Queue Management
Queue management is an umbrella term for efforts aimed at shortening and mitigating waiting times and queues. Reducing the annoyance of having to wait results, among other things, in higher customer satisfaction. Queue management can consist of technical solutions, work processes, physical design or a combination of these.
Queue management policies and measures are also known as queue softeners. It can be applied at a variety of businesses, stores and other institutions but is especially common at museums, amusement parks and other major crowd-pullers.
Examples of queue management
Some examples of options for managing queues:
- Having an appointment/reservation made online for a specific time slot (virtual queue)
- Entering e-tickets and checking in online
- Required reservations for groups
- Having numbers drawn
- Provide information on current waiting time
- Placing more cash registers and employing additional staff
- Using historical information to predict visitor spikes
- Making waiting more pleasant by offering entertainment, a drink or free wifi while waiting
A waiting line is not necessarily bad advertising. After all, the fact that people bother to wait for something implies that it is worth the wait. In fact, at amusement parks, the queue for an attraction is often part of the experience, complete with theming, TV screens and other entertainment.
