Queue Busting: How To Improve Your Customer Experience

What are the most important things a retailer must keep in mind when considering the day to day operation of their store? Well unfortunately, there are many, many things to keep in mind (That wasn’t a fair question, sorry!)

But essentially, a good retailer will aim to keep their store running, efficiently with consistent profitably. To this affect, it is paramount to ensure that the customer’s shopping experience is as seamless, and enjoyable as possible; because the easiest way for any retailer to hit these goals is to cultivate repeat, loyal custom and this can be achieved through excellent customer service.

But nothing sullies the customer experience like being forced to wait in a slow moving, cement-footed queue that seems to somehow extend beyond the physical and scientific boundaries of the nature of time. So what can we do to keep our customers happy when our stores are busy? Well I assure you that we can bust those queues quite easily.

Queue Busting

When dealing with Queue Busting, there are a range of factors that need to be taken into consideration: Planning for busy periods, queue management, queuing delay and transaction time are all variables which will impact the ultimate delivery of your customer experience. As experts in EPOS solutions and business technologies we like to think we have an extensive understanding of the issue at hand and would like to offer to you our advice in defeating the dreaded queues and improving the customer experience in your store.

Firstly, here’s just a few of the ways that we believe something as simple as ‘Queue Busting’ can affect a business:

Customer loyalty – show the customer you care about their trip to your store and they won’t forget it.
Increased profitability – ensure no customer ever gives up on your business because of queues and takes their money elsewhere.
Public perception – Image counts for a lot in retail, so show you’re an innovator and people will notice.

Staff

When ensuring the smooth operation of any organisation, your staff are essential in maintaining the successful running of your business. Equally, your staff have a huge impact on possible delays and queuing, so training your staff to anticipate possible queuing factors is key. This, combined with providing your staff with the skills at your point of sale to be efficient in taking transactions and operating the till, will serve to improve the operation of your business.

Queue Management

Queues are no surprise in a customer facing environment, so ensuring the efficient management of a queue is essential. Understanding what factors influence queues in your business is half the battle of reducing queue times.
Factors such as:

Customer Arrival Rate & Time of the Day
Average Shopping Time per customer
Variation in time duration for customer service
Average number of lanes open in the store
External factors beyond the stores influence i.e seasonal, weather etc.

Profiting From The Queue

Queues are a fact of retailing or dealing with the public, so exploring options of capitalising from the queue is something retailers have been exploring. Placing promotional items at the area of queuing is a way that the vast majority of retailers in the clothing and supermarket industries have significantly increased their impulse purchases and increased their overall sales.

Queue Busting With EPOS Technology

Queue busting within the point of sale is made incredibly easy with a modern EPOS system. The ability to have synchronised tablets to process items in the queue can speed up the process a great deal; this means that the only action to be carried out at the pint of sale would actually be taking the payment for the item which would dramatically improve the efficiency of your store and reduce queuing time considerably.

Summary

By careful planning, well trained staff, a comprehensively managed queuing system and an efficient point of sale, your business can beat the queues and still come out on top.