Having long lines and busy waiting area is a common sighting in the service industry. Businesses who operate in service sector can’t avoid waiting lines, though there are proven market strategies that can help them minimizing the customer wait time enable them to improve customer experience. There are many factors that contributes to slow moving queues and long waiting lines, which cause unhappiness, and sometimes annoy your customers. That is when the queue management comes into play, the queuing management is a strategy and technology a business implement to reduce customer wait time and to improve their experience at the business. These two are extremely important for a business, happy and satisfied customers become loyal, the loyal customers not only give repeated business, but they also help establishing a positive brand image. No one likes waiting, but if you have a queue management system you can not only minimize the wait time but you can also significantly enhance customer experience.
Imagine you have some important work at a government office or a bank, when you reach there you find crowded waiting areas, entangled queues, and you have no idea which waiting line you should stand in, or even if your line is moving or not. How frustrating and annoying it would be? You are also risking the same frustration for your customers by not properly managing your customer flow and queues. Businesses knew that from the very beginning, that is why the queue management system have transformed from a paper pen ticketing to a highly advanced AI (artificial intelligence) based sophisticated digital queue management system. Now a days in Dubai or anywhere in UAE there are hundreds of vendors who are advertising different types of queue management systems in the market, which sometime could be very confusing for the business owner or the managers to choose the best match of their requirements. In this blog we will discuss how a customized queue management system is the best choice for any business.
What is a Customized Queue Management System?
There are usually two types of every digital system and software, one is called commercial off-the-shelf solution or COTS and the other is customized solution. The COTS are designed for masses and a large number of businesses/users uses them. Whereas the customized solutions are tailor-made software and systems which are exclusively designed for a particular business or user. Both types of solutions have their own advantages and disadvantages. The COTS are easy to deploy, in fact can be deployed within a day or two, the customized queue management systems take time to develop and also have higher initial cost. The biggest problem with the COTS is that they can never fulfil 100% of the needs of a business, usually if a commercial off-the-shelf solution meets a business’s 80% of the needs, it is considered ideal. However, the customized software solutions eliminate that problem and as they are exclusively designed for the user, they can meet 100% of the needs of the user and have higher performance, adoptability and longer lifecycle. Furthermore the COTS also have reoccurring costs and the ownership belongs to service provider, the customized software on the contrary doesn’t have any such cost and the ownership belongs to the business for whom these software are designed for.
What are the Benefits of Customized Queue Management System?
The customized queue management system can completely transform the business/branch and the customer experience. It can significantly improve the customer flow and help businesses reduce and manage the crowd. The reduction in wait time and the enhanced customer experience ensures maximum customer satisfaction. Here are the key benefits of implementing a customized queue management system at your business/branch:
Benefits of Customized Queue Management System: Reduced Wait Time
The customer wait time is one of the most impactful factor on customer happiness and customer satisfaction. No one wants to wait in long queues, everyone wants to get everything done quickly. According to several studies on an average a customer could wait for up to 8 to 13 maximum. After 8 minutes the customer start getting annoyed and anxious and after 13 minutes the customer start getting annoyed, angry and frustrated. The customer wait time is one of the primary causes to unhappiness of the customers. That is why the main objective of implementing a digital queue management system is to reduce customer wait time, improve their queuing experience and help businesses achieve better performance. The customized queue management system is exclusively designed as per the needs and requirements of your environment which enables it to maximize its impact and minimize the customer wait time as much as possible without compromising customer experience and happiness.
Benefits of Customized Queue Management System: Seamless Ticket Generation
Earlier businesses were manually distributing tickets to the customers and visitors, which is a slow and time consuming process, and this process also have higher error rate which cause problems for the customers. However a customized queue management system makes ticket dispensing and distribution process self-service for the customers. Usually a self-service interactive kiosk is used to dispense the tickets. In your customized queue management system the User Interface is designed as per the requirements and needs which further improve the performance. Businesses can have multiple languages that they want and they can ask certain questions if needed. The customer can chose the right service they need from a list, and the queue management system can also suggest them what service they might be needing based on their previous experience. The ticket dispensing kiosk is a self-service technology powered by AI (artificial intelligence) and its automated algorithms can offer a great customer experience.
Benefits of Customized Queue Management System: Improve Employee Performance
The success of any business depends on its employees’ performance. When employee works under heavy workload and the crowd formation and poorly managed queues are a common occurring, the employee become less productive. In case of unorganized queues the staff usually have to spend a lot of time in organizing the queues and sorting out the problems and queries of the customers and visitors. However, when you implement a customized queue management system, the system take care of the entire customer flow and it manages all the queues automatically. The smart algorithms and AI based powerful software engine can fetch data in real-time from various touchpoints and it can compare it with live data and historic data, which enables it to take highly effective decisions in real-time and manage all the customer footfall to maximize the efficiency. Furthermore the queue management system also monitor and track employee performance and KPIs which also help management and HR to take informed decisions to maximize the employee performance.
Benefits of Customized Queue Management System: Enhance Customer Experience
Customer experience is a key to customer happiness which drives customer loyalty and the customer loyalty help businesses to sustain and grow. Bad customer experience on the other hand tend to repel customers from the business and can harm or completely disrupt the growth and sustainability. In a highly competitive market like UAE if a business fails to meet the expectations of a customer, then the customer will move on to the next business, in fact these days the availability of too many options also raised the customer standards. When customer demands are skyrocketing, the market become highly competitive and you are failing to fulfill their needs, you are not only risking to lose the customer but also your business’s reputation. The customized queue management system help reducing service delivery time, wait time and improve employee performance. Furthermore, it is also helpful to maintain a balance between the customer footfall and employee performance.
Conclusion
Every business belongs to service-sector, needs some kind of customer flow management system which is also knows as queue management system. The businesses often get average footfall, but during peak hours or peak days of the week or month, the customer footfall could significantly increase. Businesses need prior planning and strategy in order to meet the demand of the customers. On top of that it could become extremely difficult to manage the queues during the peak hours. A digital queue management system can solve all these problems but there are two main types of Queuing systems, one is with the COT and the other is the customized queue management system. The customized queue management system is superior than the off-the-shelf solution, it help reducing the customer wait time, it helps businesses improve their internal processes, it improves employee performance, it minimize customer wait time, it enhance customer experience and increase customer loyalty.
Check out this: The Beginner’s Guide to Queuing Theory