Question

Imagine you're a business owner: If waiting in lines is a truly inescapble event for your customers, what can be done to make this experience less painful? How can you maximize their time waiting in line and even use it to stimulate your income from them?

Answer 1

As a business owner, I would distract the attention of waiting customers to something more useful. Some of them are:

• Impulse purchase- I would place magazines or books near the counter tables to attract customers when they are waiting in line for a longer time that they don’t like. The customers read the magazine to kill the time however they will not have sufficient time to finish the interesting articles in the magazine. Finally, the customers end up buying the magazine thus increasing the profits for my company.
• Technology- Technology plays a major role in distracting the attention of individuals. I would place tablets near the waiting line so that customers waiting in lines can access it. The Tablets would contain information about the different categories of the products and services. This top-notch information will be useful for customers to make an unplanned purchase and never think about the long waiting lines.
• Open concept- Customers would be bored to wait in lines to get their orders or pay for the purchase. The long waiting lines make the customers impatient and unsatisfied. To avoid this, the open design concept can be used. For example, Starbucks let the customers watch the making of the coffee. They hear, see and smell the espresso being made. This making of a product is very interesting to customers thus attracting them and makes them to order products that they have not tried.
• Other basic products- I would offer customers other products that meets the basic needs of the customers. Apart from my main stream of business, I would supplement my business with products such as pharmacy, stationeries, etc to attract customers to buy these necessity goods and increase the revenue of the firm.

Conclusion- If the customers have to wait for a long time in the queue, then it is pertinent to distract them to both increase the revenue of the firm and keep the customers busy. The above mentioned strategies would change the customer’s perception of waiting in line. The customers would be happier and become a loyal customer to the business.