Virtual waiting rooms

What do you associate with long physical lines when trying to purchase a product or book a service? Delays, exhaustion, nuisance? Though long a fixture of both private businesses and public services, nowadays, due to advances in technology and increased competition, customers simply don't find the delays associated with physical queues.

Virtual waiting room technology offers the answer. It allows you to properly provide services and organize orders without requiring customers to physically wait in line. All done digitally, the technology is being increasingly adopted by government agencies and private industry leaders alike.

In this article, we'll go over what virtual waiting rooms are, how they benefit your business, and the ways in which you can implement them into your existing business operations.

What are virtual waiting rooms?

Digital queues or virtual waiting rooms are simulated queues that customers use as an alternative to physical lines. Instead of requiring customers to wait in line, a digital program that tracks orders, keeps customers up to date, and organizes service delivery.

How do virtual waiting rooms compare to physical lines? 5 key benefits

Digital waiting rooms are seeing increased adoption across both public and private institutions. From public hospitals to retailers, the use of virtual queues has led to faster services, increased productivity, and reduced costs. Here's a glimpse into the benefits that you can expect when your business adopts virtual waiting rooms:

#1 Faster service delivery

From queue organization to manual appointment reminders and staff oversight, managing a physical queue efficiently has overhead. Not only are there substantial costs associated with each one of these items, but they also lead to inefficient service delivery and lower productivity.

Our digital queue management software, for example, automatically organizes queues based on predetermined criteria, sends automated reminders to customers, and empowers your staff to manage orders digitally, all leading to substantially faster service delivery.

#2 Scalability

No matter the approach, physical queues are ultimately limited by the space available to your business and the number of employees that can attend to the customers. This is a limiting factor when you want to expand your product lineup or extend your reach.

While businesses can temporarily solve this issue by expanding their locations, hiring additional staff, and opening new stores, this is, ultimately, both expensive and unsustainable, however.

By adopting virtual queues, you can offer services digitally. Instead of waiting physically at your store, potential customers can browse your products or services online, book virtual appointments, and communicate with your staff online. This empowers your business to both handle a larger volume of customers and expand your reach to locations outside the zones your physical stores can typically service.

#3 Better customer service

Waiting in line is usually cumbersome and exhausting. Potential customers often avoid businesses with long queues, and long delays are the primary reason why organizations receive poor reviews.

This is not just true for retailers. In health systems, for example, long delays can lead to poor patient satisfaction but can also become a health hazard, directly leading to complications. To improve the patient experience, doctors can take advantage of virtual waiting rooms, keep patients updated on the status of their visit, and even establish long-term two-way communication channels. This is key to improving patient engagement.

#4 Complementing physical waiting rooms

Virtual waiting rooms and digital queues not only replace but also often complement physical queues. If your organization relies on in-person appointments, like hospitals or government agencies, digital waiting rooms still offer key benefits:

• Instead of the queue occupying physical space, hospitals can keep patients updated on the status of their appointment digitally, sending a reminder when they are required to be present.
• Practices can provide virtual care for routine visits, which reduces the burden on the patient and improves their well-being.
• Their digital footprint helps healthcare providers keep track of a patient's wellness and preferences, taking them into account during future visits.

Though these might seem specific to health practices, these benefits largely hold across industries and organizations. Government offices, for example, can similarly empower citizens to submit routine paperwork virtually from their own home, reducing their burden.

Tips for creating a digital waiting room

Carefully consider the kind of customer experience you want to create

As its name suggests, your new virtual waiting room will be how clients and potential clients interact with your business. It is how they book appointments, communicate with staff, and ask for help. Once you adopt it, it becomes a central part of the customer experience.

This is why the first step when designing a virtual waiting room is to carefully take into account the kind of customer experience you want to create. Here are some of the questions you need to ask:

• What are the criteria you use to prioritize clients/visitors?
• How do you communicate with customers? Are there channels that are more or less effective?
• What services/products do you offer? How can you put them on display virtually?

Asking these questions will help you design a digital waiting room that truly meets the needs of your organization.

Choose the right tools for the job

Creating a digital queuing system from scratch is no easy feat, especially for businesses that don't already have an established digital footprint. Reinventing the wheel takes time, effort, and technical expertise that you simply can't spare.

Relying on established tools helps your business:

• Reduce training and adoption costs.
• Take advantage of tried-and-tested technology that has proven its worth through real-world applications.
• Integrate these solutions into your existing business processes with minimal downtime.

At Waitwhile, we offer customizable digital queue management solutions that have been specifically designed to empower retailers, healthcare providers, and government agencies to design solutions that truly meet their needs.

Conclusion

From overcrowded waiting rooms in health systems to traffic spikes that make retailers unable to cope with demand, physical queues lead to frustration and delays.

Through virtual waiting rooms, organizations can provide users, customers, and patients with a better experience, faster service delivery, and improved support. Whether you are a doctor looking to improve the patient experience or a department store looking to increase access to your business, you'll benefit from virtual queue solutions.

Virtual Waiting Rooms FAQ

Are virtual waiting rooms suitable for my business?

Businesses across various industries take advantage of virtual waiting rooms to provide better services to their clients. Healthcare providers use patient portals to reduce the burden on patients and increase satisfaction. Retailers use virtual waiting room technology to speed up product delivery and reduce the need for larger real estate. Government agencies use digital queues to increase productivity and cut down on costs. If your business benefits from integration into digital platforms, faster product delivery, and the elimination of physical queues, then adopting digital queues is an excellent addition to your repertoire.

Is implementing virtual waiting rooms expensive?

No, in fact, taking advantage of digital queues can often act as a cost-saving measure as it helps reduce costs by:

• Reducing the physical area needed to organize clients and handle orders.
• Giving employees powerful tools to manage and communicate with customers improves productivity.
• Removing the need for physical paperwork and automating data collection and analysis.

All these features combined often mean that the return outweighs the investment businesses make when adopting digital queues.