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August 15, 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.

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

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

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 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.

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

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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June 20, 2021

Queue Management Challenges 2021

As the year 2020 had a huge impact on everyone, the customers are expecting a bit more digital experience. The year 2021 brings new challenges for queue management and queuing systems as well. Businesses in Dubai and all across the UAE will have to adopt digital solutions in order to meet the expectations and needs of the customers. The customer interaction should also be improved by adding digital interactions and experience. Nowadays the price has become a secondary factor when it comes to the customer loyalty, instead, the experience and interaction is the most important factor in customer loyalty. If you are offering a good price but not a good interaction your customers will soon leave you. Investing in customer experience projects and strategies such as queue management systems is a long-term investment, it could literally double up your revenue in three to four years. However, if your customer journey and customer experience are slightly less than the average you will immediately witness a decline in revenue, and customer retention will become harder. This scenario results in a lot of challenges for the queue management systems as well.

Here are some challenges for a queue management system in 2021 and their reasons:

Challenge No 1. The Impact of Pandemic

The customer experience was earlier ruined by the crowded waiting areas and long queues. Businesses have to find innovative ways and solutions to manage such scenarios. After the pandemic of the COVID-19, this has completely changed, now businesses not only have to handle the queues but they must have to deal with the social distancing and health and safety regulations as well. Here in Dubai and all around the UAE the governments have very strict policies and regulations, which are great for the health and safety of the public and society but for the business, it becomes even harder to manage the customer flow under such circumstances. The queue management systems earlier were programmed to automate customer journey and customer flow, now they must have to manage and control the number of customers allowed to be in the queue in order to implement social distancing.

Another most important factor is that businesses all around the world are actively seeking methods to cut costs. In such scenarios, expensive solutions or bulky upgrades are not an option for most businesses. This means that the queue management systems must have to be very cost-efficient and very effective to deal with social distancing and such scenarios. A queue management system will have to provide additional features and functionalities to aid the management in handling such situations at the same time it has to be very cost-effective too. If we talk about the long-term gains, queue management is an excellent customer happiness solution, as for the short-term gains, leading queue management system providers in Dubai such as RSI Concepts are offering great deals and support for local and international clients.

Challenge No 2. Customer Expectations

Customer expectations is a very important trend to keep an eye on. There are so many factors that influence customer expectations. The more notable are the competitors, the overall market trends, for example, in 2021 all sorts of businesses, public and private sectors, government offices, and everywhere else where ever you go, the social distancing is a must. This lead to a new trend, now a day’s people expect from their brands and service provider to offer certain solutions and systems in place which will help them to implement social distancing and such stuff.

Apart from social distancing, even before that in Dubai and all across the UAE businesses and institutions who are facilitating visitors and customers are always having one or another kind of digital queue management system. This trend led people in expecting a digital queue management system wherever they go. If their brand is not offering a digital queue management system then they will perceive it negatively and they could think that the brand is outdated or old hence they should consider other businesses who are offering better services, etc.

Another important factor is the competition. If your competitors are offering a digital queue management system at their branch, then your customers and visitors will also expect a digital queue management system there and so on and so forth. That is how customer’s expectations are formed and businesses should have to consider those trends and customer expectations when making future strategies and taking decisions.

Challenge No 3. Customer Journey

The year 2021 is the year of digitalization, everything is getting digital. The things that can’t get completely digital are getting partially digital with heavy involvement of digital systems and solutions. That is not all, businesses have changed their practices and methods too. The queue management systems have to adapt to all those changes as well. Businesses are moving towards digital interactions and inventing ways to be as contactless as possible, however, in most cases a completely digital customer journey is not possible. Now a day’s queue management systems are integrated with various other systems to expedite the customer flow and to improve the customer journey. Most of the queue management system providers in Dubai are focusing on innovating new ideas and personalized queue management systems for certain industries.

The general consumer market is leaning towards online and eCommerce. However, the service-based industries that can’t completely go digital are partially digitalizing their services and service delivery mechanisms. For example, virtual queuing is partially digitalizing the customer journey and queue management. The online appointment is helping the health care industry and so on. As per the regulations and laws, only a certain percentage of customers and visitors can be welcomed at a given time. This means that the businesses would not be able to let more people inside the premises to wait in the waiting area. The customers will have to wait outside. In order to deal with this problem the queue management systems adapted to virtual queuing, online appointments, smartphone apps, and such features to help both the business and the customers too.

Challenge No 4. Customer Experience

Another toughest challenge that a queue management system has today is the customer experience. Despite all those factors that are not only changing the customer behavior but also demand a completely different approach to handle customer flow, maintaining the customer experience is a very challenging job. This is why the queue management systems have to adapt to the new trends and requirements very quickly. All the customer touchpoints, interactions, and relevant business processes that were being handled through the queue management systems should be reworked and redesigned. The modern queue management systems in 2021 are not only a ticket dispensing and customer calling setup but in fact a complete customer happiness and customer experience management tools.

The customers are very sensitive these days, especially about their interaction and experience at public places. As the market has shifted rapidly so there is too much confusion among the marketers and businesses, everyone is trying to catch up. In such situations, things could easily go wrong, so it is important to focus and work in the right direction. This demands critical thinking and a better understanding of customer behavior and demands. Although it may sound difficult it is not. These days the most important thing any customer wants is the quickest service delivery, the least wait time, and better human interaction. Well, this is what a customer always wanted. But these days, it is extremely important to focus on these factors to improve customer experience. An advanced queue management system should be able to help management in dealing with such situations.

These days, the overall market trends and the behavior of the general population are changing. The working from home, online schools, eCommerce, and a long list of online services which before that we never thought could go online, have completely shifted the market trends. Now the customers are very comfortable with the digital experience, in fact, prefer digital over traditional methods. So including digital fragments into your business process along with the personalized interaction or human interaction could really boost the customer experience which will increase customer happiness and satisfaction.

Challenge No 5. Virtual Queuing

Virtual queuing is also a modern customer flow management technique. The virtual queue management system is a queuing system that allows the customers and visitors to sign-up for the queue even before physically appearing at the business. There are so many different methods and approaches to attain virtual queuing functionality. Virtual queuing not only allow remote sign-up but also provides the queuing information and various other data directly to the customer using various different mediums, the most commonly used methods are SMS and Smartphone Applications. This data and live status updates are very helpful for the customers as well as for the business.

The virtual queue management systems are gaining popularity in Dubai and also all around the UAE. Virtual queuing can significantly reduce the customer wait time and in fact, it can completely eliminate the wait time. The customers and visitors are already provided with live updates and queuing information so they can come at the exact time when their number is called. Virtually there will be no wait time at all. The virtual queue management systems also reduce the workload of the staff and servers/agents. Which further improves their efficiency and service quality. The customers and visitors can have an excellent user experience.

Virtual queuing can be a little bit challenging if not planned properly. However, at RSI Concepts, we have a highly experienced design team and business analysts. Our virtual queue management systems can not only provide a personalized experience but also provide a very flexible control panel and data collection module for the management.

Challenge No 6. Integration with Other Systems and Tools

In order to cater to the needs of the businesses under today’s circumstances, a queue management system will have to be able to synchronize and integrate with tons of other enterprise solutions and business tools. For example, in order to include a virtual queuing module the queue management system will have to be linked with the Smartphone Applications, QR Code module, Customer Portals, Intranet, ERP, and Sales System too (if required). These are just a few commonly used types of integration. There are several others that are required to ensure the desired customer experience.

Integration is usually done via Secure Web Services or APIs. Integrating one system with another could be tricky but integrating one system with three or four or even more different systems and synchronizing data between all of them could be very challenging for a queue management system. Sometimes there have to be some intermediary applications to make sure everything works as per the plan without any technical problem. These apps should be designed and developed along with the customization of the queue management system as well.

As each and every business has certain business processes and unique methodologies and practices. So the queue management system also has to be very flexible in order to support the businesses in improving their efficiency and productivity without forcing them to change their business processes and methodologies. This could be even more challenging when the queue management system will also have to integrate with various other systems and corporate tools.

Conclusion

As the year 2020 has completely changed everything the customer journey and customer experience that we were experiencing earlier have been completely changed. The pandemic and resulting circumstances have changed every aspect of our daily life. When social distancing is required the digital and online services are the best solution. However, there are still so many businesses that can’t conduct business online. People will still have to visit the business or a local branch to get the service done. The trends have been shifted and the general behavior of the customers has been changed completely. This means that in order to maintain a better customer experience and customer journey, the queue management systems should also have to evolve.

This brings a lot of new challenges for the queue management systems in the year 2021. The new digitalized features and virtual queuing are not new to the queue management system industry. However, earlier multiple different digital services were provided in different types of queue management solutions. But now a day, all those features have to be provided in a single queue management system. The business should also have to maintain the best customer experience, which is also very challenging for the queue management system. This blog was to highlight those challenges and to let our audience have a better understanding of the market trends and the new advancements in the queue management system market. At RSI Concepts we have specialized in queue management systems and various other customer happiness and customer satisfaction solutions. If you need any help or want to get a quote, 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.

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