Is Your Queuing Strategy Helping Your Bottom Line?

Did you ever abandon a line just because it looked long? Most of us have: 75% of lost sales come from queue-related issues. Conversely, happy customers are returning customers – those who receive good service are 32% more likely to make a repeat purchase.

With business increasingly becoming digital, customers have more ways to meet their purchase or service needs. Given the relationship between customer satisfaction, sales, and waiting in line, business owners and managers can outperform the competition through better queue management.

Here are three ways to use your queue management strategy to improve the customer experience and simultaneously improve the bottom line:

1. Reduce abandonment with more efficient service.

Studies show that customers will typically only wait up to eight minutes in line until they walk away. Fortunately, effective queue management strategies can help reduce abandonment by making queues more efficient or removing queues altogether.

For example, research shows a business can speed up the line simply by switching over to a single line queue. As opposed to a multiple-line queue, a single-line queue minimizes the effect a long wait time in one line has on the average wait times of the entire system.

2. Create opportunities for impulse sales.

Your queuing strategy can boost revenue directly by encouraging impulse sales in and out of the queue. Two ways to do this include letting your customers shop while they wait (using a virtual queue to accomplish this) or adding in-queue merchandising to your existing waiting line. These strategies can immediately create more opportunities for impulse sales.

3. Increase customer loyalty through a better customer experience.

When customers find a wait time “unacceptable,” they associate the experience with poor service. In a business, this can be detrimental to developing customer loyalty as customers can be expected to avoid businesses they associate with poor service.

The customer experience in the queue is largely influenced by how long and enjoyable the wait is. Strategies that address both -- from the in-queue entertainment to footfall analytics -- will give you the best chance at a win-win.

Is your business doing what it can to increase revenue in and out of the queue? Whether it’s with a virtual or physical line, there are ample opportunities to keep customers engaged, satisfied, and loyal to your brand. Learn more about solutions to improve queue management.