Virtual queues: How managing wait time information can improve the customer experience

Americans spend roughly 37 billion hours each year waiting in line. In fact, based on a recent survey it reported that wait related issues are the number one reason retailers lose customers. As queues go virtual, optimizing how you provide wait time estimates is an inexpensive yet very effective tool to significantly improve your customers’ experience for any business that’s thinking of implementing a virtual queue.

No one likes waiting in lines, it’s a fact. Whether at the grocery store checkout searching desperately for the shortest line, or watching the clock tick while waiting our turn at the dentist’s office, or at an amusement park, looking at the long lines and deciding how badly we really want to ride our favorite ride, most of will do everything we can to avoid waiting.

And even since the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic, when so many aspects of our lives are now conducted virtually, we still find ourselves waiting in lines, or in this case, in virtual queues, both online or by phone.

For this episode, I am joined by Qiuping Yu, professor with the Georgia Institute of Technology, to discuss her study “The Reference Effect of Delay Announcements: A Field Experiment,“ which will be published in an upcoming edition of the INFORMS journal Management Science. Her research explores our new normal of virtual waiting rooms and what companies can do to ensure excellent service and customer appreciation. The key comes in the form of carefully managed WTI, or wait time information.

Want to learn more? Check out the additional links and resources below for more information about what was discussed in this episode.

"When providing wait times, it pays to underpromise and overdeliver," Harvard Business Review

Qiuping Yu website

Gad Allon website

Achal Bassamboo website