Virtual Queuing and Digital Customer Experience

Virtual Queuing and Digital Customer Experience

Business in Dubai and all around UAE are always seeking ways to improve their customer experience and customer journey. The UAE is a very large and rapidly growing economy, this attracts a lot of entrepreneurs, investors, businesses from all over the world. Especially the service based industries are facing tough competitive environment. This competition results is high market standards and higher customer expectations. That is why the customer experience is extremely important for any business to ensure long term sustainable growth. During last few years the customer behavior have changed drastically due to the COVID and social distancing. People are more inclined towards digital interaction than physical interaction. The businesses also have to implement social distancing policies and other safety rule to ensure the health and safety of the customers and the staff. This has changed the entire landscape of the communication and services.

Virtual Queuing and Digital Customer Experience

A queue management system is a tool used to streamline customer flow. It help businesses to automate or semi-automate various customer journey steps. A digital queue management system can segregate customers as per their needs which improves customer flow and reduce customer wait time. The queue management system also help improving the service quality and boosting the performance of the service staff or service agents. Which result in reduced customer churn rate, higher customer happiness. The customer satisfaction is a key to customer loyalty and the customer loyalty is considered to be the foundation of growth and profitability. The queue management systems have also evolved a lot, as the general market trends got changed the queue management systems also got changed. The virtual queuing and mobile queuing are not a new concepts however, since the later 2020 till today and also in future the virtual queuing will dominate the queue management systems. In this blog we will discuss how virtual queuing and digital customer experience can be your best competitive advantage to boost the profitability, efficiency, quality of service and customer experience.

What is Virtual Queuing?

The virtual queuing is a process of signing-up a customer in a virtual queue. For queue management systems the virtual queuing is a relatively new terminology and it doesn’t only mean to create virtual queues in fact the virtual queuing means to enable the customers to sign-up remotely in virtual queues using mobile devices or digital channels. The virtual queuing can be done using web portals, mobile apps, SMS, emails, QR Codes and much more. The biggest differentiation between the virtual queuing and traditional queuing is that the virtual queuing can literally reduce the wait time to none. The customers and visitors are free to wait outside or plan their visit to arrive only when their turn is expected. The live queuing information can be relayed to the customers using multiple channels along with alerts and notifications. The customer service agent can also communicate with the customers and visitors to inform them about any change or unexpected scenario. The virtual queuing transform customer journey and customer experience and ensures maximum customer happiness.

Read More: Benefits of Virtual Queue Management System

What is Virtual Queuing?

What is Digital Customer Experience?

The term digital customer experience refers to all the interactions a customer have with the business using the digital channels and mediums such as online or internet, emails, mobile apps, social media, chat bots, and even the SMS communication can be taken as the part of the digital customer experience. The digital customer experience management strategy is very important these days. As people living in Dubai or anywhere else in UAE are very familiar with the digital interactions. So providing digital customer experience doesn’t only have operational benefits but the customers will also expect digital interaction from their favorite brands. That is why the digital customer experience is very important and a business should use right tools to ensure the customers will be satisfied and delighted with their interaction. The virtual queuing is a great tool to enhance digital customer experience. It also help businesses collect useful system insights and business intelligence data which can be further used to tune up relevant business processes and to evaluate the performance of the staff and different departments/branches. The business intelligence also help businesses to take informed decisions and make right policies to ensure long term growth and customer retention.

What is Digital Customer Experience?

Virtual Queuing and Digital Customer Experience Optimize Wait Time

People don’t like to wait in long queues. The long wait time is a major reason of customer churn and poor customer experience. We have all noticed that when we are standing in queues at one point or another we feel that the line next to us is moving faster, this is only a behavior phenomenon when people just perceive that and it is because of the stress of the waiting. With manual queues there are several other problems too, such as line jumpers, or people standing in wrong queues or even people are giving way to others to join the queue from their point. However, with a digital queue management system when a single customer have a ticket these all things can be avoided. The psychological effects of waiting in the queues can also be minimized. With the help of virtual queuing the businesses can offer their customers and visitors a facility to sign-up remotely or virtually and they are provided with the live queuing information via remote channels which allow them to arrive only when their ticket is called. Hence there is literally no wait at all.

Virtual Queuing and Digital Customer Experience Optimize Wait Time

Read More: How to reduce patient wait time in hospitals with virtual queuing?

The digital experience and virtual queuing strategy can significantly improve customer satisfaction and help improving customer loyalty too. These days everyone is familiar with digital interaction. The internet penetration is almost 99% in UAE. This enabled businesses to innovate very effective digital strategies utilizing digital channels and digital communication. There are several digital channels that c

an be integrated with queue management system to enable virtual sign-up process. For example, the company website or a dedicated customer portal can improve customer experience. Moreover an appointment booking module can offer a great sign-up experience. It can provide additional details such as busy hours, nearest branches and much more which can be very helpful for booking a suitable appointment and planning the visit.

Virtual Queuing and Digital Customer Experience Optimize Wait Time

In the entire UAE the mobile phones are widely used, in fact almost 96% of the population use mobile phones. Which make them extremely important. In order to build a strategy for digital customer experience the mobile phones can be a great tool to enhance customer journey and experience. Businesses can offer mobile phone apps or SMS based virtual queuing. The retail sector in Dubai and all around the UAE is also using QR code based queuing. These all are the form of virtual queuing. Along with that the business can also integrate SMS services to enable the customers to sign-up via SMS. WhatsApp is the most popular app used for communication in UAE and also all around the world. The WhatsApp can also be integrated to enhance digital customer experience. These all tools can be used to improve communication, customer engagements, customer waiting experience and even businesses can also conduct customer feedback surveys via their digital channels. The virtual queuing reduce the customer wait time to literally none, which raise customer satisfaction and customer happiness.

Read More: Queue & Waiting Time Management

Virtual Queuing and Digital Customer Experience Optimize Wait Time

Virtual Queuing and Digital Customer Experience Improves Customer Satisfaction

The virtual queuing and digital customer experience can automate several customer journey steps and improve customer flow. The queue management system can easily identify the service hence it can sign-up the customers and visitors for the right queue or virtual queue. The queue management system can also help streamlining the customer flow by automatically routing customers to the relevant counters and even it can automatically reroute the customers as per the set protocols. For example, if some counters are less busy or free the system can automatically reroute the customers to such counters. This way the business can optimize resources and improve the overall efficiency of the entire branch. The queue management system can also manage customers on the bases of their priority, such as ordinary customers, premium or VIP customers, and customers with special needs, etc. This also help improving customer experience and ensure a balanced workload for the staff to improve staff efficiency and quality of the service.

Virtual Queuing and Digital Customer Experience Improves Customer Satisfaction

Read More: What Is Virtual Queuing? A Guide to Virtual Queues

Most of the time a business has multiple services and multiple counters, some counters are dedicated for certain services and sometimes some counters are dedicated for priority customers. A digital queue management system can easily handle all those scenarios and it can automatically control customer flow for each counter as per the set protocols. Most of the time businesses also offer stepped-services. The stepped services are those which require from a customer to visit multiple counters for a single service delivery. Managing such services could be tricky, some steps are lengthier and some are quick, sometimes some steps have more counters and vice versa. A digital queue management system can easily handle all those scenarios by using in-built smart algorithms and intelligence software engine, which help businesses to ensure smooth customer flow throughout the entire customer journey to improve customer happiness and customer satisfaction. Such way the businesses can significantly reduce customer wait time and improve customer flow which directly impact customer happiness and customer satisfaction.

Virtual Queuing and Digital Customer Experience Improves Customer Satisfaction

Virtual Queuing and Digital Customer Experience Improves Service Quality

The service quality is extremely important for customer retention. If a businesses is failing to provide quality service no matter who much efforts they put to improve customer flow, ultimately the customers will be unhappy. That is why it is extremely important to improve service quality. A virtual queue management system or any other queuing solutions is capable of collecting basic information during the sign-up process. This information can be used to improve service quality. For example, whenever a customer is reaching to a counter the agent needs their basic information to start the service. That information can be pre-loaded when the customer is arriving as the system already knows their identity from the virtual sign-up process. Similarly as a customer is already selecting the service they need, so if any preparation is required for that, it can be done automatically before even the customer arrives, so the agent is completely ready to deliver the service.

Virtual Queuing and Digital Customer Experience Improves Service Quality

This not only reduce the service delivery time, but it also reduce server’s/agent’s work, which give them a better chance to focus on the quality and experience. Quicker service delivery mean happy customer and it also mean less time for the next customer waiting in queue. This way it not only facilitate the service delivery process but is also help businesses in reducing the wait time. Since an employee can entertain more customers in less time, their work efficiency is also improved. The virtual queuing and digital customer experience can help improving service quality and service delivery process.

Read More: How Queue Management System Helps to Provide Better Customer Service

Virtual Queuing and Digital Customer Experience Provide Deeper Data Insights

The virtual queuing is used to transform digital customer experience. The digital comes with various benefits and one of them is the data collection and business intelligence gathering. With virtual queuing and digital customer experience strategy business can collect statistical and usage data from each and every touch point of the customer journey and businesses can also collect customer feedback data using integrated communication channels. The queue management system can record the statistical data too such as which virtual queuing channels are used for how many times, what is he average wait time, which service delivery takes how much time on average and even the queue management system can also record such details for each individual interaction. These are very helpful information and provide a deeper and much better understanding of the customer journey. Businesses can easily identify the areas of improvements and build their future strategies to meet their goals of efficiency and customer satisfaction.

Virtual Queuing and Digital Customer Experience Provide Deeper Data Insights

The virtual queuing and digital customer experience also provide accurate KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and other data which can be used for various purposes and can be shared with relevant departments and personals to help them improve their performance. The business can accurately monitor and record the performance of individual employee for example, which employees take how much time to deliver a service and that can be recorded against each service the agent is working on. The queue management system can also record the performance of the teams and even the branches which can be later analyzed by the management using in-built data analytical tools. Businesses can also done comparative analysis for the employees, services, teams and branches as well. The queue management system also help collecting the customer feedback data which can be collected using multiple channels.

Virtual Queuing and Digital Customer Experience Provide Deeper Data Insights

The customer feedback data is very important. Businesses can conduct various different types of surveys using the digital and mobile channels such as SMS, Emails, Customer Portal Dashboards, Website, Touch Screens (in-premises), mobile apps, etc. The queue management system can collect NPS (net promoter score), CES (customer effort score), CSAT (customer satisfaction score), general rating and happiness scores and even businesses can also conduct long surveys. This data can provide a deeper understanding of the customer’s minds, their expectations and market trends. Collectively the business intelligence data collected from virtual queuing and digital customer experience can be used highlight areas of improvements and to build strategies for the future growth.The queue management system also provide facility to directly share the relevant data to the relevant department, management or individual employees to ensure seamless automated data sharing. This enables the businesses to take immediate actions on top priority feedbacks and data indicators and also help them to make better plan for the future.

Read More: Business Process Optimization Using Queue Management System Business Intelligence Data

Virtual Queuing and Digital Customer Experience Provide Deeper Data Insights

Virtual Queuing and Digital Customer Experience Boost Employee Performance

The employee performance is also a key factor in customer satisfaction and overall efficiency of the business. With the help of virtual queuing and digital customer experience the employee workload can be easily reduced. As the wait time is very less, so there is not much chance of crowd formation or any such problem with the customers and visitors waiting in the waiting areas. Moreover the sales agents and server also get help from the queue management system dashboard and the system can also aid the service delivery process by automatically preparing the agents for the next customer. This way the employee workload can be significantly reduced. A single customer service agent can serve more customers in a single shift. Which boost their performance. The queue management system also closely monitor the performance of the staff and help the businesses and management to effectively utilize resources for best performance.

Virtual Queuing and Digital Customer Experience Boost Employee Performance

For example, some employees perform better with the services they are experienced in and some perform better for certain services and vice versa. This can be analyzed with the help of KPIs monitoring tool. The information can be relayed to the HR which can later help training programs or transfer human resources and deploy them as per their skill set to obtain maximum employee performance and overall business efficiency. Good employee performance also help improving customer journey and customer satisfaction. The employees who are working under a pleasant environment with balanced workload are tend to deliver high quality services thus ensuring better customer experience and higher customer happiness.

Read More: Virtual Queuing and Digital Customer Experience

Virtual Queuing and Digital Customer Experience – System Integration

The virtual queuing and digital customer experience management is not as that simple. In fact it is a very complex and sophisticated process. The SMEs and SMBs can equally benefit from the virtual queuing and digital customer experience strategy as the large banks, healthcare facilities, educational institutes and large enterprises. Any digital solution or system requires data to operate at optimum levels. For that the system integration is done. The system integration is a technique used to push and pull data from a system. Usually every business have a central information system which is lined to a tool or software that is responsible for the most of the operational activities. That is why a queue management system and digital customer experience solution can be integrated with the central information center or with any other third-party system or tool to ensure automatic data synchronization. The integration also paves the way for various innovative features which can be added to the system to improve digital customer experience and to increase customer happiness and satisfaction.

Virtual Queuing and Digital Customer Experience – System Integration

Virtual Queuing and Digital Customer Experience is a Key to Long Term Growth

The growth of any business depends on two main things, one is customer satisfaction and the second is right strategy and policy. The customer happiness and customer satisfaction drive customer loyalty and help improving customer retention rates. Studies have shown that it is almost nine to twelve time less expensive to sell to an existing customer rather acquiring a new customer. There are various studies that shows that a business’s reputation and its brand image can impact its marketing campaigns too. If a business has good reputation and a positive brand image the return over its marketing investments would be better comparing to a business with bad reputation or negative brand identity. The loyal customers and customer retention is considered to be the foundation of the long term growth. Customer happiness and customer satisfaction drive customer loyalty. The loyal customers are more likely to do repeated business and are also tend to be a good brand advocate and help promoting the brand.

Virtual Queuing and Digital Customer Experience is a Key to Long Term Growth

In addition to that the virtual queuing and digital customer experience help businesses optimizing the resource consumption and improve employee performance as well. The digitalization and automation also help automating various business processes and reduce customer journey steps. Collectively these all factors result in per service cost reduction. Which ensures high productivity and profitability. That is why the virtual queuing and digital customer experience is a key to long term growth.

Read More: Why should you adopt queue management systems?

Conclusion

The virtual queuing and digital customer experience help businesses improve customer journey and ensure customer satisfaction. The customer happiness and customer satisfaction is achieved by reducing the customer efforts and by enabling the business to reduce the wait time. It also help businesses to optimize various business process and also help improving service delivery mechanisms. The virtual queuing and digital customer experience help improving staff efficiency and increase the overall operational capabilities and productivity of the entire business. All these factors contribute in customer retention and help earning customer loyalty. The virtual queuing and digital customer experience also help collecting data insight and customer feedbacks. Which can be analyzed to make changes for the improvements and to build future strategies that drive higher profitability and customer satisfaction. The purpose of this blog was to emphasize on the importance of the virtual queuing and digital customer experience. If you need more information about the topic or need our help with your queuing needs or customer experience transformation, 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.

How Queue Management Systems are helping Businesses Grow in 2021

How Queue Management Systems are helping Businesses Grow in 2021

The impact of the year 2021 was a complete shift in customer behavior, expectations, and market trends. Businesses are quickly adopting new technological solutions to deal with such changes. A queue management system is a great tool to transform customer journeys and to monitor each and every aspect of them. The businesses in Dubai and all around the UAE are strictly following the health and safety protocols, the social distancing is a new norm. The number of active queues and customers inside the premises has significantly dropped, however, the facilities remained of the same size. Businesses will have to make the customer journey as quickly as possible to be able to serve an equal number of customers daily before the pandemic. Although this is a temporary situation and soon the businesses will resume as per their older states. However, the change in the customer behavior and market trend will be going to take a lot longer to reverse. Most probably it won’t reverse at all. In such conditions, businesses will have to have a better control over the customer journey and customer experience. Which is only possible with an efficient queue management system.

How Queue Management Systems are helping Businesses Grow in 2021

No matter what type of industry you operate in, almost all businesses want or have to keep their customers in lines and queues. It doesn’t matter how large or small your facility is, the important thing is to ensure a flawless customer journey and a satisfactory customer experience. Which is a key to success. Happy and satisfied customers tend to be the best advocate of the brand and help to promote a positive brand identity which improves the brand’s reputation and overall image in the market. This attracts more customers and it also helps to improve the conversion rates of the marketing activities.

Here are some key areas where queue management systems are helping business to ensure their steady growth in 2021:

Queue Management System Improves Customer Journey and Customer Experience

Queue Management System Improves Customer Journey and Customer Experience

A queue management system can completely transform the customer journey and enhances the customer experience. The main concern of all businesses is to improve customer journey and their experiences through their branch or offices. A queue management system can automatically manages the customer flow and route them according to the predefined company policies and protocols. Managing the lines manually required more staff and it also cause problems, most of the customers complains about line jumpers and mismanagement and got unhappy with the staff, this ruins their experience. The manual management of the queues also results in more workload on the staff and slowly moving queues. This not only increases the wait time, but it also results in crowd formation and more pressure on the staff as well as on the customers and visitors too. The customer experience is ruined and the customer journey is prolonged. The customers left unhappy and unsatisfied. However a digital queue management system can prevent all these problems.

A queue management system organizes each aspect of the customer journey and improve customer experience at each touch point. The customers and visitors can sign-up for the queue using an interactive interface which is mostly an interactive touch screen kiosks. The customer can select the service they want to avail and sign-up for the required queue. Once they signed-up they are directed to a waiting area. In the waiting area the businesses can further improve their waiting experience by utilizing the digital signage screens comes with any standard queue management system. Usually these digital signage are used to display live queuing information, but adverts and multimedia content can also be played to increase customer engagements. The queuing information are also very important for the customers. So these digital

Queue Management System Helps Improving Customer Retention

Queue Management System Helps Improving Customer Retention

The queue management systems are a great help to improve customer retention and customer loyalty. As the customer retention and customer loyalty both are linked with each other and both depends upon the customer journey and customer experience. A queue management system helps businesses and organizations to streamline their customer flow and to improve their waiting experience. This had a very positive impact on the customers and it also increase customer happiness rates. Customer happiness lead to improved customer loyalty, the loyal customers are the one who do repeated business with the brand and generate more revenue. According to several studies and market researches attaining a new customers could be 9 to 12 times more expensive than retaining an existing customer. This directly impact the profitability of the business.

Business always seek methods to retain their existing customers. As the customers who are happy with their brand are tend to be more loyal and only loyal customers are the one who promote a positive brand identity. The positive brand identity helps the brand to attract more customers easily. A positive brand reputation also improves the outcome of the marketing efforts and campaigns. Once a customer or visitors builds a positive image of the brand it is much easier and less costly to satisfy them for the business. Only by improving the customer journey and customer experiences a brand can significantly improve their customer retention rates with the help of a queue management system.

Virtual Queuing Boosts Customer Happiness and Productivity

Virtual Queuing Boosts Customer Happiness and Productivity

Virtual Queuing is not a new type of queue management system in fact this form of queuing was there since more than 5, 6 years. However, due to the situation in 2020 the virtual queuing suddenly got attentions and businesses immediately rushed toward adopting this technology. The main concept of virtual queuing is to enable the customers and visitors to sign-up remotely and let them wait in the virtual queues without being physically present in the physical queue. This means that the customers and visitors will only have to come at the very time of their turn and they don’t have to wait inside the premises. This means there will be absolutely no wait time. Wait time is extremely important in customer journey and customer happiness. Studies have shown that around only 13 minutes of wait time is acceptable by any customer or visitor, any time longer than that start impacting customer happiness and customer experience. Which is why the virtual queuing is a very advanced and modern form of customer flow management and it boosts customer happiness.

Another reason why virtual queuing enabled queue management systems are gaining popularity is because the management can easily control the entire customer flow, they can limit the number of customers to be allowed inside the premises which ensure social distancing and health and safety of the customers and visitors as well as of the staff. Apart from that when an option is given to the customers they prefer not to wait inside the premises, instead customers only arrive at the very exact time of their turn, which will prevent crowd formation and make it a lot easier for the staff to manage the customers and visitors inside the premises. This reduce the work load of the employees and make them more productive. As the agents and servers are relieved from extra work, their productivity automatically raised, they would be able to serve more customers in a single shift. This enables the businesses to reduce the number of employees and make rest of the employees more efficient which definitely reduce the cost and increases profitability. The balanced work load also improve the capabilities of the employees and make them able to serve customers better, which also improves customer experience and increase customer happiness.

Virtual Queuing Boosts Customer Happiness and Productivity

There are several methods and techniques used for virtual queuing, for example the customers can be allowed to sign-up from their smartphone applications, SMS, Email, Call, QR Code, etc. The queuing data and information can be provided on the customer portals, smartphone applications or temporary link which can be shared with the customers through SMS or Email or via Smartphone Apps. The customer calling and announcements can also be made through SMS, Smartphone Applications, Notifications, etc. This further enhances the customer experience and increase their satisfaction. It leaves a very good impression on customers and customers thinks that the brand really cares about them and is very serious in facilitating them and making everything convenient for them. This help business promoting positive brand identity and it improves brand reputation.

Customer Feedback ModuleAids Progress and Development Process

Customer Feedback ModuleAids Progress and Development Process

The customer feedback is a very important indicator of the business progress and development. Business here in Dubai and all around the UAE often overlooked this tool and keep pouring huge amount of resources for development and improvement in various sectors. But the question arises how would a business know if their all efforts and investments are in the right direction? The most accurate and easier method is to ask your customers if they are happy with all what you are doing to please them or not? That is why the customer feedback plays a vital role in business’s growth and progress. Asking customers to opine on a certain aspect of the service delivery or customer experience is very simple and easy using a customer feedback module integrated with the queue management system. We have frequently witnessed small touch screens on the counters of banks, exchanges and retail stores. These are the simplest and easiest form of customer feedback. The businesses and organizations can also utilize these small touch screens or tablets to conduct small customer feedback surveys.

Linking the customer feedback system with a queue management system comes with several advantages. For example in such case the business don’t necessarily need to ask for identification information, as such information can be obtained from the queue management system itself, this enables the management to keep the customer feedback survey simple and easier which encourages more customers to share their opinion. As one of the most annoying thing for any customer is to fill in long forms or to fill in identification data before submitting their feedbacks. The identification of the customer is not always needed but most of the time it is very helpful. A simple NPS Score (Net Promoter Score), or CSAT Survey (Customer Satisfaction Survey) could provide enough information to let the business trace the discrepancies or I would rather say the areas of improvements in the customer journey.

Customer Feedback ModuleAids Progress and Development Process

Another advantage of the customer feedback module is that the management can conduct several campaigns to get a complete analysis of the entire customer journey including all touch points and business can also take reviews about their products and services. For example the business set a campaign to ask customer about the wait time only, the next campaign could be for the behavior of the server, another campaign could be to get NPS Score or to know the customers opinion about what is good or bad in a particular product or service and so on. These all campaigns’ data can be combined to produce comprehensive reports which can be included in the policy making and decision making process. This ensures the development and progress of the business will be in right direction in future and it also provide a very accurate analysis of all the efforts that are being done till date to improve customer journey and customer happiness.

Queue Management System’s KPIs Help Improving the Performance

Queue Management System’s KPIs Help Improving the Performance

Queue Management System comes with in-built KPIs monitoring tool. The KPIs are Key Performance Indicators, mainly referred to as the performance of the employees. Apart from the KPIs the queue management system can also measure and monitor other aspects of the customer journey. The employee performance management and their KPIs are very important for the management to ensure the ultimate efficiency of the entire branch. The employee performance in measured by several indicators some are generic and some depends upon the situation and work flow of the business. For example how much time is consumed by an employee to serve a single customer, this value is taken usually on average and it also records number of daily services. The queue management system also measure and records the work efficiency of an employee during the busiest hours and during the least busy hours and in between. Such information is very helpful in measuring and assessing the overall performance of an employee.

Queue Management System’s KPIs Help Improving the Performance

Moreover there are certain employees who perform well with certain services, means some agents are much better on certain services and when they are assigned the same they perform well comparing to other services, some employees perform well during the busiest hours and some perform better under medium work load. Such parameters are very important to manage human resource and the business can plan a setup to ensure the highest performance of all the employees all the time. The KPIs also include the customer feedback data associated with a particular employee, which also provide more details on the subject. The business can also record the idle time and operating time during the day and can track record of such details. The KPIs monitoring is also important for optimizing the cost per service delivery. When all the employees are provided the conditions where they can perform at their best the customer journey and customer experience automatically improved. Resulting in cost optimization and more customer retention.

Business Intelligence and Reports Help Making Profitable Policies

Business Intelligence and Reports Help Making Profitable Policies

Another remarkable feature of the queue management system is the in-built data analytical and statistical engine that captures extremely useful data and stats. The queue management system can capture the various parameters and aspects of the entire customer journey such as number of daily customers, busy hours, busy days, etc. It also captures average service time for each service, the customer journey duration for different categories of the customers, such as regular or ordinary customers, VIP customers, or the customers with special needs and so on. It can capture the system usage information as well. The employee performance and KPIs are also included in the business intelligence and reporting to make the data more accurate and comprehensive. The customer feedbacks and data from other systems and business tools can also be included in these reports. Collectively the data is processed through the in-built smart algorithms and then several reports are compiled.

The major category of the reports are comprehensive or detailed reports, summary reports, trend reports and corporate or executive reports. These reports are designed for different levels of the management and are very helpful in analyzing the entire operation. On the bases of these reports and data the management can make more informed decisions and set up strategies to improve operational capabilities and efficiency, which directly impact the profitability and growth.

Read this: Why Performance Management System is a Necessity for Companies in Dubai

Conclusion

The year 2021 come with completely new challenges and business in Dubai and all around the UAE are eagerly seeking methods and tools to deal with the situation. The very top priority is to maximize the customer journey and customer experience to increase the customer retention which is considered to be the guarantee for the steady growth and profitability. Studies have shown that it is almost 9 to 12 times more expensive to get a new customer than retaining an existing customer and generating repeated business from them. This means the loyal customers can act as a strong foundation at which a business can aim for the growth and progress. Businesses are investing a lot in customer satisfaction solution, a queue management system is a complete tool to manage and monitor the entire customer journey and all its relevant factors. A queue management system can completely transform the customer journey by automating the customer flow and improving a lot of business processes that further accelerate the customer journey and ensure least possible wait time.

The wait time is the most influential factor in customer satisfaction and customer happiness, a queue management system can significantly reduce the wait time and it is also very capable of improving the wait time experience and maintain customer engagement. It also improves employee efficiency and other aspects of the customer journey which make customer experience better. Furthermore customer feedbacks, KPIs monitoring and business intelligence gathering makes a queue management system an ultimate tool to optimize the customer journey. The business can assess each and every aspect of the customer journey and then make informed decisions and strategies to improve them. The virtual queuing and smartphone applications further improve the customer experience, ensure social distancing and more control over the customer flow management and improve service delivery time and quality. A queue management system is the most cost-efficient and effective tool to transform customer journey and improve business growth rate. RSI Concepts is a leading queue management system provider in Dubai, we are providing a complete range of customer satisfaction solutions and monitoring tools. Feel free to reach 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 blog: 2021 Digital Branch Transformation Trends

5 Signs Your Business Requires a Queue Management System

 

5 Signs Your Business Requires a Queue Management System

Every business has its own set of challenges, needs, and ways to handle problems. This sets them apart from others. Businesses in Dubai and all across the UAE invest heavily in improving their products, services, communication, brand promotion, and infrastructure, but often overlook the importance of queue management. This is why most of the customers and visitors end up unhappy or unsatisfied after having an interaction with their brand. When a customer or visitor arrives at the business they want to get served instantly, only a few customers are willing to wait, the majority of them get annoyed if they have to wait for a long time. People usually don’t like being stuck in busy and crowded places. People don’t like to wait which impacts the customer experience. A bad customer experience will harm the business reputation and identity. If people are getting bad experiences more often they will start talking about it with their friends, family and colleagues, even some customers also post on social medias. Which is very bad for a business’s reputation and it could completely ruin a brand.

The queue management and customer flow management and customer journey management problems are not new neither these problems are associated with only certain types of businesses. All types and size of business and organizations are facing queue management and customer flow management problems and having difficulties with managing customer journey. Businesses often assume that their sales are going up, the growth rates are good, so everything is perfect, but in reality that is not the case, there could be hundreds of factors that could give a pump to your sales for the time being, but in longer run if you are oblivion to the problems your customers and visitors are facing, eventually you will end up with a very bad reputation and your revenue and sales will decline.

How a business will know if they need a queue management system? Here are the 5 signs that your business requires a queue management system:

Sign No. 1: Crowded Waiting Areas and Long Queues

Crowded Waiting Areas and Long Queues

That is the very first and most visible sign. If your service centers or offices are reporting crowded waiting areas and long queues you must need a queue management system. When a large number of customers and visitors are waiting to get served by the agent/server, then that means there is some problem. People who have to wait for long time get frustrated and sometimes leave without getting the service. Customer and visitors who have to wait for long time are most likely to have a bad experience with the service agent as well. If you are having long queues in the customer service center that means your customers and visitors will have to wait for a long time and they will also face all problems related to waiting in long line such as line jumpers, customer getting lost, customer ending up at wrong counter, etc. All such problems are causing negative impact on customer experience and customer journey which will eventually ruin your brand reputation as well.

Sign No. 2: Customers Complaints

Customers Complaints

Some business and organizations in Dubai and all around the UAE thinks that the queues and customer waiting in long lines is a natural mode of customer flow, however there is a threshold between acceptable and unacceptable waiting conditions and wait time. And it gets unacceptable when your staff getting complaints and start noticing unhappy customers who are talking about long wait time or complaining about mismanagement and such things. The customers and visitors will also express their opinion with the service agents. But such customers will be less in number, and in fact there will be only a very few who will ever bother to go through filling a complaint by due process. Mostly the customer will either verbally complaint to the staff who are managing the queues or to the service agents. Only a very few of those verbal complaints will make up to the top management and mostly the staff and employees will try to deal with them by themselves or either discuss with their supervisors and that is it. This is another reason why business often failed to understand the severity of the problem.

Sign No. 3: Increased Customer Churn Rate and Lower Customer Retention

Increased Customer Churn Rate and Lower Customer Retention

The long queues and crowded waiting areas always increase customer churn rate. The customer churn rate is the measurement of the customers who made their mind to purchase or acquire a service and arrived at the branch but leave without doing so. There could be several reasons but almost 90% of the time the customer churn is caused by the long waiting lines and crowded waiting areas. There are studies suggesting that acquiring a new customer could be 8 to 22 percent more costly than retaining an existing customer. If you start noticing lower customer retention rates, or if you are not getting repeated business from your existing customers, you should have to worry. Because the lower customer retention will impact your profitability it will increase the cost of new conversions. Increased customer churn rate and lower customer retention also earn negative brand reputation. The customers who have already reached to the business but leave without purchase or getting served are the most annoyed customers, the customer who don’t do repeated business are also unhappy and unsatisfied.

Sign No. 4: Poor Employee Performance and Unbalanced Workload

Poor Employee Performance and Unbalanced Workload

If you start noticing that your employees are performing poorly or serving less customers than anticipated. Or if you employees are serving less customers than before, or if your employees are also complaining about the work load and the management is also noticing unbalanced work load, some employees are busier than the others and other such issues, then you should seriously consider a queue management system. Mostly business in Dubai and all around the UAE invest heavily in employee training and employee performance management solutions, however very few business take steps to improve employee performance. It is a general believe that if an employee is performing bad then they must need more training, however this is not applicable all the times. Sometimes the employees are skilled enough but they are lagging support they need. That is why sometime the employee too complaint about the unbalanced workload or request for assistance from other employees and so on. It is extremely important that your all employee work at their full potential and are happy and satisfied as this will directly impact on customer experience and service quality.

Sign No. 5: Lack of Business Intelligence Data

Lack of Business Intelligence Data

Business intelligence data is a broad term used for a variety of different data types which are relevant to the businesses and are very helpful in decision making and future planning. In Dubai and all around the UAE the markets are very competitive and the customers are very up-to-date. It means the market trends and customer’s expectations are also continuously evolving. In order to deal with such scenarios business often require to update their policies, strategies and business processes. When it comes to customer journey and customer satisfaction related policies and strategy the business require very precise and accurate data to understand and evaluate their current business processes and current strategy. Which is not possible without having a system in place. It is very hard to track customer churn without having a record of the customers and visitors who have signed up for the queue. It is impossible to track the service delivery time accurately without any system in place. The employee KPIs (key performance indicators) can’t be measured manually with optimum precision and accuracy. There are so many different variables that impact customer satisfaction and customer happiness, which all are required when making a decision or making policies and planning for future.

How a Queue Management System can Help?

How a Queue Management System can Help?

A queue management system can streamline customer flow and help the employee in managing queues. The automatic queue management and customer flow eliminate the human intervention which rectify all major problems and significantly reduce the wait time. The queue management system facilitates various business processesand automate customer journey which reduce the workload of the staff and employees. The employees can easily focus on their primary tasks and all their efforts which was consumed in managing customers and queue will be preserved. This way the employee can provide better quality service and their capacity to serve customers in a single shift also increased. Which help the business in reducing the staff and improving branch profitability.

As the customer flow and the entire customer journey can be managed through the queue management system it is easier for business and organizations to implement new rules and policies. The queue management system manage and route customers and visitors as per these policies and pre-set configurations, which further improve customer experience and reduce the customer journey. This increase customer happiness and customer satisfaction and reduce customer complaints. A better environment and good management reduce the customer churn rate. Once customer start getting good and happy customer experience they become more loyal to the business. Loyal customers are easy to retain and business can easily get repeated business from their existing customers. The loyal and happy customers are tend to be good brand advocate and they promote the business which improve brand reputation and help business in promoting a positive brand identity.

A positive brand identity, loyal customers and efficient operation attracts more customers and also improve conversion rate form marketing efforts. Altogether these all factors increase the profitability and revenue. Another great advantage of a queue management system is that it provide intensive business intelligence data. It can capture data from all touch points, KPIs and system stats also provide great business intelligence data. These days most of the modern queue management system also collect customer feedbacks through an in-built customer feedback and survey module which also provide great insight on customer journey, customer experience and their needs and expectations. The business intelligence is extremely crucial for policy making, strategy building and identifying the areas of improvements. The management can easily take good decision on the bases of such data.

Read More: Importance of Display Devices in Queue Management System

Conclusion

Business and organizations in Dubai and all across the UAE are very keen to improve their products, services, quality, communication and what not, but unfortunately mostly the queue management is over looked. In fact most business believe that having long queues and crowded waiting areas is a normal way of the customer flow. However, the long wait time, poorly managed queues could have the most devastated impact on customer experience. A bad customer experience results in lower customer retention and lower customer satisfaction. Unsatisfied customers results in negative brand reputation and distrust among the targeted audience which also results in poor conversion rates of the marketing efforts. Whereas the positive brand identity and good brand reputation build trust, help businesses in improving customer retention and higher conversion rates.

If you are witnessing long queues and crowd in your waiting area, which means the customer flow is not good. If you are getting more complaints from the customers and visitors and your customer churn rate is increasing and customer retention and repeated business is decreasing that means your valuable customers are going to the competitor. If employees are showing signs of unbalanced workload and performing less than expectations, it means they are not satisfied and/or having too much workload. If you are finding it difficult to understand your queuing situation and business processes or if you are finding it difficult to identify the areas of improvements, it means you are lacking sufficient business intelligence data. For all those problems there is only one solution and that is a queue management system. RSI Concepts is a leading name in providing most efficient queue management systems in Dubai and all around the UAE. Feel free to reach us out 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: Qualities of Top Queue Management System

Appointment scheduling tips to improve customer experience

Appointment-scheduling-tips-to-improve-customer-experience

In this blog, we will discuss some appointment scheduling tips to improve customer experience. First of all, we have to understand why an appointment scheduling system is required and what it can do to improve the customer experience? Here are some basic features of an appointment system:

  1. Allow full control over customer flow and queue management
  2. Increase service time efficiency and decrease the customer wait time
  3. Allow booking out of the business hours
  4. Provides more flexibility, ease and access to your customers
  5. Allow online and remote sign-ups, with notifications, reminders, etc
  6. Provide detailed insight of the customer flow
  7. Facility to customize the queue management with routines and expected future visits
  8. Improve planning and management efficiency for the service agents and staff
  9. Provides real-time status reports, regular reports, and statistical data
  10. Customer Feedbacks, Integration with other systems, data export facility and much more

These are some of the basic features of an appointment system. Before you start adding up more features or add-ons in the appointment scheduling system you should have to understand your strengths and weaknesses. The best practice is to conduct some surveys with your service agents, and your customers, and try to understand what is necessary to improve the customer experience in the branch.

Most of the businesses heavily focus on the customer experience and their journey without considering any investment in the service delivery staff. It is very important to maintain a stress-free environment for the service agents as well. The appointment scheduling systems not only enhance customer satisfaction and the customer journey but also help reducing stress on the service delivery staff and the counter agents. This could further improve the overall efficiency and customer happiness.

Following are some of the most important things that business should consider while implementing an appointment scheduling system:

Availability on multiple platforms and mediums

Availability-on-multiple-platforms-and-mediums

Your appointment scheduling system should be available on multiple platforms and should be accessible through multiple mediums. People love to use their mobile phones as a substitute for the laptop or PC. A dedicated smartphone application for Google Play Store (Android) and Apple App Store (iOS) will be a good addition. Website portals and sign-up via SMS service are also widely used mediums.

Ease of Use (User Interface)

Ease-of-Use-(User-Interface)

The appointment scheduling should be very easy and in a few steps only, let say your customer can sign-up using their batch number or some serial number which provide all necessary information about the customer to the system and they don’t have to fill in long forms each time they want to sign-up. Optimize the appointment scheduling and booking mechanisms.

Provide helpful information and the latest data

Provide-helpful-information-and-the-latest-data

The portal should have enough information so that the customer can choose the appropriate service without any confusion or complexity. Showing current (real-time) information is vital for customer experience and it also helps to control the customer flow.

Communication is the backbone

Communication-is-the-backbone

In customer satisfaction and customer happiness, communication from an organization is always crucial. The customers love to get personalized communication from the organizations, it gives them a sense of importance and they feel like the organization cares about them.

Enable easy feedback channels

Enable-easy-feedback-channels

Either by online or within the branch there should be some channels to take feedback from the customers. This help to increase the trust and it also helps businesses take necessary actions to rectify issues. The feedback should be easy and simple such as a happiness meter tablet or kiosk, an online survey with just a few short questions or something which can be done in 30 to 45 seconds.

Effective Queue Management System

Effective-Queue-Management-System

Once the customer is in the branch or premises, then they should be welcomed with a very efficient queue management system. The queue management system should have all the important features to maintain and enhance the customer journey through the service area. Aid your queuing system with digital signs, audio-visual announcements, and other essentials to improve the customer journey.

Check this out: Complete guide to Queue Management Systems in Dubai

Measure the KPIs

Measure-the-KPIs

The appointment scheduling system should have a comprehensive statistical and analytical software engine. To measure key performance indicators of both the system itself and the service agents/staff. These reports could play a vital role in the strategy-making process and steps are taken further enhance customer journey in future. This will also help to improve the staff or service agents’ performance.

Check this out: How to reduce patient wait time in hospitals with virtual queuing?

Conclusion

Either you are a bank, hospital, clinic, beauty salon, public office, government office, HR department, or an organization who requires their customer to visit them in order to operate, having a high-tech appointment scheduling system and queue management system is very vital in retaining your customers. Getting new customer could be easier but retaining your existing customer, maintaining your positive brand identity is vital for your business growth.

Check this out: Why should the bank think beyond queue management?

Can a Queue Management System Improve Customer Experience?

Waiting is always a difficult and irritating task for anyone. Good customer experience can be achieved with an outstanding Queue Management System that can enhance customer perception. A properly managed queue system can benefit both the staff and customer alike. With technology, the Queue System in Dubai has seen many positive changes. There was a time when only moving the customers into and outside of the business was all that was cared about. But now that there are various other options, the Customer Experience is improved by many folds.

Queue-Management-System-Improve-Customer-Experience

Appointments and Scheduling

There are certain kinds of businesses which can help the queue system by allowing appointments and schedules that can be pre-booked online or through their call centres. This helps the customer create a connection with the business, gives better customer satisfaction and also helps with staff scheduling. Ultimately, there is an increase in revenue too.

Management of each individual case

When customers visit your business, it is not right to pass them onto the next person, where he/she has to repeat their whole story till they are sent to the right person who can deal with their problem. It is only the right kind of case management that can save a customer from this kind of ordeal. This can be done only when information is accurately captured and recorded so that it can be accessed when staff or representative needs it and accordingly helps the customer. Also, the past contacts can be recorded so the next representative can see the flow of the system.

Customer Flow System

Some businesses can do well with a self-service kiosk wherein the customer can line up in a virtual queue or an electronic queuing system. This allows them to help themselves or if not then the customers are asked a couple of questions which would determine what representative would be able to help them best.

Digital Media

When there are digital displays in the waiting area or queue area, it keeps the customer entertained while they are waiting. It also gives you an opportunity for selling. At grocery stores and other shops, the same system can be used to show the number of people waiting at each queue, which gives the customer the liberty to choose which queue he/she would like to join in.

Messaging

Who doesn’t have a smartphone these days? These smart-systems can also be used to enhance the customer experience. These can be used by a customer for booking appointments and also they can be texted in advance to let them know or as a reminder of their appointment. If the appointment system hasn’t been used, the organization can still send a message to the customer to inform them that they are the next to be served. This gives the customer enough time to continue to shop or browse around and gives you extra revenue.

These kinds of modern Queuing Systems can bring in enhanced customer experience and makes it more efficient for your employees and customers both. Customers would be given the feeling that their best interests are being taken care of. When you implement things that bring their waiting time down or make it easier for them to explain their case history, it makes them feel unique and appreciated. Employees also appreciate it as it means that it is more of a planned and organized scenario. All this ultimately leads to a better business scene.

Queue Management not only helps your business, but it brings it forward. It gives a modernized feel and can set you apart from other businesses with an atmosphere of forward-thinking. Enhancing customer experience can launch a business into the future and make it cutting edge.

Checkout: The Leading Queue Management System Provider in UAE