Ever stood in a queue and wondered what was taking so long? While we have advanced technology that enables us to shop online, or hold our place virtually, we still upon occasion find ourselves waiting in a queue – wondering if the other line is indeed faster, or do you really need to be there?
There are varying statistics on how long in our lives we spend in queues, this certainly varies by country, time of day and service. However, I think we can all agree at some point in the past we have waited in a queue, and at some point in the future, we may indeed have to queue again.
So, if you are in the business of transaction processing, you may find your business has waiting lines, and you might be correct in thinking if you could reduce the time spent in the queue, you may increase your revenue and your customer satisfaction.
What contributes to typical queue times are factors such as peak hours, insufficient staff capacity, and sub-optimal transaction processing.
For the purpose of this article, we focus on transaction processing. In order to improve the transaction time, conduct an observation, process map and timing study to identify what the end-to-end process is, and how long each process step takes. Review the data, and determine which steps you can eliminate, automate or optimise.
Here are 3 ways that you can reduce your transaction time from a process perspective:
- Automate Identity verification – replace manual ID checking with biometric solutions such as fingerprint or facial recognition scanners. This is also more reliable.
- Digitise registration – Manually typing in customer registration information might take between 50-60 seconds of your registration time. This can increase with errors and typos, lengthening the registration time. Use optical character recognition (OCR) tools that can recognise the text and extract it into your system, faster than typing it in.
- Pull Information – Gathering data from different systems, or having to look in different places for information is costing you in your transaction time. Enable the flow of information by automatically pulling in the required data when it is needed.
Do you also want to improve your customer experience? Try these tactics:
- Provide wait-time estimates – customers will feel like they are waiting less time than they actually are. Some might decide to come back later, reducing your overall queue time.
- Signage – Provide helpful information of actions that your customer can take before they are served e.g. Notify them they will need their Identity card. Information such as this will eliminate questions like, “Why do you need my ID?”
- Entertainment – Giving the customer something to watch or do while they are waiting will make them feel less frustrated. You could also get the customers to pre-fill information on their phones while they are waiting.
Waiting in a queue is often a source of frustration, so manage your queues, reduce your transaction time, provide an awesome customer experience – consider how lucky you are to be able to serve customers face to face, and enjoy that human experience of talking to another person.