There are lines and queues in every part of our lives from food orders to airports, banks etc. As the population increases, queues are getting longer, and time became a commodity rather than something we try to fill up. As a result, understanding queue problems and providing solutions to them gets more important every day.
The golden question is, how can this problem be solved? There are several models and mathematical solutions for managing and optimizing the queues, and also there are some other solutions for changing the perception of customers and not dealing with queues. Both provides a solution to the problem from different perspectives. The waiting time of customers are closely related with their satisfaction and it is also affecting the profitability of business. As in the example of McDonald’s case, there are some ways they are trying. One of them is analyzing the peak hours and managing the staff based on this, another one is deciding on possible multiple tasks or solo focused works and lastly finding ways to keep customer morale high by changing queue methods.
There are two different line methods, one is called multiple line leading multiple servers; other one is single line leading multiple servers. In general, single line leading multiple servers seem better as there will be no idling server on that method but in reality, people also jockeying to be served faster. Also, in multiple lines, people might get frustrated when others are served quicker as they believe something called “Just-World fallacy”. That is when you wait more but others waited less and get their drink faster than you, the feeling you had about world. One last thing in the multiple lines, the performance of servers might be seen easier, and it may boost other servers to catch leading ones.
On the other side, in Disneyland there are way more long queues than McDonald’s. If a customer waits around 2–3 minutes in McDonald’s, in Disneyland that may go up to 30–60 minutes waits. So, Disneyland tries not to shorten queues which seems impossible and uneconomic, but they use it for their advantage and entertain people on the waiting line. People in the queue may perceive that wait a lot shorter than it is. Also, besides the entertaining games they provide for waiters, they also sell some stuff on the queue and make some money as well.
Easiest and most guaranteed way to cut down waiting time is generally opening more servers but there should be a balance between served customers and new employee’s costs. So, there is always a trade-off between customer and employee. Also, rather than the number of servers, efficiency of them affects more. Effective servers and successful psychological tricks might be the best way to maximize customer satisfaction and keep waiting time short.
Finally, Graves says the first thing that attracts his attention is buffet set up. When there is something missing or wrong in the setup affects server’s performance. Thanks to development of technology, there are other solutions coming every day like self-checkout desks or mobile apps to shorten queues and waiting times. In the near future, less waiting and more satisfaction would be possible with those improvements.
Kubilay KIRMIZI
