EDITORIAL: Reduce customer wait times

When it comes to doing business efficiently in Barbados, it is high time that local public and private sector companies work hard to reduce customer wait times.

If there is something we all have in common, it’s our dislike for waiting. It really can be a painful experience, just sitting or worse yet standing in line at the bank, in a government department or even in the Accident and Emergency Department of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital for a long, long time. Thus, those businesses, agencies, departments, etc. that usually experience high volumes of traffic on a daily basis, really need to ensure that they have adequate and efficient staff to ensure that lengthy queues do not form, leading to frustration on the part of customers.

Qmatic, a leading international company which seeks to optimise the customer experience, suggests that, “Queuing is one of the biggest dis-satisfiers in stores, hospitals, banks and government institutions, and a structured approach to queuing is being expected by a large number of customers and citizens.” A UK-based firm, Inaccord, takes it further by noting that, “Queues are bad news for customers. When queues form at peak periods like first thing in the morning, at lunchtime or shortly before closing, they are made up of people who can’t visit at any other time, so the time they have is precious and the irritation they feel at having to queue is amplified as a consequence.” The company adds, “Despite improvements in the use and application of technology, Internet banking, telephone banking and other means of remote banking, for most banks, queues remain the biggest source of customer complaints.”

On the other hand, queue management is the ability to manage and streamline queues in order to improve customer waiting periods and staff productivity. This concept, which should be studied and embraced, however seems like a foreign concept to some who own and operate private businesses, and it is even worse in the public sector.

If you doubt that the whole issue of inadequate queue management and lengthy customer waiting periods is a big problem, then visit almost any bank next week during the pay period to do a transaction at the teller booth and then see what you think. You will find people in the line shifting from one foot to the other, grumbling underneath their breath about the length of the queue and the lack of adequate tellers to service the lengthy line.

So why is it that banks, for example, do not deploy more tellers at peak periods? Why is it that staff in key public sector agencies or even some segments of the private sector have to go to lunch during what is generally everybody else’s busy lunch period? Wouldn’t it make sense to allow the tellers an early lunch hour or a later one for those who have no problem with it, so they can handle the influx of people coming in? Why have six booths, but only two tellers working during peak periods and around what is known as the pay period? Why can’t more banks or institutions introduce a ticketing system and a seating area and cut out the long queue in general? These are all simple measures that can help to alleviate a bothersome issue.

When will the heads of these organisations understand that better management of queues and a better customer experience overall can lead to reduced wait times, thereby reducing customer complaints whilst increasing customer satisfaction?

Barbados Advocate

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Advocate Publishers (2000) Inc
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Phone: (246) 467-2000
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