4 Key Considerations for Structuring Your Waiting Line

When setting up a new queue, or reviewing the effectiveness of your current queue structure, it is important to understand the factors that determine your best approach. We would contend there are 4 key factors to consider:

1. The predictability of your customer flow

Does your business serve a high volume of customers? Do customers arrive in predictable surges or do you strive to predict when the next big influx of customers will ensue? The flow and volume of customers you serve is a big determinant of the proper structure of your waiting line and influences many factors, from the floor space required to the length and formation of the queue.

2. The products or services you offer

First, which is it? Products or services? The answer to that question alone has an impact on the structure and strategies you’ll employ in the queue. Are your products high-end or more commoditized? Are your services high-touch or high-churn? Identifying the characteristics of your offerings will help you decide on factors such as whether you’ll go with a traditional queue or electronic call-forward queuing, whether you’ll focus on in-queue merchandising or virtual queuing, and whether you require multiple lines or a single-line queue.

3. The customers you serve

Who’s waiting in your queue? What is your customers’ level of tolerance when it comes to waiting? People are generally willing to wait longer for products or services they consider to be of a higher value, while the less expensive or more commoditized items might not be deemed worth a long wait. Knowing your customer base is crucial here. Think about it: A single person with time to kill on their lunch break will have far different expectations about a waiting line than a mother with two children in tow. That mother needs to get through the line quickly, or she needs a queue that is conducive to keeping her children engaged. So who do you serve? And do you serve these customers appropriately within the queue to keep them happy?

4. The experience you strive to deliver

What do you want your customers to remember about your business and your queue? Do you want to be known as a fast in-and-out type of business, or do you want your customers to feel like they’re being given a high level of time and attention? The queue requires attention no matter what category you’d like your business to fit into. If you want to offer your customers speed, your primary area of focus is likely to be the queue’s flow and efficiency. If you desire to offer a high level of time and attention, you’ll focus on service agent performance and staffing your queue with enough people to provide such targeted consideration. The queue is about knowing the customers within it, their habits and demographics. The waiting line is about knowing the product or service that patrons are waiting for, and knowing as a business what kind of experience customers expect you to provide.