The question of how to manage huge amounts of customers is as old as retail. Today, this problem is a major issue for many businesses. With online shopping becoming more popular, retail and F&B stores need to keep up. This is why we are seeing many businesses moving away from a traditional queue system and is using new queue management technology.

How Does a Queue Management System Work?

A good queue management system will look at the queue’s demands at any given time and inform the management of what they could be doing better. This could be having more staff on, or finding ways to reduce the customer wait time. Some systems will use sensors to count the number of people who are waiting in line and will keep a count of how many customers are served in a specific time period. These sensors can send an alarm to management’s computers, so staff can be moved around the shop to better serve your customers.

Queue management systems allow you to adjust for customers’ needs at the moment and in the future. This can help keep checkout times low, improve customer shopping experiences, and reduce wait times.

Predictive Queue Systems

When you are looking to improve overall wait times and customers’ shopping experiences, you need to predict when you are going to have a high queue volume and the amount of staff that is needed to handle it. In retail, this could be as simple as adding one or two extra cashiers on your busy days of the week or month.

Food and beverage businesses can have a hard time predicting when they are going to be really busy. However, tracking the number of customers in a queue system does provide some insight to when the business has the longest queues.

Many businesses make predictions about when they are going to be the busiest and plan around these times. The queue system can be changed to fit these busier times, so some retail stores will have more ‘Fast’ lines open for customers with less than 10 items, which can reduce the customer’s wait times. Others will continue to use the same type of queue system but will have more cash registers open. The best solution will depend on the business and the number of customers that the business has.

Staff and the Queuing System

In retail and food & beverage businesses, the staffs play an important part in the queuing system. They have the greatest effect on the wait times and customer satisfaction. Good staff members will help customers and enter the customer’s order correctly quickly. This is important for any store because small mistakes can end with the customer not returning in the future. This is especially true if they can get the same items online or from other local stores.

A queue management system is important for any business, but especially brick and mortar stores. The right system can improve customer loyalty and even boost your business’s sales. Traditional queue systems can still be a good option, but with online ordering for F&B and even some retail stores becoming more popular, you need to think about keeping up with new technology.