Worth The Wait - Tips on dealing with queuing problems

21.06 - Rick Harris, Director of Insight, CGA

In an increasingly crowded world, the existence of queuing isn’t going to disappear in a hurry. Some businesses are already seeking to reduce the pain of ‘standing-in-line’ but what could be done to make queuing a positive experience?

It’s official – England is already the most crowded place in Europe, and it’s going to get worse. Population density is now twice that of Germany and four times that of France, according to Office of National Statistics data released this week.

In the longer term, businesses need to respond to crowding by planning ways to increase capacity. But this can take years to deliver, especially when infrastructure like widening motorways or building railway tunnels is required. So, in the meantime, all firms should be exploring where and why crowds form within their customer experience and responding with creative changes which acknowledge and reduce the problem.

Where To Start?
In our work, CGA starts by looking for ‘bottlenecks’ – those points in the customer journey where people get funnelled into a small space for a specific task or time period. It’s here where queues form, sometimes orderly (especially in UK and USA) sometimes not (think the 1st ski lift of the day in France!).

There are then two processes to map and understand:

1. What is the functional procedure forcing people to this point (a checkout till, a ticket barrier to cross)?


2. What is the customer need (I need to try this clothing on, I have to check my coat and luggage)?

Once the insight of ‘where and why’ is in place, there are typically three ways where the customer experience can be improved:

• Add value to the wait – I remember helping a Theatre client deal with the queues that form during the interval of a West End show. Lines for the toilet, lines for the bar, another queue for ice-creams. Then we found that 1 in 7 people at the bar just bought bottles of water. So, we created mobile water-sellers, who sold to those waiting in line to spend a penny. The time-wasting of queuing for the loo was reduced. The bar queues got shorter, everyone was less stressed, and drinks revenue went up 9%.


• Upgrade the wait to an ‘event’ – most Barber shops don’t offer appointments, you just turn up and hope. And the clientele is (almost) exclusively male. It would be easy for barbers to replace the dog-eared magazines with a rack of the latest Men’s glossy titles – cars, gadgets, sport. Always keep two copies of everything, and replace at the first sight of wear. Customers would soon look forward to the ‘luxury’ of a peaceful few minutes to read. Are they taking the kids too ? Then add a small ice-cream cabinet to treat them at the end for good behaviour. By ‘topping-and-tailing’ the task at hand, the wait is absorbed into the overall experience, and frustration fades into the background


• Disperse the bottleneck – self-service is a great way to reduce queues. The evidence of ATMs and airport self-check-in demonstrates how technology can help. Yet, our work in the transport sector showed us that up to 2 in 3 people still use the ticket window at many train stations as opposed to an adjacent ticket machine. What’s going wrong?


• Lack of trust – unlike banks and airlines, the rail companies did not use enough staff to help customers use the machines early on. Even though the technology has improved since, the memory of early, bad experiences lives on.


• Poor siting – my local rail station has just installed two new machines outside the station. When it rains, you get wet using it. When it’s sunny, you can’t see the screen. Unsurprisingly, the machines are deserted at all times, even when long queues exist in the ticket hall. By turning the machines through 90° away from the sun, and adding some shelter, these problems go disappear.

It isn’t always possible to make queues disappear altogether. But a lot more can be done to understand their dynamics, and how they can be adapted both to improve the customer experience and influence the costs/revenues that result from it.

Read more about CGA’s experience design tools...

To find out how CGA’s experience design tools could uncover the emotional pitfalls and opportunities of your customer journey, contact Rick Harris on +44 (0)1483 209 586 or rick@cgaexperience.com today.