7 Examples of Successful Enterprise Queuing Solutions

Your customers’ perception of their experience waiting in line—a queue—for service can make the difference between growing your business with customer loyalty or driving customers away. Integrating a virtual queuing solution into your customer experience can create greater efficiencies, result in a more positive view of your business, and boost your bottom line no matter the industry.

Why Large Enterprises Need a Queuing System

Not having a queuing system hurts your business’s reputation and can eventually negatively impact your balance sheet. Standing in long lines feels too much like wasting time, and some people may even start to feel like they’re wasting money buying your products or services. Once that perception sets in, you may lose that customer and the business of anyone they share their negative opinion with.

One in three customers will leave a brand^[1]https://www.pwc.com/us/en/services/consulting/library/consumer-intelligence-series/future-of-customer-experience.html after a bad experience, and some people may define that as waiting in long lines. When digital queuing systems are so readily available and easy to implement, is it really worth the loss of revenue and the potential loss of your brand reputation to continue going without one?

Industries That Benefit

Many industries could benefit from employing a virtual queuing solution. Think about when you arrive at a restaurant for seating but don’t have a reservation. The host or hostess takes your name and hands you a plastic disc that lights up and buzzes when your table is ready. A true virtual queue system eliminates both the disc and the tether to that location by sending an alert to your smartphone, giving you the freedom to run errands, browse nearby shops, and more.

Banks/Financial Institutions

Digital queuing solutions work well for banks and other financial institutions. Despite bank customers increasingly taking advantage of mobile banking to conduct most of their transactions, there are a number of services that require a more personal approach. Visiting a branch to see a wealth advisor, a loan officer, or a teller traditionally meant waiting outside their office or in a line until someone was available to meet with them.

Virtual queuing and appointment scheduling solutions serve both the customer and your employees. Customers can better plan their day and feel confident they’ll conclude the business they need to conduct. At the same time, your bank staff members have more control over their days and the types and levels of service they provide, routing customers to different agents depending on their needs. The result is that customers will have an improved overall impression of your bank, including the level of service offered and the products available to them.

Government/Public Service

Imagine visiting your local DMV to renew your license but not waiting in what feels like interminable lines. Part of the agency’s bad reputation was earned because of how long it historically took to complete simple transactions.

Customer service counters at government offices and other public service agencies benefit from virtual queuing to minimize lines and boost efficiency. Customers who have to wait longer take longer to serve once they reach the front of the line, possibly because they’ve thought of additional services they want to discuss—or because they want to complain about their wait.

With a digital queue solution to provide frequent updates and err on the side of longer wait time estimates, organizations improve both efficiency and service quality. Employees serve people faster and with greater focus on the needs of the person standing in front of them.

Transportation

Mobile flight check-in has certainly created a smoother boarding process for passengers who don’t need to check bags or change flights. For everyone else, though, virtual queuing practically eliminates the need to arrive hours early at the airport, bus terminal, or train station by giving passengers a time they can expect service.

Waiting in line is the bane of every traveler’s trip, but virtual queuing can significantly reduce wait times for service at ticket counters and for moving through security. Using a virtual queue reduces congestion during peak travel periods and allows airport staff to serve more customers more quickly.

Additionally, airline, bus, and train employees must go through screening before they can report for duty. Because shift changes can be especially busy, virtual queuing can reduce potential bottlenecks and move workers more quickly into facilities.

Benefits of a Queuing System

Virtual queuing solutions offer a plethora of benefits to any business or organization. Customers move through lines more quickly, and workers serve them faster and with a greater emphasis on more personalized attention. By implementing digital queuing, your company or agency leadership can monitor high traffic periods, allowing them to more effectively schedule staff members.

All of these factors increase the number of customers served—and their overall satisfaction with the service they received and the business delivering it.

Successful Queuing Solutions

Below are some examples of how your organization can take advantage of a queuing solution.

Remote Queuing

Eliminate the need for your customers to stand in line for service. Instead, with remote queuing, they check in through their mobile devices and receive a good-faith estimate of when they can expect service. More often than not, the amount of time they spend waiting is less than it would be without remote queueing because your employees know exactly what each person needs and are ready to serve them.

Appointment Scheduling

Medical offices, hair salons, automotive repair shops, and, of course, banks benefit from online appointment scheduling. Instead of holding for the next customer service representative, patients and customers can scan availability at a glance to choose the time that best works for them.

Centralized Management

Virtual queuing takes the guesswork out of operations. With just one system and remote access to manage both visitors and staff, team leaders save time assigning associates to where they’re needed most. Virtual queuing is also scalable, so as your business grows, your digital solution does as well, incorporating additional locations, for example, without interruption.

Mobile Queuing

The ubiquitous nature of smartphones allows you to communicate directly with your customers through mobile queuing. You could notify them about updated wait times, offer unique shopping experiences, and more.

Reports and Analytics

Metrics and data are key in the digital age, and a virtual queuing partner delivers. Your enterprise organization can better understand customer behavior, analyze employee service benchmarks, and have the opportunity to constantly and consistently improve the customer experience.

Integrations

No one system can do it all, and your digital queue partner should have the ability to integrate easily with what you’re already using to share data in real time and provide even deeper insights into your customers’ behavior.

Support

By providing ongoing training, updating their technology, and sharing regular reports, your virtual queuing system partner takes on the heavy lifting. You’re free to focus on what moves your business forward while you increase your responsiveness to what your customers need.

Are You Ready to Implement Virtual Queuing?

If you’re ready to improve your customers’ experience, schedule a demo with one of our virtual queuing experts or watch the 3-part self-guided video tour.