Queuing has always been a part of life. The issue, however, is that people are becoming far less patient and forgiving. How can we solve that?
Queuing has always been a part of life. The issue, however, is that people are becoming far less patient and forgiving. Studies have found that the average human’s attention span was eight seconds — a full second shorter than that of a goldfish! With technology taking over virtually every aspect of our lives, that number is likely to decrease further in the future. Technology is teaching us to expect instant fulfillment, but the physical world rarely works that way.
Relying on physical queues is bad for business. It has been proven that even an objectively short wait will frustrate customers, leading to poor experiences that ultimately damage your brand.
The best way to reduce wait times if you’re using physical queues is to increase your service capacity, which means either increasing your operating space and/or staff, both of which is a costly exercise. Plus, manual queue management is labor-intensive, inefficient, and not always accurate.
In a world that is more digitally centered, embracing a tech solution to queue management is the logical next step in the evolution of brick-and-mortar retail.
The pandemic forced customers to rely on self-service channels to satisfy their shopping needs. With brick-and-mortar on the rebound, merging digital experiences with physical ones simply makes sense.
Innovative companies are turning to Service Systems to solve the problem of long queues and human impatience. Service Systems Virtual queues replace physical lines, allowing customers to continue their shopping and receive alerts on the queue status via their own devices or screens installed in-store. Virtual queue management gives people flexibility and makes waiting feel acceptable.
Studies have shown that physical queues most commonly bring out feelings of boredom, annoyance, or frustration and that if given the choice, almost 70% of customers would rather wait in a virtual queue than a physical queue. Customers are also more likely to leave a physical queue than a virtual one.
Physical queues are outdated. In today’s competitive retail market where customer loyalty is fragile, virtual queue management will elevate your customer experience while bringing order to your waiting area.
Delight your visitors with one of our fantastic queue management systems proudly made in South Africa! Visit Service Systems to find out more.
