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queue management infographic

Queue Management Essentials for Retailers [Infographic]

People hate waiting in line! And long lines aren’t just bad for your customers, they are bad for employee morale too.

It is essential that retailers have a queue management plan that will help them balance queue length and queue wait times with other factors like staffing costs and impulse purchases made while waiting. Queue management is both an art and a science. Check out our infographic below that highlights the most important factors to consider.

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technology in the fitting room

The Best Technologies to Use in the Fitting Room

When you think of fitting room technology, does Rebecca Minkoff come to mind?

This stylist has partnered with eBay to put together one of the most jaw-dropping fitting room experiences. The rooms are complete with personalized kinetic sensors and tracking systems to get to know customers on a deeper level.

For most retailers, the idea of adding technology to a fitting room feels far-fetched. This is where most retailers are sorely mistaken.

Technology isn’t something to be afraid of in retail. It’s something to embrace.

Many retailers worry about adding technology because of the cost or extravagance. Still, some of the best technologies to use in a fitting room are simple and highly effective. They drive sales and improve customer’s experiences.

The first step, is knowing what you need and what makes the most sense for your brand.

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Is the Layout of Your Store Affecting Your Customers in a Negative Way?

As a retail apparel company, it’s your responsibility to ensure your customers enjoy a stress-free and pleasurable experience each time they shop at one of your stores. This means:

  • Making customers feel special as soon as they walk in the door
  • Making items easy to find
  • Encouraging sales associates to provide exceptional customer service
  • Making sure a long line and long wait time isn’t the last memory a customer has when they leave the store.

Even if you’re in love with the design and layout of your store, it’s important to remember that everything you do, from product creation to check out, should cater to the needs of your customers. If the first thing a customer sees when they come through the door is a long line and it’s also the last thing they see when they leave, you won’t have a great relationship with that customer for long. In fact, did you know that 75% of retailers will lose a sale because of wait-related issues?

If you think your store may be losing business due to long wait times and unhappy customers, there are numerous ways to improve the flow, customer perception, and overall usability for your customers.

Read More »Is the Layout of Your Store Affecting Your Customers in a Negative Way?

4 Ways to Distract Your Customers From Long Lines

In the apparel retail industry your customers or clients often need to wait for fitting rooms and wait for you to grab their product or complete a transaction. Did you know you could significantly improve your business by distracting them while they wait?

Modern attention spans are shorter than ever, and a wait that may seem short to you may feel excruciatingly long to your customers. If you give them something to do while they wait, though, the time will seemingly fly by, and they won’t notice that they’ve been waiting at all.

Businesses have known the importance of these distractions for a long time- that’s why waiting rooms have magazines, kids get crayons at restaurants, and music plays when you’re on the phone and get put on hold. No matter what your business is, if waiting is part of the transaction, then you need to know how to make waiting in line better for your customers. This article should help you get some ideas.

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How to Turn Customer Wait Time Into an Experience

People hate it when they have to wait in line for 45 minutes at their neighborhood grocery store, but they have no trouble at all waiting in line for three hours to get the newly released iPhone or get front row seats to the new Star Wars movie. Either way they’re standing in line, so what makes the difference?

Though your customers may expect to wait in line when trying on clothes or making a purchase at your retail store, if you really want to dazzle them you need to turn their wait into an experience they will remember forever.

Times Writer Mandy Oaklander once wrote that when a customer waits for an experience instead of an object, they get excited about the wait instead of dreading it. If you can learn how to make the wait a little more exciting, you will retain more customers and increase your in-store revenue in the long run. Instead of seeing the wait as a process they have to go through, customers will begin to feel like they are part of a unique event that caters to their needs.

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How to Study Your Customers Behavior and Change Proactively

We live in an age of impulse buys. In the retail space, it’s not at all uncommon for a customer to walk in with the intention of just browsing, but to end up making a purchase. Shoppers are always grabbing things off the shelf and head to the cash register based on little more than a whim.

An obvious enemy to these types of impulse buys are long lines. The more time that a customer has to think about an impulse decision, the less likely it becomes that they are going to go through with that decision. Furthermore, long or boring lines can make a customer question whether or not a 10 or 15-minute wait is even worth it for the purchase he or she was going to make.

As you can see, queue management is very, very important. However, managing the queues in your store is about more than shortening your lines. Cutting the line at the cash register in half, while an attractive idea, is not always possible—particularly at peak shopping hours.

Plus, even if you could shorten your lines, would you want to? After all, having a busy, bustling store often leads directly to higher revenues.

Read More »How to Study Your Customers Behavior and Change Proactively

5 Things your customers wish you knew about queue management

5 Things Your Customers Wish You Knew About Queue Management

If we were to add up the amount of time we spend waiting in line every year, we’d probably be pretty shocked at the final number. It’s best not to think about it too much.

Sometimes, though, the wait is more unpleasant in some places than it is in others. The line to renew your driver’s license is unbearable, and if it weren’t mandatory, you would never set foot in a DMV office again. But the wait for a table at a restaurant, when you’re comfortably seated at the bar with a drink in your hand, isn’t so bad.

Other than the presence of alcohol in the latter scenario, there are a few things that set the two waiting experiences apart, and it has a lot to do with queue management. In fact, there are five things your customers wish you knew about queue management.

Read More »5 Things Your Customers Wish You Knew About Queue Management

Learn to improve sales with queue management

9 Ways to Improve Sales with Queue Management [Free eBook]

How to improve sales with queue management

Despite popular and traditional beliefs, queue management strategy does not rely primarily on solutions to shorten lines. Instead, it is most successful when your customers feel happy and at ease while waiting for a fitting room or waiting to pay for their purchase.

The length of your queues does play a significant role in your choice of which queue management strategies to employ because the number of people queuing up affects the customer’s perception of your store.

Customers are always making snap judgments about whether or not to buy from you. The longer your queues are around your store, the higher the likelihood that you’ll lose sales due to the perception of long wait times.

Queue management goes a step beyond shortening up these lines to improve your customer’s perception of wait times. It involves giving your customer an experience while buying from you.

In this book, we give you nine highly effective ways to improve your customer’s experience in your store. From implementing modern technology to improving your sales associates experience working for your store, you’ll discover some of the best ways to get your customers buying more. Boost your sales, employee happiness levels, and customer satisfaction with these nine solutions for better queue management.

Read More »9 Ways to Improve Sales with Queue Management [Free eBook]

How Much Luxury Can Be Behind a Doorbell?

In the days of yore, people defined luxury by marble fixtures, gold enhancements, and high-tech amenities. In those days, high tech meant easy access to a bedside button that instantly called for the maid or butler to show up at your beck and call.

Today, luxury feels a little bit different. It’s defined as fancy cars, opulent homes, and other types of high-tech amenities. The one thing that hasn’t changed is the expectation.

People who live in luxury expect quality service. These people demand individualized attention and help when they need it and where they need it. In a clothing store, this can mean having the same bedside button in a fitting room, so an associate is available at their beck and call.

On the surface, a doorbell doesn’t sound luxurious. Dig a little deeper and you’ll realize why it’s so in-demand in every shop from intimate boutiques to high-end department stores.

Read More »How Much Luxury Can Be Behind a Doorbell?

How to Deliver Hyper-Personalized Customer Service

When you think about personalizing your retail business, what’s the first thing that comes to mind?

If you’re like many retail store owners, it’s marketing. You consider cross-channel or omnichannel marketing. You make sure you gather enough data on your customers to share relevant marketing messages. Is this enough?

Probably not.

In retail, you have a unique opportunity. Your employees work one on one with customers. As they begin talking to shoppers, it’s easy to sprinkle in personalized service. It’s good old-fashioned customer service with one associate personally investing time into one customer.

Read More »How to Deliver Hyper-Personalized Customer Service

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