Virtual queuing software and appointment booking software takes the stress out of queueing for both customers and store associates, and for a business, this drives strong return on investment through better customer relationships, greater sales and improved operational efficiency.
During Covid-19, such software provides additional benefits through enabling customers to wait remotely, ensuring social distancing and reducing the chances of spreading the virus, while reducing anxiety and uncertainty to ensure more positive customer interactions with staff and one another. This is particularly important in today’s world where anxiety and uncertainty is rife.
Here’s the psychology and resulting statistics that explain how virtual queuing and appointment booking software helps customers and businesses:
- It offers a fair and democratic queuing process that enables every person to secure their place without having to be concerned about other people pushing in front of them or encroaching on their space.
- Providing customers with wait time information makes the wait feel shorter. We liken this to waiting for a tube or bus with and without the dot matrix billboard displaying when the next tube/bus will arrive. The wait always feels longer when you don’t know how long you will be waiting. In a similar way, if you walk to a friend’s house for the first time, the walk there often feels longer than the walk back when you are familiar with your surroundings. In our surveys of customers at our client’s stores, we asked them how long they waited for – 97% said they waited for less time than they actually did. If customers had been standing in the queue without wait time information, the opposite would have been true.
- Because customer expectations are managed and the wait feels shorter and more secure (and because customers can leave and return later if the wait is long), customers are much more likely to stay and wait for service with a business using a virtual queuing system. Qudini has reduced walkouts for all its clients. For telecommunications provider O2, store walkouts reduced by 62% when they first started using our software. On an annual basis, this gave their 487 stores opportunity to convert £29 million in potential new contract revenue.
- Customers are now given the opportunity to browse a store while they wait for service, rather than wasting their time standing in a physical queue. Many of our clients have seen their customers browse and make purchases while they wait. 24% of House of Fraser customers browsed and made purchases while they waited for services. Sports shoe retailer, Sweatshop, saw a 9% increase in unplanned customer spend. Eleanor Oldroyd on BBC Radio even used the software in a John Lewis children’s shoe department and reports increased likelihood of spending while she waited.
- The more positive queuing experience means that customers have a more positive experience with the store staff during their service, which means they are more likely to convert and to spend more. Through using a virtual queuing system, an international travel agency retailer’s stores saw a 10% increase in store conversion rates and Specsavers stores have seen average customer spend increase by 33%.
- The more positive customer interactions, alongside staff visibility of their store’s activities within intuitive interfaces, significantly reduces colleague stress levels and their service time speed. Specsavers stores report being able to better retain talent due to the reduced stress of running the store. O2 saw staff transaction times reduce by 27%.
- All this means that customers are more likely to return to store and more likely to tell their friends and families. O2 saw their store NPS scores rise to an all time high when they installed the Qudini software. All our clients report customers returning more frequently and telling their friends and family.
- Appointment booking software enables brands to drive footfall to store from their website and marketing channels, while also improving conversion through enabling customers and store colleagues to better prepare for interactions. For an electronics retailer’s support services, 40% of their service footfall comes from online appointments. Department store retailer, Brown Thomas, finds that most appointments are booked by new customers who have not engaged with the brand before.
- From a data perspective, virtual queuing and appointment booking enables retailers to capture a range of insights previously unavailable to them. Most retailers capture footfall data and sales data, but what happens between the door and till is often an enigma. Virtual queuing and appointment software provides data points such as: customer demographics, wait times, service times, customer product/service interest, sales outcomes, survey feedback and more. O2 reduced their spend on mystery shopping and exit surveys by £150,000 per annum now that such insights are accessible to them on a daily basis.
So virtual queuing and appointment booking software ensures both customers and businesses win. To read our full report, get in touch by emailing info@qudini.com
