The businesses in Dubai and all around the UAE are well-aware of the queuing difficulties and problems. Especially the retail and service-based industry suffers the most. The businesses who require their customers to arrive at their location or branch in order to make a transaction are the ones with more intense queuing and crowd management problems. Traditionally the queuing process is managed via clipboard and pen. Businesses doesn’t use any tool or complex software solution for their queuing and crowd management needs. This caused very serious problems and businesses have started noticing higher walk-out rates.
Furthermore the market conditions, customer behavior and other factors also started transforming the queuing industry. We have witnessed the rapid and in-depth integration of smartphones and other digital technologies in our both work and private lives. The customer experience has become much more important than ever before in recent times. In fact there are several studies and market researches which suggest that an ordinary customer place experience equal to the quality of the product or service they are acquiring. The clipboard and pen based conventional queue management methods are unable to offer a better customer experience.
See Also: Virtual Queuing Systems: Redefining Waiting Experience
Furthermore the modern workplaces are heavily data driven the businesses need a tons of data in order to function properly hence there are several technological solutions and software that are considered to be absolute necessity for the modern businesses. Here in Dubai and all around the UAE in fact anywhere in the world, the cost of the labor and retaining employees is very expensive. In order to improve operational capabilities a business might have to hire more employees. First of all more employees doesn’t necessarily means optimized and improved productivity, you must also have to have management mechanisms in place in order to maximize the outcome of the teams and individual employees.
That is the reason businesses implement digital solutions and software. The digitalization and IT help businesses in achieving maximum performance with far less employees and far less sophisticated management. In fact a single employee can produce an outcome worth of a team’s work if proper technology and digital tools are in place. Same is applicable to queuing process as well. Businesses need a proper technology to maximize the success rate and in order to achieve their strategic and long-term business goals.
See Also: What Is Virtual Queuing? A Guide to Virtual Queues
What is Virtual Queuing?
The virtual queuing is a modern form of digital queue management systems. The traditional digital queue management systems have greatly improved the queuing process however, the virtual queuing have completely revolutionized it. The traditional queuing significantly improve customer flow, reduce their wait time, improve management and enhance customer experience. But the virtual queuing have amplified all those advantages with innovative features and integration of modern technologies and digital platforms. The virtual queuing not only allow your customers and visitors to sign-up remotely for virtual queues but it also provide them freedom doing so without being physically present at the premises.
This means that the customers and visitors can sign-up for a virtual queue while they are at their home or work and their wait time starts right away, they will be served on time as per their ticket or e-ticket number without being physically waiting or standing in queues at the business’s premises. This is the major difference between a traditional digital queue management system and virtual queue management system. The virtual queuing further enhance customer experience by providing facility to sign-up using multiple remote channels and other useful features. This is what make virtual queuing more superior than the traditional digital queue management systems.
See Also: Why Virtual Queuing Has become an Essential Part of Modern Queue Management Systems?
Why a Virtual Queuing System is better than a Traditional Clipboard and Pen Method?
The virtual queuing system can completely eliminate all pain points that cause a lot of problems in the traditional clipboard and pen line management methods. That is the main reason of implementing a digital virtual queuing system. Furthermore the virtual queuing system also offers a tons of benefits and can help businesses effectively compete in the modern marketplace. Here are the common problems that a traditional clipboard and pen method has along with key advantages of using a virtual queuing system:
Common Problems with Traditional Clipboard and Pen Waiting Line Management
The traditional manual queuing management with clipboard and pen is an outdated process. It is not effective anymore and the businesses need a better management tool to ensure a smooth customer experience. Here are some very common problems that businesses and customers face with a traditional clipboard and pen based queuing management methods:
- Unclear Wait Time: The wait time is one of the most important factor in queue management and it have profound impact on the customer experience. The manual clipboard and pen based queuing management can’t estimate wait time or provide a clear information to the customer which is also the cause of most of the complaints.
- Higher Customer Churn Rate: The manual clipboard and pen based queuing management always have higher walk-out rate which is called customer churn rate. The customer churn rate is represent a great loos of the sales, not only that it results in unhappy and unsatisfied customers who will share their experience with others which will harm your business’s brand image.
- Inconvenient for Employees: The biggest problem with the clipboard and pen based queuing system is that only one employee at a time can have it. But that is not practical, usually more than one staff will have to manage the waiting lines hence they will have to constantly pass the clipboard and pen to the next employee. Furthermore the handwriting and typo also cause more problems.
- Poor Customer Experience: The customers can never be provided with the accurate estimated time to their turn, usually it crosses the value the staff estimates due to several factors. However, another critical problem is that the clipboard and pen based queue management requires customers and visitors to stand nearby or in waiting lines, hence they have less freedom and could feel bound which results in frustration and unhappiness.
- No Data Collection: The business intelligence data is vital for strategy making and decision taking processes. A clipboard and pen based queuing system cannot gather any kind of business intelligence data. It is nearly impossible to understand customer behavior, their experience, the waiting time and employee performance, etc. using clipboard and pen queuing management method. Without clear information decisions and strategies have too much guessing work which reduce the success rate and can undermine the profitability and productivity of a business.
The waiting line management can be very challenging for businesses. There are several factors that contribute to long waiting lines and their repercussions on customer experience. The clipboard and pen queuing is a very old waiting line management method. Due to its inherent disadvantages and flaws businesses started adopting more modern and technologically advanced queuing methods such as implementing a digital queue management system. Here are some key advantages of virtual queuing that will help you significantly improve customer experience, and drive efficiency and productivity in the internal business processes.
See Also: The Role of AI in Enhancing Queue Management Systems
Advantages of a Virtual Queuing System
Any digital queue management system can offer a great efficiency comparing to traditional clipboard and pen methods. However, the virtual queuing is considered to be the most modern and advanced form of queue management systems. The virtual queuing system help businesses achieve a better customer flow and improve customer journey and experience. The customer experience drives customer loyalty, and the customer loyalty is a key to long term success. Furthermore the virtual queuing system is also a great tool to collect highly valuable business intelligence data which help businesses understand and evaluate their internal processes, customer experience and much more.
The virtual queuing system utilizes the most commonly used communication channels and mediums to make it more convenient for an average customer or visitor to access to the system. The virtual queuing also help reducing the customer wait time and provide better control over the customer flow. The crowd prevention features help management dealing with any unexpected scenario and large influx of the customer and visitors. The virtual queuing system is based on an AI (artificial intelligence) based smart software engine which also facilitate communication and improve customer engagements. Here are the key advantages of a virtual queuing system which make it far more superior than the conventional clipboard and pen methods.
See Also: Queue Management System Features you Need for Modern Queuing
Advantages of Virtual Queuing System: Easy Remote Sign-up Features
One of the biggest advantage of a virtual queuing system is that it offers multiple remote sign-up methods. Which makes it more convenient and easier for the customers and visitors to sign-up remotely without being physically present at the business premises. There are multiple channels that can be integrated with virtual queuing system such as SMS, Call Center, Online Booking, Customer Portals, Corporate Website, Queue Management System Mobile Apps, WhatsApp, QR Code, etc. All these channels help customers sign-up easily without any need of physically appearing at the business.
The customers are signed-up remotely for virtual queues, no matter if they are present at the business premises or not they will remain on their designated positions in the queue and will be called upon their turn. This means that if a customer plans to visit a bank branch or a customer service center they can sign-up while they are at home or work, and they will be issued an e-ticket which will contain their token number and the estimated time to their turn. Hence they can plan their visit with more freedom and convenience which definitely enhance their experience and raise their happiness and satisfaction.
See Also: How a Queue Management System Can Transform Your Business Operations
Advantages of Virtual Queuing System: Significantly Low Wait Time
The wait time is one of the most impactful aspect of queuing process. Longer wait time will always hurt your customer experience and it will also cause increase in customer churn rate. Furthermore the longer customer wait time also causes unsatisfied service experience and it creates other management related problems such as it will impact your employee efficiency and resource management strategy. Furthermore there are two different types of wait time that we consider in queuing process. One is the actual wait time and the other most important phenomenon is the perceived wait time. The perceived wait time is just the imagination of human brain. The human brain works in very peculiar ways, if the waiting experience is not so good, the actual wait time could be 1 minute but we will feel it like 5 minutes or so.
That is why the perceived wait time is very important for customer experience. The biggest advantage of virtual queuing system is that it not only reduce the actual wait time but it also help minimizing the perceived wait time as well. As the customers and visitors can sign-up remotely and only required to arrive at the time of their turn so the wait time can be reduced to literally none. Even if a customer arrive before some time it would be marginal and they will have to wait very little which is why the virtual queuing system is one of the best in terms of managing customer wait time.
See Also: Importance of Queue Management System for Government and Public Offices
Advantages of Virtual Queuing System: Increase Customer Engagements
Customer engagement is another important factor of queuing management process. Engaged customers are tend to tolerate more wait time comparing to less engaged customers. For that different queue management systems use different techniques, for example a traditional digital queue management system offers digital signage screens and audio/visual announcement system which help engaging customers and keep them distracted from the waiting and reduce their stress. The digital signage are used to display the live queuing information along with multimedia content which keep users busy. Furthermore the audio/visual announcement system also keep announcing ticket number upon each customer call in multiple languages which also keep user distracted from the waiting and help reducing their stress and boredom.
The virtual queuing system offers all these features and on top of that it also offers a bi-directional communication channel. Since most of the customers and visitors who are using virtual queuing would spend very less time in waiting areas so the communication channels help businesses provide queuing information, updates, notification, alerts and also a chatting facility via dedicated chat boxes or WhatsApp, etc. The service agents can also update customers in case of any urgent update or change in their turn, etc. These all features help businesses increase the customer engagement which is essential for reducing the wait time stress. It greatly help improving customers’ waiting experience and increase their satisfaction.
See Also: Touch Less Customer Experience, Use the RSI Queue Management System
Advantages of Virtual Queuing System: Improved and Automated Customer Flow
The customer flow management always have huge impact on the overall performance and efficiency of the queuing process. Each business offers multiple services, these services are offered through multiple counters. Sometimes businesses also multi-stepped services or stepped services which require a customer to visit at least two or more counters in order to avail a full service. Then there are different customer segmentations on the bases of the customers and visitors demographics and service type. For example, businesses could have dedicated counters for elderly visitors, people with special needs, VIP or Premium customers and service-bound segregation. All these segregations means that each customer group will be treated differently or could have different customer experience expectations.
On top of that in a real-life queuing scenario there are several other variables that can impact your customer flow such as longer service delivery time than expected, unwanted delay due to disputes, additional requirements or any such thing, all these factors can disrupt a regular customer flow. Hence the businesses need a mechanism in place which can order the customer flow by monitoring real-time queuing data and taking automated decision in order to ensure maximum customer flow is sustained. The dedicated administrative dashboard and smart software engine of the virtual queuing system will help businesses define and implement their queuing policy in a fully automated manner.
Hence the virtual queuing system monitors system usage stats and data from touch points to take real-time decisions which help improving the customer flow and improve customer experience by reducing their wait time and solving such problems.
See Also: How to Set Up SMS based Queue Management System?
Advantages of Virtual Queuing System: Improve Productivity and Employee Performance
For any business the productivity and performance are essential needs. Without achieving higher productivity and performance a business can never achieve higher profitability which is crucial for long term success and growth. The clipboard and pen based queuing system is slow, restricted and outdated. It cannot meet the needs of the modern market requirements. A digital queue management system on the other hand is very advanced, it improves productivity and performance and help businesses in resource management. A virtual queuing system can collect a variety of employee performance data which is also very helpful in improving employee performance. It can track all employee activities and their progress of the day.
On top of that it provides various performance KPIs and analytical tools which help management in evaluating employee performance and help them taking actions in right direction to improve performance and productivity. Furthermore in any queuing management scenarios the employees who are serving customers need to perform several pre and post-service tasks. These tasks can be time consuming, however, with the help of the virtual queuing system and its ability to integrate it with other internal systems and central information center can help reducing employee efforts and maximize their performance. It also keep employee free from any task related to customer flow and line management as all that is done automatically. Hence the employee performance and productivity if significantly improved.
See Also: Streamlining Customer Service: The Power of a Modern Queue Management System
Advantages of Virtual Queuing System: Collect Valuable Business Intelligence Data
The modern day and age is completely dominated by technology and data. The AI (artificial intelligence), big data, cloud, electric cars, smartphones and such technologies are so popular that every day we are reading something about them. The technology have completely revolutionized our daily work and personal lifestyle. The modern businesses are heavily relying on IT and data for their day-to-day tasks as well as for basing their strategies and policies upon it. The term business intelligence is self-explanatory. The business intelligence data is insight about the matters relate to your business. It could and should include both internal and external factors. The data gathering is crucial for any modern business as their most of the policies and strategic decisions will be solely based on the reports and inputs of their data analysts.
The traditional clipboard and pen queuing method is unable to collect the required data in fact it is nearly impossible to collect any business intelligence data with that method. The virtual queuing system on the contrary can provide a wealth of valuable business intelligence data. The virtual queuing system is capable of collecting system usage and analytical data from each and every touch point of the customer journey and it can also capture insight from other connected systems and tools. Furthermore the virtual queuing system also provide enriched analytical tools and customized reporting features which also help businesses getting the full advantage of the precious business intelligence data.
See Also: What to Consider When Choosing a Queue Management System
Advantages of Virtual Queuing System: Effectively Collect High-Quality Customer Feedback Data
Customer feedback data is vital for a healthy business growth. It help businesses acquire a deeper and better understanding of the customers, their behavior and market trends. Businesses in Dubai and all around the UAE actively work on their customer feedback management campaigns. For that usually businesses use a dedicated customer feedback management tool. The virtual queuing system offer two different method to implement customer feedback management tools. You can integrate your CRM or existing customer feedback management tool with the virtual queuing system or you can utilize the in-built customer feedback management module of the virtual queue management system to collect customer feedback data.
It is far more convenient to conduct customer feedback campaign using the in-built customer feedback tool of the virtual queuing system. As the queue management system is already taking information about the customer and the service they need. Hence no need to input that data again during the survey. Which will make your survey small and it will definitely increase the response rate. Furthermore the customer feedback data can easily be analyzed with in-built analytical tools or it can be relayed to a third party system, CRM or any other customer feedback system or it can be integrated with the central information center for better data analysis and data sharing tasks.
See Also: Government Digital Transformation: Implementation of Queue Management System
See More: 5 Ways to Manage your Customer Service Queues
Conclusion
For any business managing queues and large influx could be a challenging task. For that businesses hire additional staff adopt modern practices and implement technologies. The queue management process is a very complicated process. Especially in Dubai and all around the UAE where the markets are very advanced, the customers are savvy and the competition is tough. Furthermore the customer experience has become a phenomenally important factor in any business’s success. It is not just in UAE but all over the world, the customers are willing to pay extra if they are provided with a better experience. That is why businesses need to focus more on customer experience and customer satisfaction.
When it comes to queuing management system the clipboard and pen queuing method is very old and outdated. It is limited, have several restriction, and this method doesn’t collect any business intelligence data. These are the reasons businesses decided to implement more advanced and technology based digital queue management systems. The virtual queuing system is the most modern and highly advanced form of a traditional digital queue management system. It not just only offers all advantages of a tradition queue management system but it also help boosting system efficiency and enhancing customer experience.
The virtual queuing system is a great tool to maximize the efficiency of your queuing process. It also help enhancing customer experience and it is a great tool to capture valuable business intelligence data. In this blog we have discussed why a virtual queuing system is better than clipboard and pen. We have listed the common problems and drawbacks of clipboard and pen based queuing process and we have enlisted the key advantages of the virtual queuing system. If you want to learn more about the subject or if you want our help to implement a highly customized and tailor-made virtual queuing system for your business please 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.
See Also: 5 Challenges to face if Performance Appraisal is not customized as per Organization’s Policies