Here in Dubai and all around the UAE the supermarkets, shopping malls, retail stores, discount stores, and other small and medium size retail businesses are booming. In fact in some places you can find more than 10 supermarkets in the same row. This is due to the fact that most of the middle class population lives in flats and high rise buildings, so these stores have enough amount of customers. However, this also provide customers with more options in a close proximity and make the competition very tough. When people visit supermarkets, shopping stores, retail shops and businesses their experience could have very long-lasting effects on them. If a customer had a great experience they will most likely to return, if they had a bad experience they might not return. Another very common behavior is detected in retail customers which is that if they found there are long queues at the counters, they might not even enter the supermarket, instead they immediately move on to the next business. That is why having a good queue management is extremely important for supermarkets.
How a Retail Queue Management System Works
A retail queue management system is completely different from the traditional queue management system where the customers and visitors sign-up for the queues and get a ticket number issued against their position in the queue. In the supermarkets and retail sector the queue management system is rather a bit more of a data collection tool which help managers to get real-time data from the store. The integrated algorithms and AI (Artificial Intelligence) based software engine can accurately predict the crowd formation several minutes (20 to 30 minutes) priors which provide manages enough time to activate all the counters and make sure all the cashiers are at their positions. The retail queue management system relies on a video processing mechanism which accurately measure the number of customers entering in the supermarket and the number of customers/carts at the cash counters.
With the help of previous data and intelligent software engine the retail queue management system can accurately predict the crowd formation and it can also help managers understand the reasons of cart abandonment. This data can help managers refine their future strategy and help them understand the major factors of crowd formation and cart abandonment. Furthermore the system can accurately track the idle time of each individual cashier/service agent, the wait time of each customer and the service delivery/transaction time of each customer. This data can help managers monitor and improve employee performance as well which could have significant impact on service quality and customer satisfaction.
The Impact of Wait Time on Supermarkets & Retail Customers
The retail market is getting very sensitive, the customers are becoming more sensitive to wait time and overall experience. Studies have revealed that the 25% customers don’t tolerate more than 2 minutes of wait time, 55% to 60% of the consumers prefer not to wait more than 4 minutes, and almost 70% to 75% says they would abandoned their carts if they had to wait more than 5 – 6 minutes. The studies was done among selected customer groups from all around the world. In different countries and regions these figures could be different. However we can get an idea of the importance and impact of wait time on customer happiness. The ability to check out quickly have significant impact on customer’s perception of the brand as well. Most of the customers judge a business’s credibility on the bases of the experience they have with them.
A retail queue management system is a great tool to effectively reduce the customer wait time. It provide real-time data updates, and it has in-built automatic notification and alert mechanism which can alert the management and the relevant personals when things go beyond the thresholds. This way the management can also take steps and get themselves ready for increasing number of customers at the counters to prevent long wait time.
Retail Queue Management System Improves Resource Management
Here in Dubai and all across the UAE the supermarkets and the retail sector always have multiple tasks for the cashiers. The fact is that the market is not always crowded, it is just a few peak hours when the supermarkets and the other retail businesses gets too many customers, in such scenarios all the cash counters must be online to expedite the checkout process and to prevent the long queues and crowd formation. A retail queue management system can monitor the footfall along with capabilities to measure the number of customers at the cash counters awaiting checkout. This ability blended with intelligent software engine enables the retail queue management system to accurately predict the queues. All this data collection and data analysis is done in real time and the results are provided to the managers. Which allow them to get ready for the increased number of checkouts and provide them enough time to gather employees at the counters to ensure a continuous and uninterrupted customer flow.
With the help of real-time data and predictive abilities of the retail queue management system the manager can effectively and more efficiently manage the resources. Furthermore the retail queue management system also maintain the historic data which can be analyzed with in-built analytical tools to understand several trends. The managers can effectively understand the cart abandonment trend, the peak hours’ trend, and even the employee performance and various KPIs. Which help them make policies and build strategies to effectively use resources to obtain maximum efficiency and productivity.
Retail Queue Management System Measures Cart Abandonment
For any supermarket and retail business the tracking of cart abandonment is crucial. The retail queue management system is very good in accurately measuring the cart abandonment. As we already know the customers don’t tolerate much wait time. But the wait time is not the only factor causing cart abandonment. In fact there is another very important aspect of retail queuing that cause results in increased cart abandonments. Several studies and researches have concluded that on an average in a supermarket or any other retail business if a customer found the queue is longer than the 7 people, they are most likely to look up for another counter and eventually they will leave empty handed. This is a very important matric to track. There has been several studies and surveys that showed that almost 85% of the customers avoid such supermarkets and retail businesses where they think they will have longer queues.
The retail queue management system not only accurately measure the number of cart abandonment but it can also correlate it to the number of customers in the queue. The businesses can use this data with the average cart value to estimate how much sale value they are losing on an average. This data can be very helpful for the management in decision making process and they can compare the sales value loss with the expense of hiring a new cashier and make a decision very easily. Such features make retail queue management system a very useful tool for the supermarkets and retail businesses.
Retail Queue Management System Help Improving Customer Experience
Retail queue management system is very helpful in improving customer experience. The customer experience is majorly driven by the wait time and waiting lines in the supermarket and other retail businesses. In order to make your customer happy it is extremely important to make their checkout experience happy. The retail queue management system help businesses understand customer behavior, cart abandonment trends and several other matrices which help businesses effectively and efficiently manage resource. The retail queue management system also have ability to make accurate predictions of crowd formation and send alerts to the manager and other relevant personals. This feature help managers to take necessary steps to prevent crowd and appoint more employees at the cash counters to ensure smooth customer flow. Which not only enhance customer experience and reduce their waiting time but it also help reducing customer churn rate or cart abandonment.
Happy customers experience help supermarkets and retail businesses to gain customer trust, improve brand image and increase their loyalty. The loyal customers can be a great asset for supermarkets and other retail businesses as they are tend to be a good brand advocate and help getting more customers. The real-time data and recorded data can be used in decision making and policy building process and can help business in long term.
Conclusion
For any supermarket or retail business the biggest challenge is always to manage the long queues at the cash counters. The customer experience is pretty much driven by the waiting time they had to spend at checkout queues. A business can easily train its staff to make the checkout process quicker, but it is very hard to control the number of customers lined up at a cash counter. A retail queue management system is specifically designed for supermarkets and retail businesses to help them reduce the customer wait time, it also help them efficiently manage their employees and resources. And it collect and provide real-time data. The managers can use the real-time data to understand customer behaviors and cart abandonment trends. This help them identify the problems that their customers are facing and provide them accurate business intelligence data to help them in decision making and policy building phases.
These traits of a retail queue management system make it essential for the supermarkets and retail businesses. RSI Concepts is a leading queue management system provider in Dubai, UAE. If you want to learn more about the subject or if you want us to help you with your queuing needs, 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.
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