Queue Management Solutions Offer Employee Perks
The old adage that the “customer comes first” is undoubtedly true in virtually all retail spaces, but how you treat your customers should not be the only thing your company considers when creating processes. Employees play a huge role in how your business performs as a whole. Thus, considering a queue management solution that maximizes employee benefits is a proactive way to ensure operational success.
Ensuring that employees are happy can affect virtually every aspect of a company. In fact, a 2017 study from MIT noted that when employees have good experiences with your business, they also develop twice as much, in terms of innovation, and create two times the customer satisfaction that generally unhappy employees generate. Companies with good employee experiences also see a 25% increase in profitability as well. Thus, it pays to invest in employee wellness and experiences.
An effective queue management solution can provide employees with a streamlined, efficient, and pleasant experience in the workplace.
Reduce Frustration in Servicing Customers
Poor time optimization not only results in frustrated customers, but it also means frustrated employees.
When your workers aren’t sure whom to serve next or what customers need at the outset of interaction, it slows down services. Employees must also deal with frustrated customers who may not feel like their time is being respected if you don’t have an effective queue management system.
Frustration breeds more frustration. By not having to deal with angry customers, unnecessary paperwork, or congested traffic, your employees can focus on actually doing their job. When your team can do what they were hired to do, they feel more productive and that their contribution has value. Happy employees end up creating happy customers.
Improve Overall Company-Wide Efficiencies
Managing lines and guessing which clients should be serviced next wastes time and energy. It leads to inefficiencies and ineffective use of resources. When you have a queue management system that meets your needs, you don’t have downtime resulting from these inefficiencies.
In addition, by tracking all of your employees’ customer service interactions, you can see exactly how well they are doing and share feedback with them. Showing employees how many customers they helped in a day or a month, for example, can help them become more satisfied with their work as a whole. They are also often more engaged in the services they continue to provide-and higher employee engagement means lower absenteeism, fewer accidents, and fewer mistakes.
Better Communication and Faster Response Times
When your QMS works well, it allows your team to communicate with one another and customers easier.
When your team doesn’t have to work hard to communicate, they are more likely to stay engaged and work better with each other. Working together also generally creates faster response times-both in responding to clients and when answering peer or management questions. Ultimately, all of these aspects help increase efficiencies and make workflow much more manageable.
Decrease Employee Stress
When your team has to deal with confusing paperwork, lines, and angry customers, their stress levels are bound to rise.
Managing how clients are served instead of actually serving clients creates a situation where the employee is constantly putting out fires rather than being proactive and being productive in a meaningful way.
Creating mechanisms to get clients what they need-whether that is through virtual check-ins, curbside service, or other tech-savvy options-will help employees manage their time effectively. When workers don’t have to sprint from one task to the next, they provide better services in a safer way, and they are far less stressed.
Fewer Absences and Decreased Turnover
When your company uses no queue system or an ineffective queue method, it overworks and stresses out your team.
By using a queue management system that makes their job easier and allows them to be more effective, you create a better working environment that allows employees to relax, focus, and accomplish goals.
A relaxed, happy workforce will not miss as much time from work compared to those who are stressed and overworked. They will take fewer days off, and they will often stay as a member of your team longer than they would if they came to a chaotic work environment every day.
Decrease Down Time
When a queue management solution is used properly, it provides information about the next client before your team ever interacts with that person.
By having this information in advance, your team can skip some of the more basic information and get right into the heart of what the client needs.
Employees can also prepare effectively to service the next customer when they have some advanced notice of what that person needs. They ultimately spend less time waiting around for their next task and are prepared when the customer arrives or checks in. That also provides better service for your customer as well.
Streamlining Back-of-House Processes
In a restaurant, the back of the house is anywhere that customers generally don’t see.
This is where the magic happens-food gets made, and necessary restaurant operations take place. Back of the house can also generally refer to any “behind-the-scenes” processes that customers don’t see.
You may be surprised to realize just how much managing customers at the “front of the house” affects how processes work behind closed doors. When you have an effective queue management solution, you can streamline processes. In the example of a restaurant, a QMS that includes a display system allows chefs to process orders without waiting to coordinate with the servers. You can even “bump” specific orders based on how long they take to make and get back out to the customers.
Better back-of-the-house services also mean productive, happier employees-which is better for everyone.
Use Staff Where They are Needed Most
Your team is bound to get frustrated when they know you need more team members to help customers in a particular area.
A queue management system will allow you to track and understand where your team can be moved at certain times of the day, days of the week, or even immediately, to address demand in real-time.
Tracking live statuses allows you to move your team around so that no one feels like they are alone in addressing customers’ needs in a particular department or section of your store or facility. By reacting to customer needs, you decrease wait times for customers, resulting in happier customers.
You can also use this information to spot team members who are not performing as quickly as others. That person can be assigned elsewhere or receive more training as necessary.
Creating and Implementing a Queue System That Helps Your Team Help Customers
Clients or customers aren’t the only focus in a good queue management system.
Instead, your team can benefit a great deal from streamlined processes and a productive environment. If you are ready to learn more about how a queue management solution can help your business, contact our team at Ombori. We can help you create a system that fits your needs.
Originally published at https://ombori.com.
