We’re often speaking to retailers about how Tigrox can help them streamline queue management and streamline customer waiting periods. This week, we found a brilliant article written by The Marketing Donut, that speaks about exactly that.
They write:
“Customer waiting time and queues are an arithmetic certainty of service delivery. In the real world, even when you have extra staff available just in case demand builds up, queues will occur. It’s normal for shoppers to arrive in bunches and not in a steady flow.
Well-planned and well-managed queues are a healthy thing. They indicate a vibrant business that is successfully controlling the cost of delivering service to its customers and at the same time managing shoppers’ perceptions of their wait.
Whether there are only two people waiting or 42, the right mathematical methodology has to be used to determine how to serve customers as efficiently as possible and how to allocate service fairly.
You can see the impact of a well-managed queue on the faces of the customers and servers. They are relaxed, unstressed. Waiting customers look around them and take an interest in merchandise. The store receives fewer complaints and suffers lower staff absenteeism. A business without queues is either overmanned or lacking customers – or worse, both.
Every store has a strategic decision to make. Is operating cost more important than customer service? Cutting costs can mean that customers wait longer. On the other hand, if stores decide that service times are more important to their brand proposition than cost or if they know that because of the nature of their business customers will be less tolerant of waiting times, they will ensure that fewer customers have to wait, but they will also increase the cost of their operation and risk more times when staff are standing idle.
This dilemma can be resolved through lean queue management. By making wait times more acceptable, and by organising service allocation systems they can help to lower costs and reduce waste in the process.”
A study completed by Professor Edward Anderson, called Managing Waiting Lines succinctly highlights an age-old retail issue, “Managing waiting lines create a great dilemma for managers seeking to improve the return on investment of their operations”, and with all kinds of mathematical formulas and calculations, there is no doubt that queue management is something that is on everyone’s minds.
Tigrox not only streamlines your queues, but it communicates with your customers at the same time. From the minute they walk into your establishment, your customers have a clear visibility as to where they need to queue. It is efficient, fast, and meaningful.