Valencia California, April 3, 2020 – The month of March saw a dramatic shift in the way businesses serve their customers. Concerns over Coronavirus (COVID-19), has led to an increased focus on customer safety and health, creating new queuing challenges for restaurants, grocery stores, retailers, laboratories, pharmacies, medical centers and others. How businesses and customers physically interact with each other has rarely been more important than it is in this time of abrupt change.
Lavi Industries is familiar with adapting to new and sudden changes in queuing, with over 40 years of assisting the TSA and countless other agencies and organizations with queuing strategies, products and services. “Businesses are faced with an immediate need to implement new, safer queuing strategies. The lead time from decision to installation needs to be quick, allowing businesses the opportunity to get back to serving their customers and keeping them safe” says Perry Kuklin, Director of Marketing for Lavi Industries. “We want to help, and one way we can do that is to look at the products and services we offer and find a way to make them even more accessible and useful”.
One such service is Lavi’s new smartphone queuing technology. “We have been offering virtual queuing through our Qtrac VR product for several years now, and we know the benefits it provides our customers”, states Kuklin. “It enables contactless engagement, allows the customer to wait outside the business premisis or in the safety of their car, and provides the business a way to control customer access into the building or space.”The lead time for implementaton of our standard Qtrac VR would average 2-3 weeks due to all of the customization options. However, we knew our customers needed something sooner than that”, Kuklin explains, “so we asked our team to create a simpler solution that could be implemented immediately”. The result was Qtrac VR Smartphone Queuing. With no app or hardware to install, businesses are able to begin using the program within days. “We’ve recently implemented this program into 300 branches at a financial institution in just 5 days. Smaller implementations take just a day”, states Kuklin. Customers simply scan a QR code using their smartphone camera or text their name. They are then automatically directed to a webpage where they can track their place in line, ask for more time, or communicate with staff if necessary. The webpage, or a text message, then alerts the customer when it is their turn for service.
“It’s the safest solution for providing social distancing to your customers, with the added benefit of being quick and easy to use and implement”, says Kuklin. “However, we know there are some businesses that may still require a physical queue, and we wanted to make sure we helped them as well”. Seeing the lines of customers outside grocery stores was enough inspiration to realize what needed to happen. “People are not used to social distancing yet, and don’t always recognize six feet or more of safe distance without visual cues”, says Kuklin. “Our portable retractable belt stanchions not only help organize queues and help keep waiting customers safe, but they also happen to have retractable belts that are between 7' and 13' long – perfect for identifying safe social distance”. Lavi Industries has designed and begun selling stanchions and signage with visual cues to help customers maintain a safe space between them. The solutions are easily installed on any of the retractable belt stanchions offered by Lavi Industries, and take only a few minutes to install and set-up.
About Lavi Industries
Based in Valencia, California, Lavi Industries is the premier provider of public guidance and crowd control solutions in the Americas. Leveraging its portfolio of world-class brands – Beltrac® stanchions, Directrac® signage systems, Qtrac® electronic queuing systems, and NeXtrac® in-queue merchandising systems – Lavi has helped the world’s leading companies effectively guide people in, through, and out of their facilities. More information is available at https://www.lavi.com.
