Business in Dubai and all around UAE are always seeking ways to improve their customer experience and customer journey. The UAE is a very large and rapidly growing economy, this attracts a lot of entrepreneurs, investors, businesses from all over the world. Especially the service based industries are facing tough competitive environment. This competition results is high market standards and higher customer expectations. That is why the customer experience is extremely important for any business to ensure long term sustainable growth. During last few years the customer behavior have changed drastically due to the COVID and social distancing. People are more inclined towards digital interaction than physical interaction. The businesses also have to implement social distancing policies and other safety rule to ensure the health and safety of the customers and the staff. This has changed the entire landscape of the communication and services.
A queue management system is a tool used to streamline customer flow. It help businesses to automate or semi-automate various customer journey steps. A digital queue management system can segregate customers as per their needs which improves customer flow and reduce customer wait time. The queue management system also help improving the service quality and boosting the performance of the service staff or service agents. Which result in reduced customer churn rate, higher customer happiness. The customer satisfaction is a key to customer loyalty and the customer loyalty is considered to be the foundation of growth and profitability. The queue management systems have also evolved a lot, as the general market trends got changed the queue management systems also got changed. The virtual queuing and mobile queuing are not a new concepts however, since the later 2020 till today and also in future the virtual queuing will dominate the queue management systems. In this blog we will discuss how virtual queuing and digital customer experience can be your best competitive advantage to boost the profitability, efficiency, quality of service and customer experience.
What is Virtual Queuing?
The virtual queuing is a process of signing-up a customer in a virtual queue. For queue management systems the virtual queuing is a relatively new terminology and it doesn’t only mean to create virtual queues in fact the virtual queuing means to enable the customers to sign-up remotely in virtual queues using mobile devices or digital channels. The virtual queuing can be done using web portals, mobile apps, SMS, emails, QR Codes and much more. The biggest differentiation between the virtual queuing and traditional queuing is that the virtual queuing can literally reduce the wait time to none. The customers and visitors are free to wait outside or plan their visit to arrive only when their turn is expected. The live queuing information can be relayed to the customers using multiple channels along with alerts and notifications. The customer service agent can also communicate with the customers and visitors to inform them about any change or unexpected scenario. The virtual queuing transform customer journey and customer experience and ensures maximum customer happiness.
Read More: Benefits of Virtual Queue Management System
What is Digital Customer Experience?
The term digital customer experience refers to all the interactions a customer have with the business using the digital channels and mediums such as online or internet, emails, mobile apps, social media, chat bots, and even the SMS communication can be taken as the part of the digital customer experience. The digital customer experience management strategy is very important these days. As people living in Dubai or anywhere else in UAE are very familiar with the digital interactions. So providing digital customer experience doesn’t only have operational benefits but the customers will also expect digital interaction from their favorite brands. That is why the digital customer experience is very important and a business should use right tools to ensure the customers will be satisfied and delighted with their interaction. The virtual queuing is a great tool to enhance digital customer experience. It also help businesses collect useful system insights and business intelligence data which can be further used to tune up relevant business processes and to evaluate the performance of the staff and different departments/branches. The business intelligence also help businesses to take informed decisions and make right policies to ensure long term growth and customer retention.
Virtual Queuing and Digital Customer Experience Optimize Wait Time
People don’t like to wait in long queues. The long wait time is a major reason of customer churn and poor customer experience. We have all noticed that when we are standing in queues at one point or another we feel that the line next to us is moving faster, this is only a behavior phenomenon when people just perceive that and it is because of the stress of the waiting. With manual queues there are several other problems too, such as line jumpers, or people standing in wrong queues or even people are giving way to others to join the queue from their point. However, with a digital queue management system when a single customer have a ticket these all things can be avoided. The psychological effects of waiting in the queues can also be minimized. With the help of virtual queuing the businesses can offer their customers and visitors a facility to sign-up remotely or virtually and they are provided with the live queuing information via remote channels which allow them to arrive only when their ticket is called. Hence there is literally no wait at all.
Read More: How to reduce patient wait time in hospitals with virtual queuing?
The digital experience and virtual queuing strategy can significantly improve customer satisfaction and help improving customer loyalty too. These days everyone is familiar with digital interaction. The internet penetration is almost 99% in UAE. This enabled businesses to innovate very effective digital strategies utilizing digital channels and digital communication. There are several digital channels that c
an be integrated with queue management system to enable virtual sign-up process. For example, the company website or a dedicated customer portal can improve customer experience. Moreover an appointment booking module can offer a great sign-up experience. It can provide additional details such as busy hours, nearest branches and much more which can be very helpful for booking a suitable appointment and planning the visit.
In the entire UAE the mobile phones are widely used, in fact almost 96% of the population use mobile phones. Which make them extremely important. In order to build a strategy for digital customer experience the mobile phones can be a great tool to enhance customer journey and experience. Businesses can offer mobile phone apps or SMS based virtual queuing. The retail sector in Dubai and all around the UAE is also using QR code based queuing. These all are the form of virtual queuing. Along with that the business can also integrate SMS services to enable the customers to sign-up via SMS. WhatsApp is the most popular app used for communication in UAE and also all around the world. The WhatsApp can also be integrated to enhance digital customer experience. These all tools can be used to improve communication, customer engagements, customer waiting experience and even businesses can also conduct customer feedback surveys via their digital channels. The virtual queuing reduce the customer wait time to literally none, which raise customer satisfaction and customer happiness.
Read More: Queue & Waiting Time Management
Virtual Queuing and Digital Customer Experience Improves Customer Satisfaction
The virtual queuing and digital customer experience can automate several customer journey steps and improve customer flow. The queue management system can easily identify the service hence it can sign-up the customers and visitors for the right queue or virtual queue. The queue management system can also help streamlining the customer flow by automatically routing customers to the relevant counters and even it can automatically reroute the customers as per the set protocols. For example, if some counters are less busy or free the system can automatically reroute the customers to such counters. This way the business can optimize resources and improve the overall efficiency of the entire branch. The queue management system can also manage customers on the bases of their priority, such as ordinary customers, premium or VIP customers, and customers with special needs, etc. This also help improving customer experience and ensure a balanced workload for the staff to improve staff efficiency and quality of the service.
Read More: What Is Virtual Queuing? A Guide to Virtual Queues
Most of the time a business has multiple services and multiple counters, some counters are dedicated for certain services and sometimes some counters are dedicated for priority customers. A digital queue management system can easily handle all those scenarios and it can automatically control customer flow for each counter as per the set protocols. Most of the time businesses also offer stepped-services. The stepped services are those which require from a customer to visit multiple counters for a single service delivery. Managing such services could be tricky, some steps are lengthier and some are quick, sometimes some steps have more counters and vice versa. A digital queue management system can easily handle all those scenarios by using in-built smart algorithms and intelligence software engine, which help businesses to ensure smooth customer flow throughout the entire customer journey to improve customer happiness and customer satisfaction. Such way the businesses can significantly reduce customer wait time and improve customer flow which directly impact customer happiness and customer satisfaction.
Virtual Queuing and Digital Customer Experience Improves Service Quality
The service quality is extremely important for customer retention. If a businesses is failing to provide quality service no matter who much efforts they put to improve customer flow, ultimately the customers will be unhappy. That is why it is extremely important to improve service quality. A virtual queue management system or any other queuing solutions is capable of collecting basic information during the sign-up process. This information can be used to improve service quality. For example, whenever a customer is reaching to a counter the agent needs their basic information to start the service. That information can be pre-loaded when the customer is arriving as the system already knows their identity from the virtual sign-up process. Similarly as a customer is already selecting the service they need, so if any preparation is required for that, it can be done automatically before even the customer arrives, so the agent is completely ready to deliver the service.
This not only reduce the service delivery time, but it also reduce server’s/agent’s work, which give them a better chance to focus on the quality and experience. Quicker service delivery mean happy customer and it also mean less time for the next customer waiting in queue. This way it not only facilitate the service delivery process but is also help businesses in reducing the wait time. Since an employee can entertain more customers in less time, their work efficiency is also improved. The virtual queuing and digital customer experience can help improving service quality and service delivery process.
Read More: How Queue Management System Helps to Provide Better Customer Service
Virtual Queuing and Digital Customer Experience Provide Deeper Data Insights
The virtual queuing is used to transform digital customer experience. The digital comes with various benefits and one of them is the data collection and business intelligence gathering. With virtual queuing and digital customer experience strategy business can collect statistical and usage data from each and every touch point of the customer journey and businesses can also collect customer feedback data using integrated communication channels. The queue management system can record the statistical data too such as which virtual queuing channels are used for how many times, what is he average wait time, which service delivery takes how much time on average and even the queue management system can also record such details for each individual interaction. These are very helpful information and provide a deeper and much better understanding of the customer journey. Businesses can easily identify the areas of improvements and build their future strategies to meet their goals of efficiency and customer satisfaction.
The virtual queuing and digital customer experience also provide accurate KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and other data which can be used for various purposes and can be shared with relevant departments and personals to help them improve their performance. The business can accurately monitor and record the performance of individual employee for example, which employees take how much time to deliver a service and that can be recorded against each service the agent is working on. The queue management system can also record the performance of the teams and even the branches which can be later analyzed by the management using in-built data analytical tools. Businesses can also done comparative analysis for the employees, services, teams and branches as well. The queue management system also help collecting the customer feedback data which can be collected using multiple channels.
The customer feedback data is very important. Businesses can conduct various different types of surveys using the digital and mobile channels such as SMS, Emails, Customer Portal Dashboards, Website, Touch Screens (in-premises), mobile apps, etc. The queue management system can collect NPS (net promoter score), CES (customer effort score), CSAT (customer satisfaction score), general rating and happiness scores and even businesses can also conduct long surveys. This data can provide a deeper understanding of the customer’s minds, their expectations and market trends. Collectively the business intelligence data collected from virtual queuing and digital customer experience can be used highlight areas of improvements and to build strategies for the future growth.The queue management system also provide facility to directly share the relevant data to the relevant department, management or individual employees to ensure seamless automated data sharing. This enables the businesses to take immediate actions on top priority feedbacks and data indicators and also help them to make better plan for the future.
Read More: Business Process Optimization Using Queue Management System Business Intelligence Data
Virtual Queuing and Digital Customer Experience Boost Employee Performance
The employee performance is also a key factor in customer satisfaction and overall efficiency of the business. With the help of virtual queuing and digital customer experience the employee workload can be easily reduced. As the wait time is very less, so there is not much chance of crowd formation or any such problem with the customers and visitors waiting in the waiting areas. Moreover the sales agents and server also get help from the queue management system dashboard and the system can also aid the service delivery process by automatically preparing the agents for the next customer. This way the employee workload can be significantly reduced. A single customer service agent can serve more customers in a single shift. Which boost their performance. The queue management system also closely monitor the performance of the staff and help the businesses and management to effectively utilize resources for best performance.
For example, some employees perform better with the services they are experienced in and some perform better for certain services and vice versa. This can be analyzed with the help of KPIs monitoring tool. The information can be relayed to the HR which can later help training programs or transfer human resources and deploy them as per their skill set to obtain maximum employee performance and overall business efficiency. Good employee performance also help improving customer journey and customer satisfaction. The employees who are working under a pleasant environment with balanced workload are tend to deliver high quality services thus ensuring better customer experience and higher customer happiness.
Read More: Virtual Queuing and Digital Customer Experience
Virtual Queuing and Digital Customer Experience – System Integration
The virtual queuing and digital customer experience management is not as that simple. In fact it is a very complex and sophisticated process. The SMEs and SMBs can equally benefit from the virtual queuing and digital customer experience strategy as the large banks, healthcare facilities, educational institutes and large enterprises. Any digital solution or system requires data to operate at optimum levels. For that the system integration is done. The system integration is a technique used to push and pull data from a system. Usually every business have a central information system which is lined to a tool or software that is responsible for the most of the operational activities. That is why a queue management system and digital customer experience solution can be integrated with the central information center or with any other third-party system or tool to ensure automatic data synchronization. The integration also paves the way for various innovative features which can be added to the system to improve digital customer experience and to increase customer happiness and satisfaction.
Virtual Queuing and Digital Customer Experience is a Key to Long Term Growth
The growth of any business depends on two main things, one is customer satisfaction and the second is right strategy and policy. The customer happiness and customer satisfaction drive customer loyalty and help improving customer retention rates. Studies have shown that it is almost nine to twelve time less expensive to sell to an existing customer rather acquiring a new customer. There are various studies that shows that a business’s reputation and its brand image can impact its marketing campaigns too. If a business has good reputation and a positive brand image the return over its marketing investments would be better comparing to a business with bad reputation or negative brand identity. The loyal customers and customer retention is considered to be the foundation of the long term growth. Customer happiness and customer satisfaction drive customer loyalty. The loyal customers are more likely to do repeated business and are also tend to be a good brand advocate and help promoting the brand.
In addition to that the virtual queuing and digital customer experience help businesses optimizing the resource consumption and improve employee performance as well. The digitalization and automation also help automating various business processes and reduce customer journey steps. Collectively these all factors result in per service cost reduction. Which ensures high productivity and profitability. That is why the virtual queuing and digital customer experience is a key to long term growth.
Read More: Why should you adopt queue management systems?
Conclusion
The virtual queuing and digital customer experience help businesses improve customer journey and ensure customer satisfaction. The customer happiness and customer satisfaction is achieved by reducing the customer efforts and by enabling the business to reduce the wait time. It also help businesses to optimize various business process and also help improving service delivery mechanisms. The virtual queuing and digital customer experience help improving staff efficiency and increase the overall operational capabilities and productivity of the entire business. All these factors contribute in customer retention and help earning customer loyalty. The virtual queuing and digital customer experience also help collecting data insight and customer feedbacks. Which can be analyzed to make changes for the improvements and to build future strategies that drive higher profitability and customer satisfaction. The purpose of this blog was to emphasize on the importance of the virtual queuing and digital customer experience. If you need more information about the topic or need our help with your queuing needs or customer experience transformation, feel free to contact us through our Contact Us page or leave a comment in the comment box below and we will get in touch with you soon.