From field operations to corporate boardrooms, “customer experience” is a hot topic. For good reason when you consider the way Harley Manning, Forrester Research Analyst and co-author of OUTSIDE IN, describes customer experience. He refers to it as “the single greatest predictor of whether customers will return — or defect to a competitor.”
When it comes to managing the customer experience, companies must look to every touchpoint, every customer interaction. Starting from an initial brand exposure to the final purchase and post-sale follow up, it’s all about the experience. One of the most important experiences a business must manage is the experience of waiting. Waiting lines, whether at a retail store checkout or at an airport ticketing counter, present a significant challenge to companies that care about customer loyalty and satisfaction.
It’s easy for companies to forget that waiting in line for what they view as their wonderful, unforgettable, glorious products or services is still waiting… in… line… and as a well-known campaign from FedEx so eloquently stated,
“Waiting is frustrating, demoralizing, agonizing, aggravating, annoying, time consuming and incredibly expensive.”
Waiting in line just plain stinks.
Regardless of how fabulous your product is. Building a remarkable customer experience requires companies to take a hard look at their waiting lines. In retail, the checkout line is literally referred to as the place where sales are won or lost. Likewise, in many industries, the queuing experience can leave the most dramatic and memorable impression on a customer. (Do you STILL talk about how long the lines were at Disneyland when you went 5 years ago? Does the thought of waiting in line at the airport prevent you from traveling during the high season? Can you still clearly visualize the wrap-around-the-store waiting line last Black Friday?)
Managing the waiting line experience is important.
The following infographic presents one simple measure companies and organizations can take to improve the customer experience: Make your queue a single line. Simple, yet powerful, transforming a multiple line queue into a single line can dramatically impact the customer experience by reducing the stress of choosing the “right line,” making the wait time shorter and fairer, and increasing the service efficiency.
