The success of one company always depends on the satisfaction of its customers. Recent stats claim that as much as 65% of revenue in an average company comes from repeat business with existing customers. So, it’s safe to say that keeping your clients satisfied and keeping them yearning for more is a foundation for financial sustainability.
How do we achieve these elusive goals?
Well, customer satisfaction is a very complex issue. But, we can also safely conclude that the first impression strongly contributes to this overarching feeling. And, no matter what you put on the table afterward, your brand won’t be able to create that strong impression if you face your clients with endless queues from the get-go.
Let us take a look, then, at why you should pay more attention to this issue and make strategic queue management one of your priorities.
Higher level of employee productivity
In the introduction, we presented queue management as a purely CR issue. However, failing at this important duty does affect other components as well. Take for example employee productivity. If you want your staff to be able to work at the optimal capacity, your staff needs to allocate enough time to each customer, eliminate idling for as much as possible, and freely use available resources. Effective queue management is at the core of these activities. And not only that. Staff members unable to deal with the workload get frustrated which only further diminishes their ability to work efficiently.
Stronger storewide revenue
When it comes to retail businesses long, stand-in-line queues can be damaging for a number of reasons. A slower flow of transactions is one of the most obvious examples. You need to keep in mind that the goal of every customer is to pick up the desired items and go out as fast as possible. When they see an endless queue at the checkout, some of them, and not a small number for that matter will simply give up and go shopping elsewhere. So, you are not only trimming down the number of successful transactions you are also melting your expected revenue, which is something to strongly avoid.
Improved employee satisfaction
The inability to work efficiently and poorly optimized workflow is, as we said, very damaging to workers’ efficiency and, as a result, morale. But, you need to keep in mind these effects are not only short-term. When put into long-term perspective, these frustrations lead to poor employee satisfaction, absenteeism, and even employee turnover. According to recent stats, the average staff turnover is 16%. If you are experiencing anything above that, some measures need to be taken. Allowing your workers to work at a reasonable pace and let their skills shine through is a good way to start cracking this issue.
Better service quality
This topic is important for several reasons. From a purely consumer standpoint, you need to keep in mind that your clients are not only shopping your products, they are buying a shopping experience. The queue waiting, therefore, affects the quality of the product you are putting out. But, we also need to remember that workers who are rushing through interactions and are constantly under pressure from the people visibly waiting in line are also diminishing your product and upselling potential. So, having an efficient queue management solution can go a long way in solving these problems.
Better and more accurate customer data
The ability to give each client full attention and engage in fruitful interactions they are able to collect much richer, insightful, accurate, and consistent customer data. And, as you know, such data is all but critical for identifying workflow bottlenecks, and client grievances that can potentially blow out into bigger problems, and drawing out similar important conclusions. These insights can be fed back to the workflow and queue management creating an effective and constantly growing system that is easy to maintain and self-sustaining. Of course, valuable client insights can be used in other business facets as well.
Increased scalability and flexibility
Last but not least, it is important to remember that all companies, especially the retail businesses see their share of demand spikes and slower periods. Your staff members need to be able to deal with these fluctuations while maintaining a reasonable level of efficiency. Here is the point where the data we talked about before comes kicking in full force. By establishing a firm queue management system and building that system around hard real-life data you will be able to identify these patterns and achieve a very high level of scalability and flexibility. This has a great impact on the operational costs of your brand.
Well, there you have it – the top six reasons why you should stop looking at queue management as a novelty but rather a vital resource that can completely turn around the efficiency of your business. Even if we move aside from the issue of customer satisfaction, we saw countless times throughout this article that cutting down customer waiting time and giving your employees enough breathing room affects all moving parts of your company. So, try giving this problem the attention it needs. You can only help your gig keep moving forward at greater speed.