All businesses face queuing and waiting line problems. In fact here in Dubai and all around the UAE the service based industry is struggling very hard to minimize waiting line problems. This is because the market is very competitive, people usually have a busy lifestyle and no wants to stand in waiting line for hours. Let us admit, we don’t want to wait in a queue even if we have time, and in case if someone had to reach somewhere or short on time, the waiting could get more frustrated. That is why the businesses invest huge number of resources and hard-earned profits into solutions that can solve their queuing problems.
No matter what service you offer there would be a time when you will have to deal with long queues. Extended waiting time could destroy customer experience, it cause stress and frustration which later also impact on the service. It is extremely harder to satisfy an already stressed or annoyed customer. That is why we have decided to write this blog to provide our audience and customers a basic understanding of the waiting line problems and how a digital queue management system can solve them.
What are common Waiting Line Problems?
The waiting lines doesn’t only impact your customers but they also cause frustration in your staff. Extended and longer wait time is one of the biggest and most harmful problem any service based business face with their waiting lines. The long waiting time cause stress and unrest among the customers and visitors, people tend to start line jumping, crossing one another, which results in verbal confrontations and dispute among the customers themselves as well as with the staff. Furthermore with poorly managed queues, people usually end up at wrong counters, which cause additional issues.
The long waiting line result in higher customer churn rate, when a customer leaves without getting service, they most likely will never return which cause business a great loss. The long waiting line put employees on their toes, everyone have to do multitasking in order to maintain the order and keep customers calm. Which put extra strain on employees and effect their efficiency and performance. Businesses will have to assign more employees to manage queues which increase their expense and further squeeze their profits.
The mismanaged queues and long waiting lines can directly or indirectly impact each and everything in an organization and impact their overall growth. Here is how a digital queue management system can not only solve their problems but it can also help businesses in improving customer experience, customer satisfaction, employee efficiency and productivity.
How a Digital Queue Management System can Solve Waiting Line Problems?
A digital queue management system is a technological solution to solve waiting line problems. It consists of two parts, the software and the hardware, these two can further divided into multiple categories on the bases of features and functionalities. A basic digital queue management system consists of the following components:
Queue Management System Software:
- Queue Server Software/Application
- Agent Interface
- Administrative Dashboard and Control Panel
- Customer Interface
Queue Management System Hardware:
- Ticket Dispensing Kiosk/Printer
- Audio Visual Announcement Tools
- Digital Signage
- Counter Displays/Plates
The operation is fairly simple. The queue management system is installed at the business premises. The server software/application could be hosted online, or at cloud on even in local in-premises data centers. The agent dashboard could be a well-crafted intuitive web-based interface which can be accessed by any computer with a web browser on it or it could be as simple as a push button. The ticket dispensing unit is usually an interactive self-service kiosk but a simpler ticket printer can be used at the reception to issue queuing tickets to the customers and visitors.
The audio visual announcements system consists of a speaker system and a display which are installed at strategic places within the premises. The counter displays or counter plates are used to assign number/names of the counters. The counter displays also allow displaying more useful information. Since the primary language here in UAE is Arabic and there is a huge expat population so having an Arabic queue management system, which supports both Arabic and English and even more languages can greatly improve customer satisfaction.
That is a simplest form of a digital queue management system. There is a wide range of all sorts and types of digital queue management system available in the market. Some follows a bit more traditional queue management methods and some are modernized and offer more value to customer experience. Here is how a digital queue management system can help eliminating the waiting line problems:
Queue Management System: Organizes Waiting Lines
The queue management system help organizing the waiting lines which itself can solve a lot of common waiting line problems. All the customers are required to get a ticket. Their ticket number corresponds to their turn in the queue. Moreover the queue management system can also ask customers to choose their desired service which prevent confusion and ambiguities. Since the ticket number is already assigned to everyone, so the line jumping is completely eliminated. Everyone will be served on their turn only no matter where they stand in the queue.
Usually when the customers are standing in waiting lines, they think that the line next to them might be moving quickly, which cause line jumping. However when the tickets are already given, then there is no point in jumping lines. Similarly when people are in waiting lines, they feel the staff is favoring someone, especially familiar customers, which cause unrest and stress and sometimes led to disputes between customers and the staff.
As a queue management system is a digital system and everyone knows that all the tickets are issued by a computer program which is unable to distinguish between different persons, so they don’t have any concerns about favoritism or unfair treatment. That is why the customers trust it and knows that everyone will be treated fairly. This make waiting line more organized and also help reducing the work of the staff who usually engaged in managing waiting line and solving problems. Moreover the businesses can also utilize the queue management system to segregate different customers on the bases of their required services, their priority levels and much more.
All businesses have different services and different priority levels for the customers. For example, usually at banks the retail customers and the corporate customers are served at different counters or service windows. Similarly for expecting mothers, people with special needs, or elderly people there could be different service counters and so on. The queue management system help organizing the waiting line according to the needs of the business.
Queue Management System: Reduce Customer Wait Time
One of the biggest advantage of a digital queue management system is that it has ability to significantly reduce the customer wait time. The customer wait time is single most influential factor in the waiting line and longer the wait time make your customers unhappy and in some cases very stressed. The longer wait time is also a major cause of the customer churn. The customers tend to leave when they feel they will have to wait for a very long time. This happens when the waiting lines are moving slowly, the queues are managed poorly, the staff is fully engaged with customers and the service agents are also busy in managing customer flow and solving other waiting line problems.
Which distract them and cause further delay in the service. All these things add up to the waiting time. Studies have shown that on an average a customer is only willing to wait for around 14 minutes, this is the maximum limit, for several other businesses the average tolerable wait time is even less than that.
More wait time means more stress and frustration, if a customer reach to the counter in a stressed mood, it would be hard for the service agent to satisfy them. A digital queue management system can solve all these problems. It can streamline customer flow and lift unnecessary work from the service agents and other staff. Which allow them to focus on their primary tasks. Thus the service agent can have a better interaction with the customers and they can also minimize the service delivery time. Furthermore the well-organized waiting lines and queues also help reducing the wait time and improve customer flow.
Smoother customer journey means better customer experience and higher customer satisfaction. Since most of the customer journey is managed by the automated queue management system this means there would be no delays, errors or complaints from the customer. The queue management system also ensures each customer arrive at the right counter and it can also support service agents in the service delivery process which maximize their performance. All these improved processes significantly reduce customer wait time and ensure a smoother and happier customer journey.
Queue Management System: Improves Customer Waiting Experience
Another most important aspect of customer satisfaction is their waiting experience. The human brain works in a very peculiar way. When we are waiting for something we feel like the time is passing slower than usual. When we are excited we feel like the time passes faster than usual. This phenomenon is called perceived time. In service industry the perceived time is always a problem for the managers. Even though a proper queue management system is in place, the average wait time is reduced and the service agent are performing well, still the customer complains for long wait time.
This is due to the fact that they started to get bored after just 8 to 10 minutes. For that the queue management system offers multiple solutions. There are large digital displays used with the queue management system to publish the queuing information. The same can be utilized to play multimedia content or adverts or anything interesting. This can distract them from the waiting and keep them engaged.
Usually a standard queue management system comes with in-built digital signage tools which allow the managers to push content on the signage screens in the waiting area. The screen can be divided into two or more sections to display the queuing information and the multimedia content side by side. Furthermore the audio announcement system also helps engaging the customers. For each ticket the audio announcement system announces the ticket number and corresponding counter number/name and this announcement is made in multiple languages, usually English and Arabic in Dubai and all around the UAE.
This also keep users distracted from waiting and increase their engagement. All these features help reducing the perceived wait time and improve customer’s waiting experience. The queue management system also comes with a smart software engine, which has capabilities to analyze the historical data and it can predict the expected wait time for each ticket based on the historic data and current queue status. Printing that time on the ticket is also helpful in reducing the perceived wait time and help improving customers’ waiting experience.
Queue Management System: Provides Valuable Business Intelligence Data
The modern businesses are heavily relying on data and information. The market trends, voice of customer, statistical data, performance data and such information are the backbone of the decision making process in the modern business environment. The waiting lines and the customer flow are one of the crucial factor for any service based business. It is extremely important to gather valuable business intelligence data from your queuing processes. A queue management system is a digital tool with an AI (Artificial Intelligence) based software. Its algorithms are programmed to collect data from each and every customer touch point and from all relevant internal business processes.
The queue management system records customer journey details such as average wait time, busy hours of the day, and busiest days of the week or month and so on. Such data helps manager to form strategies to effectively deal with the waiting line problems and help them in improving the queuing process. The queue management system can capture and provide data in real-time the branch managers, head-office or any other concerned person can have real-time access to the ongoing queuing processes from anywhere through dedicated dashboards.
The queue management system can also capture the wait time for each service and each priority level of the customers along with the service delivery time. The in-built analytical tools can provide full details of each individual process as well as average wait time and service time. The same kind of data can be captured for the service agents. This data provides a deeper insight to the queuing process and relevant staff work performance.
The managers can easily understand the strengths and weaknesses of their staff. For example, if a service agent performs well when delivering 5 out of 12 services and he/she slows down when working on the others, which mean he/she needs more training for the remaining services. The queue management system can also capture time between one service delivery and next customer call. Along with all these details a lot of the parameters are also captured and direct KPIs can be set and monitored for the performance.
The performance data helps the HR and the customer flow data helps the managers to build new strategies and plan resources accordingly to maximize the efficiency. Better resource planning, improved productivity and individual performance help businesses reduce the resources for the operational needs. Which help them reduce the expenses of the branch thus improve profitability. Satisfactory customer experience also help gaining their trust and drive customer loyalty which further add up to the profitability and growth.
The loyal customers are a precious asset for any business, it is 5 to 25 times less-expensive to sell to an existing customer than acquiring a new customer. The voice of customer or customer feedback collection capabilities also help businesses getting in-sight to the customers’ minds. Which help them understand customers’ liking/disliking, demands, needs, problems, and also help them in product development process. All this business intelligence data can significantly improve various internal processes and have huge impact on customer experience and customer happiness.
Queue Management System: Offers Virtual Queuing and Mobile Apps
Waiting line problems are not new for the service sector. Businesses are dealing with waiting line problems since the very beginning. However the market trends have been changed. The customer behavior and their expectations have changed drastically. Especially in the past decade, the technology have integrated far deeply to our daily lives. Now a days if you are living in Dubai or any other part of the UAE you must be utilizing some kind of technological solution to interact with businesses, organizations and even with government entities too. The UAE government specifically is very advanced comparing to other government in the region.
The UAE government is in a transition phase to replacing the traditional service practices with the modernized and digital e-Services. This is due to the advancements in the smartphones and their usability, these days the smartphones and mobile apps have become an essential part of our day-to-day activities. Whether it is communication, work or entertainment, the smartphones and mobile apps are helping us making our lives better. The queue management systems are no exception.
The queue management system mobile apps allow customers to utilize modernized queuing methods, which is more commonly known as virtual queuing. The virtual queuing is a modern and most efficient queuing method. It enables the customers and visitors to sign-up for virtual queues using remote channels and it has capabilities to completely eliminate the wait time. The customers and visitors can use queue management system mobile apps or any other remote channel such as SMS, Email, Call, Online Customer Portals, Appointment Booking Portals, WhatsApp, etc. to sign-up for the queue.
An e-ticket or digital ticket has been issued which act as the queue number and allow customers to sign-up for the queue without physically arriving at the branch or standing in the waiting lines. The queue management system also allow the customer service agents and staff to communicate with the customers via digital channels such as WhatsApp, Customer Portals, SMS, Email, In-app Alerts & Notifications and much more. The customers always get updated queuing information through their preferred communication channel along with the expect wait time.
This allow them to plan their visit as per their convenience and arrive only when their turn comes. The virtual queuing and queue management system mobile apps literally reduce the wait time to zero and offer a more personalized customer experience. No wait time or very low wait time in itself is a remarkable achievement. Furthermore the queue management system mobile apps and the online appointment booking portal also help customer gaining access to the valuable information which help them plan their visit more conveniently. Customer can view live queuing information at all branches, hence they can sign-up for the branch with less customers and so on and so forth.
The queue management system mobile apps also provide branch locator which allow customers to view real-time location maps and traffic updates and let them plan their visit according to their convenience. Such features can significantly improve customer experience and help businesses obtain higher levels of customer happiness and customer satisfaction. The virtual queuing also reduce the workload of the staff and help improving their performance too.
Conclusion
For any service sector the customer waiting lines are always a big challenge, especially when the footfall is high the customer waiting lines could drastically impact customer experience. A bad customer experience can repel your customers. Furthermore the businesses also have to allocate more resources to deal with the waiting line and queuing problems. A digital queue management system not only help businesses is solving all waiting line problems but it also add value to customer experience and raise the levels of customer satisfaction. The queue management system also help businesses optimize and improve staff efficiency and performance which also results in better customer experience. As it is a digital tool so it can effectively capture valuable business intelligence data which can be help businesses and management in decision making and strategy building processes.
The queue management system not only solve waiting line problems but it also help improving various internal processes and overall productivity of the service center. The virtual queuing, integration with third-party tools, mobile apps and such modern features help businesses and customers in many ways. Here in Dubai and all around the UAE there are many different types of queue management systems available in the market. It is crucial to choose an appropriate queue management system with the correct set of features to maximize your service center’s performance.
RSI Concepts is a leading queue management system provider in Dubai, UAE. If you want to learn more about waiting line problems and their solutions or if you want our help to deploy an effective and cost-efficient queue management 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.
Check out this: How Insurance Companies can Improve Customer Happiness with a Queue Management System?
