have most the client and be ready with personalized service as soon as the customer arrives.

4. Speed up service time.

Overall, staff members tin much more quickly and effectively serve a client if they are at least somewhat familiar with the person they are helping. Virtual queues and hybrid queues help provide staff with relevant data while as well keeping clients engaged.

With these types of queues, customers can begin their wait past checking in via a digital organization and filling in fundamental information, such as their name and details about their orders or services. Initially, this keeps them busy and minimizes their perceived look fourth dimension.

It too gives the staff relevant information nigh the customer so they can be prepared to assist them. The finish result is faster service and improved customer satisfaction.

v. Use queue information to optimize staffing and pinpoint staff training needs.

The data that queue direction systems provide tin can let managers know what kinds of problems are taking the longest to solve. It also helps managers know if staff are adequately trained to handle such issues.

If a staff member is taking noticeably longer (or noticeably shorter) to serve customers, managers tin place why that is. This can be an opportunity to better grooming and as well evaluate the success of overall training procedures.

6. Provide entertainment or educational activity while customers wait.

Not all businesses can provide musical water fountains or precious stone-mining games like vacationers get while waiting for the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train at Disney World. All businesses tin, however, make sure their customers take things to do and expect at while they are waiting.

Wait times are an opportunity to engage patrons. For instance, companies can offer digital signage and video displays of new products or upcoming promotions. Banks can offer screens that cycle through financial tips, promotions for specific cyberbanking services and products, and information about the bank's cadre mission and areas of expertise.

Some other way to keep customers engaged is through the utilize of surveys or fun quizzes. There are 2 benefits of such interactive activities: (ane) they give customers something to practise with their wait fourth dimension while (two) as well providing valuable customer feedback.

Queue management is the key to reduce waiting times

Queues tin be complicated to manage. However, when done correct, they will not only fulfill customers' needs only likewise benefit banks and retail stores in both short-term and long-term ways. By because ways to reduce waiting times, businesses embrace the potential for improved client service experiences, increased brand loyalty, and greater overall efficiency.

For more than information on ways to ameliorate queues, accomplish out to a JRNI good. We tin can aid you choose and implement the best queue management solutions for your concern.

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Source: https://www.jrni.com/blog/how-to-reduce-queue-wait-times