As technology advances it is impacting people’s lifestyle and the banking sector as well. Time is very crucial in modern societies such as Dubai, UAE. No matter how people are managing their bank accounts and investments, one thing everyone agrees on is that the time is very crucial for success. The banking sector is always very flexible in adopting new technologies and trends. The banking sector has huge potential, so the vendors and manufacturers always invest more in research and development for the banking sector. This also led to advance technological solutions and high-tech products and services.
The banking sector is investing heavily in communicating with its customers and the market. This is because, especially in Dubai, Sharjah, Abu Dhabi or other emirates of UAE and in fact the entire GCC, there are so many banks sharing a common market. Which results in a very competitive environment, the customer happiness and customer satisfaction have become the top priority for the banking sector and the customers do care a lot about their time. Here the saying “time is money” fits very well. Everyone wants to get everything done very quickly and no one likes to spend time in long waiting lines at eh branches. All other sectors of the market are in a race to improve the customer experience and journey, which also raise the customer’s expectations.
Here are the 5 major challenges in utilizing a queue management system in the banks and their solutions:
1. Crowded Waiting Areas
Crowded waiting areas are haunting each and every sector of the industry, but it can easily be avoided by implementing an efficient digital queue management system. When a crowd is gathered, it results in unrest, which could annoy your customers. The customers and visitors waiting in a crowd most often think about how much more time do they have to wait, upon getting no answer or unsatisfactory answer, they could easily get annoyed. This could result in customers switching to a different bank. This also causes a negative impression among the people and people always rate their experience with a particular business when talking to friends and family. So, this could also impact your reputation in the market.
How to Avoid Crowded Waiting Areas?
The queue management systems (QMS) or queuing systems also known as customer flow management systems can solve this problem very well. By main-streaming your visitor’s and customer’s flow, you can easily avoid the crowed formation in your waiting areas and lobbies. A managed customer flow also prevents the unorganized crowd in the branch. This also helps to improve the efficiency of the branch staff.
2. Customer’s Experience
The customer’s experience is considered to be the backbone of the service-based industry, especially if you are operating in a very competitive market such as Dubai, UAE. Where the living standards, lifestyle and expectations of the customers are way too higher than in any other part of the world. You must have to be the best in order to compete in the market. There are so many banks in the country, the financial sector is doing great, the people living here want to invest, and sometimes some people have bank accounts in multiple banks, which makes the switching process from one bank to another even easier. So, the bank should have to be highly proactive in improving the customer experience.
How to Improve Customer Experience with a Queue Management System?
The queue management system allows the management to effectively handle customer and visitor flow in the branch. This not only reduces the wait time but it also helps improving customer happiness. The queue management system can further enhance the customer experience by providing regular updates and information in the waiting area. Usually, large screens or digital signage are connected with the queue management system which displays the ticketing information along with the multimedia content. The multimedia content on the screens could help the customers to ease the waiting time. Furthermore, the queuing system can have multi-language compatibility which also enhances customer experience.
3. Wait Time
Wait time is a very important factor in a customer’s experience. If your customers and visitors will have to wait long on regular bases whenever they are visiting your branch, eventually a point will come when they will start thinking to switch to another bank. Another very common mistake that banks usually make is to not showing the estimated time remaining for the turn. Think from a customer or visitors perspective, if you have no finite limit on the wait time, you will immediately start feeling the stress, it is human nature, the scientific studies suggest that if a customer or visitor waiting in the queue knows the estimated time to their turn, it will reduce their stress level to 30% to 50%. Which is a very huge number. This could help the banks a lot in improving their customer’s experience.
How to Reduce Wait Time?
The queue management systems are a very advance piece of technology. We can integrate a lot many other tools, systems, and accessories to further improve their efficiency. Especially in Dubai, UAE, where most people are having busy schedules, so no one likes to wait in the long queues. First thing, the queue management system should be able to automatically estimate the expected time remaining in the turn and print it on the ticket itself or keep showing it in the digital signage screens. This will ease the stress of the customers/visitors. Second thing is to allow the customers a way to remotely sign-up for the queue. This can be achieved with smartphone applications, QR codes, SMS, calls, and many other tools. The best approach is smartphone applications for both Android and Apple iOS. The smartphone apps, not only allow the users to sign-up remotely but are also capable of providing real-time updates on the customer flow and on-going queues. Push notifications and SMS makes it a lot easier to reduce the in-branch wait time of the customers/visitors.
4. Customer Journey
Customer journey is the key to success in the banking sector, and also in so many other service-based industries. The customer journey starts from having a need to avail a service and finishes at the service delivery to the customer. It is very important that banks design their customer journey carefully, so at the end of the journey, the customer leaves the branch happily. There are a lot many things that need to be taking into account, for example, how the customer will sign-up for the service, which will be signing-up for the queue, then comes the customer flow management, then the servers and the agents, and how convenient or how hard service is to get delivered to the customer could make or break your business. These things collectively form a customer journey.
How to Improve Customer Journey?
The customer journey can be improved by simply reducing the duration. Everything else comes in between. You should allow multiple sign-up methods, including remote-sign-up for the queue. This will significantly reduce the wait time. In the branch, the customer flow should be managed effectively. The waiting area should also provide some recreational activity, the best approach is to provide multimedia content on the queue management system’s digital signage and large screens. Include audio announcements in multiple languages which all of your customers can easily understand. In Dubai, UAE, Arabic, English and Urdu/Hindi will suffice. Your queue management system should be able to automatically route the customers to the less busy counters.
The queue management system should also be able to implement your branch policies, such as in banks, usually, multiple counters are used for multiple services. For example, 5 counters are used for a very popular service, and 2 for a less popular service. Let say your 5 counters are very busy and the other 2 are empty, then the queue management should route the customers to the other 2 counters as well to accommodate more customers in the busy hours. But during that the queue management system should be able to prioritize the customers for these 2 counters to be served on priority bases on these two counters. By introducing business counters, VIP counters and Priority Customers Counters, the bank can further enhance the customer journey.
5. Business Intelligence
How business intelligence could help the banks to further optimize their customer journey and provide a satisfactory experience at the branch? Well, apparently this might not relate to the queue management systems as the banks have other tools and methods to gather business intelligence. But you might not know how effective and powerful a queue management system could be in gathering statistical usage data and business intelligence. The business intelligence will help you understand the effectiveness of your current policies and it will also help you measure customer happiness.
How to Collect Business Intelligence from a Queue Management System?
Queue Management Systems comes with a software tool, which automatically collects all the system usage stats and other valuable information such as how many customers have visited at any given point of time, the peak hours, the busiest day of the week/month, and a variety of KPIs or key performance indicators help the management to understand the customer experiences and customer journey. The queue management systems are also capable of measuring the performance of the agents and servers. You can easily extract detailed and corporate reports. Which could be a great help in taking strategic decisions for the future.
The advance queue management systems also provide the facility to integrate them with other tools, such as your CRM or your ERP, this is also a great feature to connect to the central information centre of your bank. Furthermore, feedback collecting tools such as happiness meters and surveys can also be added to the queue management system. You can utilize the queue management system’s mobile apps to conduct detailed surveys. Small tablet stands, or kiosks can be used to integrate happiness meter inside the branch which is also a great feature to collect the customer feedback. These features will provide very valuable business insight. Banks can use such data to further improve their products/services and customer journey to achieve maximum customer happiness.
Conclusion
These days, each and every bank has some sort of modern queuing solution implemented on each branch. All traditional customer flow management methods are obsolete now. The competition in the market is growing day by day. The innovation and technological advancements in other service-based industries in Dubai, UAE are also setting up new trends. The expectations of a customer from a bank are raising day by day, the customers and visitors expect from a bank to utilize the top-notch technology to facilitate them. This is why banks are continuously improving their service delivery methods and policies to attain maximum customer happiness.
A queue management system can help to solve many problems in the banks. Which will ultimately lead to improving the customer journey and customer experience. Customer happiness is the backbone of a business in any service-based industry. The queue management system can help banks to facilitate their customers and also provide a great business insight which helps the management in taking vital strategy-making decisions. The queue management systems can easily automate a lot many processes which will also reduce the stress from the serving staff and agents, which results in improved service delivery and less wait time at the branch.
It is always good to consult with a professional queue management system provider in Dubai, UAE such as RSI Concepts. We have served a lot many banks and government sector in Dubai, Sharjah, Abu Dhabi and the other Emirates of UAE. We can provide you with great advice and an excellent queue management solution to meet your specific needs. Feel free to approach us through our Contact Us page.
Check this out: 5 Tricks to Quickly Serve Customers Using Queuing System