A queue management system offers a centralized platform to manage bookings, queues, and appointments, improving service delivery and customer flow.
Where there are people, there are queues. It’s a universal part of life that spans cultures and centuries. Businesses and governments alike need a system through which they can manage resource allocation and organize waiting lines.
Though they have a negative connotation, queues and waitlines aren't always bad for business either. Constant customer flow can signify quality and even build hype for your business, think a popular brunch place that always has a line out the door.
Not all wait lines and delays mean a product is “worth the wait,” however. Often, it is quite the contrary, especially if you’re in a competitive space, where customers can simply go to your competitors to get an equivalent product. And even in situations where there aren't readily available substitutes for your products/services, long delays can seriously harm your reputation and encourage other businesses to move into your niche.
Even a short wait can create a frustrating experience, leading to cascading negative effects that ultimately hurt your bottom line. A recent Waitwhile consumer survey found that 70% of consumers experience negative emotions like boredom, annoyance, and frustration while waiting in lines, and 61% will leave a physical line before it’s their turn. That’s revenue walking out the door.
Many companies try to improve auxiliary services or throw manpower at the problem to compensate for long wait times, which is an uphill battle. The frustration an initial delay causes can taint the entire experience, regardless of the quality of the products, services, or customer support. This, at best, means the customer will never return, and at worst, it can lead to negative reviews and complaints.
These issues are precisely why, where there are queues, there's a need for proper queue management. From assigning priority to managing customer flow and organizing service delivery, queue management serves core functions that are necessary for the success of any enterprise.
Addressing how you approach queue management to improve the waiting experience at your business, event, or office is incredibly important. Delivering a great customer experience depends on it. And this is precisely what this guide is dedicated to.
Here’s what we’ll cover:
- Types of queues
- What is a queue management system?
- Benefits of a queue management system
- How digital queue management systems works: step-by-step
- Real-world examples of effective queue management
Types of queues
Whenever demand outstrips supply for a specific resource or service, queues are formed to handle the imbalance. These queues can take on many shapes based on the nature of the business, the preferences of management, and a variety of other factors.
There are four primary types of queues you’ll see in businesses, largely categorized based on how they form.
Structured
Structured queues use physical barriers or stanchions to guide customer flow, prevent people from cutting in line, and give employees a way to order and manage the line. You'll often see these in airports and grocery checkouts.
Unstructured
These queues often form unexpectedly. People approach the check-in desk or cashier when they're ready, and, if there's a wait, they queue up where they feel is appropriate. These types of queues often form in bakeries and small stores.
Virtual or mobile
Digital/virtual Queue management systems and apps like Waitwhile allow customers to join a virtual waitlist from anywhere, get real-time updates, and communicate directly with your business via text or email.
Kiosk
With a kiosk-based queue, customers fill out their check-in information at a self-service kiosk, then they sit in a waiting area until someone calls them. You see these types of queues at medical establishments or banks.
Kiosks are surprisingly easy to set up. Learn how to set up a self check-in kiosk here.
What is a queue management system?
A queue management system is any system – physical or digital – that is used to manage queues. There are a variety of different systems to organize queues, each with its upsides and downsides:
Physical queue management systems
A physical queue is just like it sounds: people line up in person to wait their turn. To keep physical queues organized, businesses often use physical objects to direct customer flow and give the queue structure. These include:
- Barriers
- Illustrated flooring
- Guideposts
These tools help businesses keep clients in line so employees know who to serve next.
Waiting in physical lines is uncomfortable; they can be messy and inefficient to manage with a larger customer base, and it can be hard to provide better customer service without making fundamental changes to how the queues are handled.
Ticketing systems
With ticketing systems, each visitor's position in the waiting line is signified through a number instead of their physical location. It's their turn when their number comes up. Ticketing systems are useful for managing high customer flow when you don't need to collect personal information.
This approach has multiple downsides. Customers can't access real-time data or proper estimates for how long they need to wait, queues and lines can build up to receive tickets, and service providers can't easily collect information on customer preferences and obtain data-driven insights to enhance customer experience.
Sign-in sheets
Sign-in sheets are printable waitlists that businesses use to keep track of bookings and appointments.
Visitors or staff have to write clients’ names and possibly some other identifying information (e.g., party size, phone number, etc.) to reserve a spot. Customers usually then have to wait nearby to hear their name called once it’s their turn.
These sheets eliminate the need for a physical line, but relying on paper records can be messy. It's burdensome to manually keep track of customer information, and the process is prone to human error, with businesses often failing to make all the proper arrangements or the necessary callbacks.
Analyzing queue data using sign-in sheets can also be tedious and inefficient. How many times has someone visited, or how busy is your establishment during certain seasons? Employees would need to sift through hundreds of sheets manually to receive basic answers regarding the customer experience.
From a guest experience standpoint, customers often have no idea how long they will have to wait, and it’s difficult for staff to provide accurate estimates.
Virtual queue management software
Queue management apps like Waitwhile create virtual queuing systems that digitally keep track of clients.
Customers can join virtual queues online or in person and can wait from anywhere. This is an effective way to reduce congestion at your business and give customers flexibility in how they engage with your establishment.
Customers can sign up online or in person, and there is no need to wait in physical lines. Clients receive regular updates on their status in line and can communicate directly with your business.
Benefits of a queue management system
Creating additional queues and increasing staff size is the simplest way to cope with higher customer flows. While it may be simple, however, this often requires adding staff or expanding your space, both of which get expensive quickly. That's why queue management — the process of improving the queuing experience — is often a much more practical solution.
The human psychology behind queue management
Queues and queue management have been part of the human experience since the advent of civilization, and believe it or not, psychologists and business analysts have been aware of the importance of queue management for more than a century. It all began in 1908 with the advent of Queueing Theory, which arose out of the need to streamline call forwarding (which was done manually back then by switchboard operators) at the Copenhagen Telephone Company.
Since then, researchers from around the world have analyzed the queuing experience to identify ways to improve customer experience. Here’s what they’ve found:
- People value transparency: Providing wait time estimates improves the waiting experience and increases customer satisfaction.
- Don’t overpromise: In fact, underpromise. Providing pessimistic wait estimates – or overestimating wait times – grounds customer expectations and has a positive effect on your guests’ experience and reduces customer complaints.
- Keep your visitors in the loop: Proper communication isn't just a sign of great customer service, but it also reduces customer frustration by feeding them valuable data about their appointment, wait times, and rescheduling options.
- Give your guests something to do: Standing in line (even with distractions) is cumbersome and makes the waiting experience bad. By eliminating the need for physical queues or giving customers something to engage with (like a magazine or a TV show), you can make the wait more pleasant, even if you can't reduce it.
But how do you harness these psychological insights and efficiently apply them to your business? Many of the queue management systems we outlined above are unable to efficiently take advantage of these insights. That is, except for one: virtual queue management systems.
The advantages of virtual queue management systems
A virtual queue management system like Waitwhile allows your guests to join a line remotely. You have the flexibility to allow your guests to join your queue from whatever location(s) work best for your business strategy – whether that be from a kiosk, their phones, a QR code, or through your website remotely.
Once they’ve signed up, your customers can wait anywhere while doing anything they like (no unoccupied time), so waiting doesn’t feel like waiting at all. The virtual queue management system provides your visitors with AI-powered wait time estimates and updates them on their progress.
Virtual queues are also incredibly flexible, as the system is largely controlled through queue management software. This means that businesses can make quick changes to their service lines and customer touchpoints to more effectively cope with peak hours, product releases, and unforeseen circumstances.
Here are the key benefits of a queue management system:
Automate customer flows
A queue management system provides a central platform to manage appointments and waitlists. This helps you keep calendars organized, ensures a smooth customer flow, and brings key efficiencies to your business. Time that employees would otherwise spend keeping track of customer information and manually managing queues can now be reallocated elsewhere.
All customer communication can also be automated with a queue management app. Keeping customers informed during the queuing process is key to improving their experience. Send confirmation messages and updates so guests always know what’s going on. And at the end, you can even automate personal thank-you notes and feedback requests to improve customer loyalty and gain valuable data.
Reduce wait times
Virtual queue management systems use AI-powered technology to provide accurate wait times to your visitors. The longer you use the platform, the more it learns about your business operations and customer preferences, which further enhances the quality and accuracy of its data.
Estimating wait times is often very difficult and cumbersome to do manually, especially if you take both walk-ins and appointments into consideration. A queue management system does it all for you.
Give your guests flexibility
Since visitors can check in digitally and only need to arrive when it’s their turn, they can wait from anywhere instead of standing in a physical queue with nothing to do. Eliminating physical waiting lines and giving your guests freedom works wonders to reduce their perceived waiting time. Because they can do whatever they want, they are less likely to notice the time spent waiting.
With a virtual queue management system, you can give your guests several options to join your queue, including while they're at home. That way, guests can delay their departure or get a few errands done before it’s their turn.
Unlock two-way communication
Employees can contact visitors through SMS or email to give them any updates necessary. Communication throughout the entire customer journey makes your clients feel valued, which has been backed up by research. Studies have shown that regular wait status updates reduce no-show rates and decrease perceived wait time.
Not only can you send important updates or pre-service messages like reminders, but customers can also easily message your business. If someone is running late, for example, they can easily interface directly with the queueing system, and your virtual queue management system will rearrange your waitlist automatically.
Organize customer data & centralize notes
A virtual queue management system or app stores customer data for easy reference. Whether you want to analyze the customer journey, gauge customer wait times, access customer contact information to keep them updated about offers and promotions, or improve service provision by remembering preferences or past purchases, you can learn all this information and more through your digital queue management system.
This allows you to not only open up new marketing opportunities but also enables you to elevate the customer experience you deliver. Employees will have access to a customer’s history with your business, so they can tailor your services and products to their needs. You can access their prior appointments, any notes logged previously, and a log of all prior communication between your business and the client.
Gain operational insights & identify bottlenecks
With a digital solution to queue management, you unlock real-time monitoring and key insights into how your business runs. Real-time and historical analytics uncover the cause of snags and delays during the customer journey, help you identify bottlenecks, and give you insight into how to institute cost-saving measures and prevent long queues.
Data is the currency of the 21st century, and equipped with easy-to-understand analytics, you can then identify actionable steps that will have a real impact on your enterprise's operational efficiency.
How digital queue management systems works: Step-by-step
You can break the queue management process into five distinct steps. A virtual queue management system improves efficiency during the entire customer journey.
1. Arrival
Even before guests arrive at your business, digital queueing systems improve the customer journey through two crucial features: digital sign-ups and automatic queue management.
Guests can join your queue virtually and wait from anywhere. On-site, you can set up self-check-in kiosks or use QR codes that visitors can access with their phones. You can also offer online appointments and sign-ins by creating a virtual waitlist on your website (or even your Google Maps listing if you use Waitwhile).
Your check-in screen can be as detailed as you want. Collect the information you need to speed up the process and allow customers to pay straight through the portal. If you want to move certain guests, like VIPs, to the front of the line, you can flag them automatically without anyone else in line seeing the preferential treatment.
2. Managing queues
Once clients arrive at the premises, your queue management system will give guests precise wait time estimates and updates. Waitwhile, for instance, uses machine learning to eliminate human error and make wait estimates as accurate as possible. This gives visitors the freedom to decide where and how they want to wait as they get ready to be served.
Your customer queue management system could also include a feature that lets you communicate directly with visitors so they can ask you questions or update you if they're running late.
3. Service
Once you're ready for a guest, you can automatically send them a notification letting them know it's their turn through the queue management system. With pre-programmed processes, your employees will simply have to click a button to deploy automatic notifications or messages to your guests.
You can also set up a digital signage to display your waitlist on a TV monitor. Setting this up with Waitwhile is easy and is great for any scenario when you want to display your current waitlist for guests who may be lingering around.
4. Departure
After the guest has completed their transaction, you can indicate that you've served them in your queue management system with a single click. If the service/product is provided through multiple stages (e.g., government offices where the guest needs to visit more than one desk), the guest can automatically be entered into any additional queues.
After their visit has ended, the virtual queue management system will automatically log important data about the visit, like total visit time. Your staff can also add notes about the visitor, if necessary.
5. Follow-up
When concluding a customer's visit, the system can automatically communicate with them through text or email, thanking them for the visit and encouraging future visits. You can customize this message to include a request for feedback or a review, or you can give them a promo code to use next time.
Real-world examples of effective queueing solutions
Queue management systems are improving queuing experiences across many industries, positively impacting customer satisfaction rates. Here are a few examples.
Retail
According to a recent Waitwhile survey, retail is the worst offender when it comes to wait times. Consumers report waiting longer and more frequently at retail establishments vis-a-vis restaurants and healthcare facilities combined.
The retail customer experience is often infamous for long lines, whether that be for waiting for entry, trying on items at clothing stores, checking out, or getting assistance from staff members. A queue management system can make all the difference and eliminate the long customer wait times that the industry is famous for:
Best Buy Canada
Back in 2019 ,capacity restrictions put a lot of pressure on retailers, who were already facing major challenges in making people feel comfortable about shopping in their stores without feeling overcrowded.
In search of a safe, flexible solution that they could scale across 169 stores, Best Buy Canada began implementing curbside pickup, but they needed an intuitive way for customers and store staff to communicate so employees could bring orders out to the curb or parking lot.
With Waitwhile’s queue management system, Best Buy Canada was able to roll out curbside pickup across the country and establish itself as a national leader with top-quality customer service.
Beyond curbside pickup, Best Buy Canada also uses virtual queues to allow customers to save their spot in line for various in-store service desks (e.g., refunds, electronics, tech support). That way, rather than standing in a physical line (which makes a wait feel longer), customers are free to browse the store or delay their arrival until it’s close to their turn.
Louis Vuitton
Facing increasing foot traffic in 2017, Louis Vuitton needed a way to meet high customer expectations and manage long lines systematically across all their global locations, so they turned to Waitwhile's flexible queue management system.
Louis Vuitton was able to customize check-in to align with the luxury shopping experience they aimed to deliver. Using Waitwhile, a Louis Vuitton staff member leads guests through a registration process to gather relevant information.
Today, Louis Vuitton still uses Waitwhile’s virtual queue management system to execute:
- Easier customer messaging
- Curbside pickups
- In-store capacity management
Waitwhile's analytics have helped Louis Vuitton understand their customer experience, letting them see customer wait times and average wait times for each store, so they can take steps to decrease them. Individual stores can also monitor their analytics and performance.
Restaurants
Major American franchise Applebee's Neighborhood Grill + Bar took a big hit when the pandemic shuttered indoor dining. Even when they were able to partially reopen, they found it hard to efficiently manage crowds with social distancing restrictions. Staff couldn't keep up using paper lists.
When searching for a virtual queue management solution, the restaurant chain needed a platform that would work with existing hardware and could operate seamlessly nationwide. Waitwhile's ability to run on the restaurants' Android tablets and its affordability made it an attractive option to help Applebee’s improve staff efficiency and manage guests. The built-in enterprise features, like single sign-on, also enabled the management of 441 locations around the U.S. at once.
The intuitive platform made it easy for Applebee's staff to create virtual waitlists that eliminated unstructured queues forming in entryways and by the bar. Guests could join the waitlist and check in at the host stand. Then, they could wait in the comfort of their own vehicles while staff managed the queue from a tablet. When it was their turn, customers would receive an automatic notification from Waitwhile's two-way messaging feature.
Now that pandemic restrictions have long been lifted, Applebee’s continues to use Waitwhile as a reliable safety net when there is more demand than available seats to manage waitlists and reduce overcrowding in waiting areas.
Healthcare
The ModernMD urgent care network used to only take walk-ins. However, the spread of COVID increased their patient volume. Coupled with social distancing constraints, wait times were as high as 2-3 hours on average, and overcrowded waiting rooms meant patients had to wait outside in all kinds of weather.
With Waitwhile’s virtual waitlist, ModernMD was able to give patients a digital platform to queue on instead, so they could wait wherever was convenient and comfortable for them. The platform also provided the ModernMD team with the exact counts of waiting patients, along with an overview of their needs, so they could prioritize certain types of treatment.
ModernMD was able to optimize the experience further by using Waitwhile's SMS feature to ask clarifying questions and give extra information before patient appointments. They could add custom intake fields (e.g., insurance information) and offer valuable information about things like estimated costs. Patients valued this transparency as it equipped them with more information before coming in.
ModernMD found great results with Waitwhile’s queue management platform. Employee morale improved immensely because staff could:
- Better understand patients' needs
- Improve waiting room management
- Monitor capacity limits
- Prioritize patients most in need of treatment
Within three months of implementing Waitwhile, ModernMD found that patient satisfaction rebounded to pre-COVID levels. Patients prefer the convenience and flexibility of a virtual queue. ModernMD continues to use Waitwhile to streamline urgent care management today.
Convenient queue management systems are what consumers expect
As digitization continues to transform all aspects of our lives, consumer expectations will continue to climb. The modern customer already expects companies and brands to go the extra mile when it comes to convenience. And now that human attention spans are officially shorter than that of a goldfish, you can guarantee that your visitors will have far less patience than before.
So, in a world that’s less patient, addressing the waiting experience at your organization is increasingly mission-critical. With a virtual queue management system or app, you can delight your customers, guests, or visitors right from the start. Using a centralized platform where you can manage your customer journey in its entirety by integrating functions like payments, messaging, feedback, and analytics will set your business apart and make a memorable impact with your guests.
