The Cost of Waiting

The cost of waiting is more than just monetary, it’s also psychological. Businesses feel the economic cost because if customers are waiting, they’re not yet buying – and could actually renege – while the business is still paying for its staff and other overhead. But it’s the psychological cost to customers that can actually be most detrimental to a business. Psychological stress is clearly a more difficult element to measure, but it’s an important part of the customer satisfaction equation as businesses consider how best to structure their waiting line system.

Queue Stress: Cause, Effect, and Solutions

Consider this scenario: You arrive at the pharmacy to pick up a prescription and enter a waiting line that is 10 people deep. There are two people behind the pharmacy counter, and only one ringing up customers. If you weren’t already stressed, you certainly are now, because chances are you’re picking up that prescription after work when you just want to get home, or for your sick child, or during an afternoon of errands where you didn’t budget in a lengthy and seemingly endless pharmacy wait. In his Capella University dissertation on queuing, Gregory E. Opara-Nadi, highlighted the psychological cost of waiting, saying that it amounts to the stress that’s accumulated during the waiting period. How intense that stress actually gets can be influenced by a variety of factors, but mainly stems from the time that is already wasted, not to mention the uncertainty about how long of a wait still remains. Ultimately, the more time spent in line, the more a customer is likely to experience stress. That overwhelming feeling influences a person’s customer satisfaction tremendously. Queue stress can make a customer form an unfavorable opinion of a business, and it can also prompt them to abandon the line, leave not-yet-purchased items behind, and simply walk out of the business, possibly never to return.

There are easy queue management solutions – virtual queues, electronic queuing, in-line merchandising, and the like – that can alleviate the psychological stress that a person can feel or develop while waiting in line, while simultaneously minimizing the actual and perceived waits. Are you inexplicably losing customers? It’s time to analyze the efficiency of your queue’s configuration as well as the efficiency of your service agents and implement queue management techniques to cut wait times and alleviate the stress of waiting.