5 Ways to Design a Queue that Keeps Customers Standing in Line

The sight of an unruly line can turn away even the most faithful customers to head for the exit door. Research has shown that nearly 89% of people have left a shop, convenience store, or business just because of an excessive queue. If the lines that customers are waiting in are not worthy, you obviously stand a chance to lose immediate and potential future customers loyalty. So, what would it take to make the best use of crowd control stanchions?

If waiting in line is a part of your everyday business, there are always ways to design your lines to maximize productivity and customer enjoyment.

Here are 5 ways to make things go very smoothly:

1. Let Customers Know How Long They Are Going to be Waiting. Uncertain waits feel longer than known, finite waits, say queuing experts. That’s why, when customers are provided an estimated wait time, they are less likely to overestimate and get frustrated about how long they’ve been waiting and these are more accurate waits feel shorter and less stressful.

2. Explain Why the Wait? Are you short-staffed? Has a card machine gone down? Or are cashiers busy processing many returns? Lack of explanation and uncertainty about the wait needs to be clear. If there’s a reason your waiting line is longer and slower than usual, being upfront about it would help in keeping customers waiting in line as they understand the reason.

3. Keeping Customers Occupied While They Wait. Whether you keep your customers occupied within the queue with queue merchandise or entertainment to enjoy their wait, then time for customers would go by much faster.

4. Keep a Check on Wait Times. Are you aware of how long your customers are waiting and how long they are willing to wait before they begin to renege or complain? Monitoring wait times against key performance indicators is one of the often overlooked basics of good queue management. And today’s plug-and-play technology makes it easy to do.

5. Create a Clear Clue to the Queue. Are your queues well marked and your crowd control stanchions well placed? A surprisingly-common reason why customers fail to enter a waiting line in the first place is that they get frustrated just trying to find where the line begins. A clear “line starts here” sign flanked by retractable stanchions is all it takes to get your customers in line.