See if there are ways to streamline your queue, so customers aren’t waiting a long time to be helped by one person. These transactions are not only more complex, they happen less frequently so moving them out of the regular line doesn’t add significant work to your staff, but decreases customer wait times overall. Have a special station where returns are taken, online purchases are picked up or loyalty program sign-ups are processed, for example. Have a separate stand for complicated transactions.Ĭomplicated transactions take more time, and they force your other customers to wait longer for service. This can also help you manage customer flow and shift people to less busy times. Some retail establishments even encourage customers to schedule an appointment to come in, rather than just walking in. For example, you could offer 10% off for customers who come in between 11 and 1, if that’s your quiet time. Offer incentives for coming in during quiet hours. One way to lessen wait times is to shift customers from the busy periods to the slower ones. Encourage customers to come in at quiet times.Įvery business has busy times and slow times. If you need to manage customer wait times without hiring more people, here are four ideas that can help you.
If they like your goods or services, they’ll be a bit forgiving, but too many long waits will send them to your competition. The bad news is customers won’t wait around forever for you to fix your time management issues. If your customers have long wait times, that’s good news for you initially-it means your business is popular. You need the right amount of staff working to keep customers happy, but not so many people that workers are standing around looking for things to do. However, due to the ongoing pandemic and recent labor shortage, many businesses are trying to keep up with the customer demand with less staff on hand.īalancing customer experience against your budget is a difficult task. We also know that every dollar counts when it comes to your business budget. Every minute counts when it comes to the customer experience for your small business.