![[Valid RSS]](http://blog.timetrade.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/valid-rss-rogers.png "Validate my RSS feed")
Ideas, tips and techniques for new generation selling and customer support.
Tag Archives: waiting
2010
“Textaurant” Improves the Waiting Experience
Continue reading »
Everyone loves the Cheesecake Factory. The problem is everyone loves the Cheesecake Factory: customers can wait up to two hours for a table. A packed bar, lobby and waiting area might be good news for the restaurateur, but it’s certainly bad news for the customers. Who likes to stand around waiting?
2009
Understand Customer Expectations When Waiting for Service
It’s impossible to serve customers if you don’t understand their concerns. If complaints are misunderstood, your best efforts to fix the problem will be misguided. Here’s a potent example – about waiting times.
2009
MIT analyst warns retailers against “queue rage”
MIT's "Dr. Queue" (Photo: Tim Gray, Boston Globe)
The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine recently interviewed MIT professor Dick Larson, a.k.a. “Dr. Queue.” The piece includes tips for both consumers waiting in line, and for retailers bracing for the busiest shopping time of the year.
For the retailer, there were results that don’t surprise us a bit:
In an informal poll, Larson found half of people polled reported they would not return to a store because of a bad experience waiting in line. He even notes that long, unpleasant lines have a greater impact on consumer behavior than low prices.
Continue reading »
2009
Five of the Worst Places to Wait in Line
Customers hate waiting in line. In fact, some organizations have waiting lines that evoke animosity before the customer even walks in the door. Which organizations are the worst offenders?
According to polls on Yelp, Yahoo! Answers and other Web sites, there are some common places where the wait is considered abysmal.
If they haven’t already done so, organizations on this list should make some changes – if they care:
Continue reading »
Filed under: customer retention, customer service
Tagged: customer retention, government, waiting
2009
Low Tolerance for Error When it Comes To Customer Retention
Continue reading »
Nineteenth century British Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli once said, “Never complain, never explain.” The sentiment may be hundreds of years old, but I witnessed a customer exercising that bit of wisdom just today. I was sitting at a tire store, waiting with another customer to have winter tires put on my car. The wait was ridiculous, and the other customer and I said as much to each other. There was no communication from the company, no explanation as to why something they told us would take 20 minutes was now spilling into hour two. After flipping through an outdated magazine for the third time, I watched as my silent companion walked to the desk, calmly asked for her keys, and left.
2009
Long flu shot lines hinder delivery. Appointments could help.
I can’t help but notice an unspoken sense of helplessness in all the coverage about flu shots … the millions and millions of flu shots that will be given.
It’s a project of unprecedented magnitude, and while government authorities are working their tails off to get everyone vaccinated, they seem to be overlooking a proven opportunity to improve reach: offering appointments can reduce wait times, which helps compliance. (“Compliance” is healthcare’s word for whether patients actually do what providers recommend.)
Citing a CDC advisor who calls it “potentially the largest mass-vaccination program in human history,” the Washington Post said Saturday
To prepare, more than 2,800 local health departments have begun recruiting pediatricians, obstetricians, nurses, pharmacists, paramedics and even dentists, along with a small army of volunteers from churches and other groups. They are devising strategies to reach children, teenagers, pregnant women and young and middle-aged adults in inner cities, suburban enclaves and the countryside.
Last night ABC News ran this two minute clip. (You’ll have to sit through a commercial first.) At about 0:36 remaining, Ryan Owens says “Many children will go to their pediatrician. Others will have to go to the health department and line up, just like these people are.”
He turns and points to a lengthy queue.
This is ridiculous: it discourages people from getting shots.
Of course we’re biased; we believe in the convenience and effectiveness of Web self-service appointments, and we sell the stuff. But seriously: this is a public health issue. People are less likely to do something when there’s a long wait.
Conversely, when the time factor is under control, compliance increases. Evidence:
- In May we reported on a talk at the Pediatric Academy Societies’ annual meeting saying Appointment scheduling issues keep children from getting vaccinated.
- At last April’s “Health 2.0 meets Ix” conference in Boston, Kaiser-Permanente VP of PR Holly Potter (@HTPotter) reported that Kaiser has found (with its millions of Web users) that when patients can pick an appointment time online, at their convenience, they’re 40% less likely to no-show.
This isn’t rocket science: You know yourself, when there’s a long line for something you’re less likely to do it. It’s just that healthcare hasn’t quite woken up to the opportunity. (Kaiser has, most haven’t.)
We hope private providers and public health officials alike will give us a buzz. Spread the word.
Related resources:
- Blog post: Medical journal article shows reminders help patients stick to the plan
- Our healthcare solutions page
- Case study: Sonora Quest labs TimeTrade smooths patient traffic and guarantees service within five minutes of scheduled appointment time
- Case study: Berkeley HeartLab Centralized scheduling helps provide cardiac patients with top-notch care
- Case study: Family Health Care Clinic Family Health Care Clinic delivers better care, 25% more visits, $2.5 million more revenue
Filed under: appointment scheduling
Tagged: appointment scheduling, government, healthcare, waiting
2009
Respecting customers’ time, part 2: Shrink the Stink
A Friday night post – some weekend reading, or maybe for you it’s Monday:
Waiting stinks.
And it’s a costly waste of time.
So let’s toss around some ways people use to shrink the stink.
Some businesses get it, and do a variety of things:
- “Take a Number” dispensers at the deli counter. Doesn’t save you any time, but gives you a good shot at “first come, first served.”
- Walk-in queuing systems are the software equivalent of “take a number.” (Sprint stores have a TimeTrade queuing system for walk-in service.)
- Cordoned “enter here” queues (at banks, post offices, airports) reduce the risk of getting stuck in the wrong line. (Why don’t supermarkets do this?? Don’t you hate it when the cashier turns on the “call supervisor” light for your line??)
- Restaurants offer “call ahead seating” to grab a place in line before you even get there, to reduce your wait.
- Some ERs publish their wait times on the internet. Associated Press, April 2009. And some let you call ahead and grab a place in line, then check back to see how close your turn is. That one’s not just a convenience, it keeps you (and your kid) from hanging out with sick people for hours.
- Then, of course, there’s making an appointment (or a reservation, as it’s called in non-service businesses).
#1, 2 and 3 still make you wait, but you can mill around. They don’t reduce your waiting time, but they do reduce the discomfort. In a sense, they make the waiting a little better.
The others, though, make your life better, because they address the value of your time. And now that I think of it, “Take A Number” and queuing systems do let you roam around and perhaps pick up a few items, letting you use that time.
Complex subject, this. One thing’s for sure – there’s a lot of waste involved in waiting lines, and that makes it an opportunity for improvement.
Think about it.
2009
Airlines and X-Rays: Customer Service in Capacity-Based Businesses
I had a shower-stall epiphany yesterday, a collision between thoughts rattling around in my head. I saw a pattern that spans many unrelated industries: customer service in capacity-based businesses.
It hit me because of events in two vastly different industries a week earlier:
- That Sunday I was on the phone with Southwest Airlines, and their system said “Our hold time is unusually long. If you want our system to call you when it’s your turn, press 1.”
- Two days later I had my adventure with the x-ray appointment (not) at a local clinic.
What do airlines and x-rays have in common? Both are capacity-based, which means customers need to be matched up with availability. And there’s a world of difference in how these two managed the customer experience.
- Southwest had their robot do the waiting, so I didn’t have to.
The clinic has lots of friendly, courteous people, but responsibility for my waiting time apparently hasn’t dawned on them. “Come on in, and we’ll get to you when we can.”
Think about this. Waiting stinks (and is a costly waste of time), so what ways can you think of to improve the customer experience?
Later this week I’ll return to this, but give it some thought. Maybe in the shower.
For a refresher on the cost (and value) of people’s waiting time, see our very first post: It’s RUDE to make people wait. And costly. That’s where this photo first appeared. It’s a real-life case study.
Filed under: online scheduling, scheduling software
Tagged: customer experience, customer service, healthcare, impatience, waiting
2009
Hate to wait? I think they did… bad customer service to the fore!
Any questions?
(Not surprisingly, a search on our new website for “waiting” produces three pages of case studies and articles. Just browsing the headlines is informative…and a Google blog search for “I hate to wait” produces hundreds of thousands of hits.) (Do we see a pattern here, a universal thing about whether customer service matters?)
A tip of the hat to Occasional CEO buddy Eric Schultz, who keeps threatening to write a guest post for us someday.
Filed under: appointment scheduling
Tagged: customer satisfaction, customer service, waiting
2009
A trend to watch: people don’t like to wait for anything. Not even your lovely voicemail.
The front page of today’s Boston Globe spotlights an inside article about impatience: “I’m Not Listening: In an age of ever-faster communications, many have no patience for voice mail.”
This is ominous if you’re in a business where customers have to wait: when your customers find a competitor who doesn’t make them wait, you could be toast.
There are exceptions: this morning I scheduled a physical with my doctor, and I have to wait three months! For this we pay the highest healthcare costs in the world?? But, he’s my doctor, and I’m not willing to doc-hop – a good doctor is a special case.
Most services aren’t nearly that special, and impatience rules. Sources cited in the Globe say:
- More than 30% of voicemails go unheard for three days or longer.
- More than 20% of people with messages rarely check them.
- PhoneTag, a company that transcribes voice mails and sends the text to users [so they can be archived, searched, and quickly read], estimates it takes 6 seconds to read a voice mail that would take 79 seconds to hear.
In this case, text is the lethal competitor – texting or email, as provided by PhoneTag ($30/month). They sound like a potential winner, but I’d hate to be in their shoes – Google Voice offers a similar transcription service for free. (Uh-oh, Google has noticed this?)
Worse, if you like to plan by anticipating where the puck’s going to be, the demographics show it’s getting worse… Sprint has been working hard to listen to its customers:
”A survey done for Sprint by Opinion Research Corporation found that with the exception of people age 65 and over, adults respond more quickly to a text message than to a voice message.”
- Under-30s are four times more likely to respond within minutes to a text message than to a voice mail.
- Over-30s are twice as likely to respond within minutes to text.
Lesson: people hate to wait. (Where have we heard this before?)
Later this summer TimeTrade will report some new findings about this, the result of original research we commissioned. Nice of the Globe to set the stage for us. :–)
Filed under: appointment scheduling
Tagged: customer service, impatience, waiting
Recent Comments