Managing Waiting Lines

Introduction
A newly opened fast food service restaurant in the busy commercial area of Central Delhi was in
the process of designing a marketing strategy to beat the competition. The first suggestion was to
offer good quality and hygienic food with a broad Indian and Continental food menu for the
consumers to choose from. The second suggestion was to make the ambience comfortable and
lively for professionals, family and youngsters to visit. The last and the most important suggestion
was to reduce the waiting time of the consumers to a minimum of two to three minutes for the
order to be delivered. The first two suggestions were instantly accepted and were considered easy
to be implemented, but the reduction of the waiting time was felt to be the most critical and difficult
to be put to practice. The same may be felt by most of the service industry players like Banks,
Saloons, Car service etc.
A number of service marketers develop a competitive advantage of working at minimum time for
delivering the services. However simple it may sound, it is the most difficult aspect to implement
in the service production and delivery. How often have you been to a dentist and had to wait for a
long time as Doctor took a long time interacting with each patient? Or may be how often you felt
frustrated on having to wait for your turn at the nearest saloon for a haircut? Did you ever think of
avoiding coming at certain hours due to crowd? Did you ever felt like getting an appointment on
phone and then visiting? If yes, you are thinking about managing the waiting lines at the service
marketers. This is one of the most crucial aspects of service marketing in which the service
provider may have to completely overhaul the service production operations to reduce service time
by as less as 30 sec! If you think 30 sec is too less a time to be thought of reducing, how about
having to wait at the toll booth for 30 sec more than ordinary days? With an increased customer
and subscriber base, comes profits, and also comes the problem of satisfying the consumers by
ensuring a quick service to all.
Thus, management of waiting lines refers to ensuring a quick service to the consumers by
maintaining the overall service quality at competitive prices. It is difficult to implement as the
consumer walk-in may be random and the service requirement of each consumer may also be
random. Since the services are not stored, there is no way to keep the inventory ready for a quick
supply during peak hours. This is what makes the issue worth discussing. One might think of
opening more counters to manage more consumers at a time. But this is a layman approach to
spending more money. The counters may not be utilized during off period , thus adding the cost
without adequate returns. Successful managers are the ones who are able to creatively design ways
and means of reducing the waiting times and engrossing the consumers while the service is
delivered to them.
Types of Waiting Lines
a) Finite Waiting Lines- There may be a finite group of consumers expected to visit the service
counter during the day. The number of consumers served will be deducted from the overall queue,
thus shortening the waiting line. For example, Banks and Retail outlets. However, the same
consumer may re-visit the service counter which will increase the overall size of the finite
population over a period of time.
b) Infinite Waiting Lines- There are services in which the number of consumers visiting in a day
may not be accurately guessed. Further, such consumers may not leave the queue, once served,
and may want to order another service. For instance, Beauty saloons and spas, Toll booths.
c) Physical Waiting Lines- These are the queues in which the prospective consumer is physically
present to be served. Like, a car owner waiting for a car wash.
d) Virtual Waiting Lines- These are the queues in which a subscriber is put on hold on phone for
the want of some information at a call center. The virtual waiting lines could be operated manually
or through voice mails. There could be a waiting line when a number of subscribers try to access
a website almost simultaneously, putting a burden on the server and hence a slow navigation.
e) Single Location- There may be a service provider offering services through a single location
counter. For example, a restaurant.
f) Dispersed Location- A service organization may be serving its consumers through
geographically dispersed locations. For example, an on call taxi service making passengers wait
at different locations.

Elements of a Queue
The strategies to manage a queue emanate from the various components that a waiting line or a
service queue has. Let us look at these elements in the following points:
a) Potential customers- The queue is essentially defined by the kind of consumers who line up
for a service delivery. Such customers are also known as the “Calling population”. When a
queue is planned, it is important to understand their needs and expectations from the service.
Let us take an example of a ambulance passing through a toll plaza. Due to an emergency
medical situation, it needs to be passed through the toll lane without any delay. This is in
contrast to a normal vehicle plying on the road. Thus, while designing lanes for a toll plaza,
arrangement should be made to allow VIP vehicles or other special vehicles to pass without
waiting. For this, categorization of the potential consumers in various segments may be done.
Depending upon the characteristics of the consumers, queues may be designed accordingly.
b) Arrival- It refers to the number of consumers seeking a service and the time of their arrival.
There may be certain services for which expected time of the consumers may be predicted.
For instance, a Bank can expect a heavy rush after a three day holiday. Similarly, the time of
consumer arrival in a day may also be forecasted. For example, it is very likely to have heavy
crowd visit a restaurant at a commercial place during lunch hours whereas a family restaurant
can expect heavy rush during dinner hours, while a restaurant on a highway can get more
crowd during morning hours. Further, the service manager may forecast the number of
consumers walking in for service purchase in group. During lunch hours the commercial place
restaurant can expect a consumer cluster of one to five consumers. While the family
restaurants during dinner may expect consumer cluster from two to twenty members. A movie
theater may predict a smaller cluster and less number of consumers during morning shows,
while it may get more number of consumers with larger clusters during evening shows. Such
a prediction is very useful in planning service counters for ensuring a lesser waiting time.
Service managers may plan operating more service counters during peak hours with additional
staff.
c) Balking- This refers to a decision by the prospective consumer to be in the proximity of the
waiting line but not to join the same. This happens when a consumer perceives the waiting
line to be long and decides not to seek the service or to come back later. It is important for the
service manager to make adequate arrangements to avoid balking as it may lead to losing
business opportunities. Think of a food plaza where given a long queue at a particular food
outlet, the consumer may prefer to buy food from a competitive outlet. Or observing a long
queue at the bill counter of a retail outlet, the consumer defers to buy the groceries from there.
Service managers may disguise the length of the queue by dispersing the counters or indicating
instructions at the counters about the average billing time to encourage the consumers to make
a purchase and join the queue.
d) Reneging- Have you ever stood in a waiting line of submitting some bill in a Bank and felt
that the line is not moving or moving at a snail pace, and then decided to leave the line in
irritation as you have next appointment due in some time? In service management
terminology, you decided to Renege. Thus, Reneging refers to a situation when the potential
consumer leaves a waiting line and prefers not to seek a service instead of waiting for any
more time. For submission of a due bill, the consumer might revert back after some time, but
it could also mean permanently losing a customer, if it is about purchasing a service. Reneging
also causes an atmosphere of negativity around the waiting line as the consumer who leaves
the line may speak or behave in a fashion that adds to the frustration of other waiting
consumers. Hence, it is very important to check Reneging by choosing a right kind of service
queue design and speed up the service delivery operations.
e) Service counters- One of the most important elements of a service waiting line is the number
and location of the service counters operational at a given point of time. There could be
different configurations for the service counters. A service manager will choose the one that
suits the other elements of the service. Here are some of the configurations:
i) Single Line- Single Stage: This design of service process involves only one point of
interaction for service consumption and there is only one queue. Waiting for operating the
ATM is one such example.
ii) Single Line- Multiple Stages: Under this design, prospective consumers will have to form
a single line but the service order and delivery is done through successive stages. For
instance, ordering for take away food may include ordering and collection at two different
points. The waiting time at the different stages can be different and service managers will
have to plan waiting time accordingly.
iii) Parallel Lines: Under this system the consumers are segregated into multiple service
counters. The line may have a single or multiple service stage. For instance, a big retail
outlet may have multiple billing counters. Additional service counters are made
operational during peak hours.
iv) Allotted lines: A service may have multiple segments of consumers. To manage the
waiting lines of such diverse consumers, service counters may be allotted to such different
categories of consumers. For example, while checking into the airplane, categories may
be made on the basis of ticket type like business class, economy class and the queues may
be made accordingly. Similarly, there could be separate lines for males and females at the
ticket counter of a multiplex.
v) Single Line to multiple counters: This is a method of having all the consumers in a single
queue. As the consumer reaches the head of the queue, he is directed or he opts to go to
the counter which is vacant. This is a very fair method of operate and also ensures quick
movement of the waiting line. Often, this method makes embankments of the waiting lines
with ropes or tapes and the movement of the waiting line is back and forth.
vi) First come, first served: This is a variation of the standing single waiting line. In this
method, the consumer comes to the reception and takes a number. He can sit or roam
around in the premises till his number is called for the service delivery. You might have
come across such a system while having to wait meet a physician.
vii) Combination: A service provider may opt for using a combination of any of the above
waiting line designs to manage the consumers and ensure a quick service. For instance, at
a multi specialty hospital, the patient may have to register at a single counter, proceed to
multiple service counters for testing, diagnosis etc. and then revert to a single counter for
billing and collection of reports.
f) Customer selection process- Generally, the consumers in a waiting line are served on first
come, first served basis. It is considered to be a fair system as the consumers who are waiting in
a line since long may resent having new consumers come in and served before them. However,
there may be formal policies designed to prefer a given set of consumers for serving prior to
others. This is also called as „Queue discipline‟. For instance, elderly consumers may be preferred
to be served in a waiting line. Similarly, there could be different processes designed to serve a
prospective consumer out of the queue as per the following basis:
Urgency of the Service: At many service counters, while a waiting line works in a sequence,
some consumers may be preferred over others in case they are in an urgent need of the service.
Let us take the example of a Hospital where the emergency cases may be attended on a priority
basis. This is ensured by having a regular OPD waiting lines and the emergency arrival section
having a separate registration and such cases are attended on priority basis. We may think of
waiting line at the ticket counter of a multiplex. Customers who want to buy tickets for the movie
show which is about to be started, may be given a priority and they may be asked to buy the ticket
at a separate counter.
Service Duration: The services which may need a shorter time duration may be separated from
the bulk business. For example, a number of banks have installed locked boxes for the cheques to
be dropped in for account deposits instead of the account holder waiting in the queue to handover
the cheque to the counter.
Premium Payment: There could be an extra charge for a separate or a shorter line. As for the
check ins in the Airplane, the business class form a separate line than the economy class and the
passengers in the business class are normally less than the economy.
Regular customers- For the customers availing of the services more frequently, some token or
a pass may be issued which entitles them for being served separately. Such an arrangement is very
commonly found at the toll booths.
g) Flexibility- This element relates to the design of the service process and the flexibility granted
to vary the service delivery system according to the demand. For example, a self service restaurant
may offer to table serve in face of long waiting lines on counters. For allowing flexibility, a service
manager may design a service flowchart and try to assess the likelihood of occurrence of delays
at various stages. Such an analysis can also be done after going through the consumer complaint
record of the past. Such bottlenecks should be highlighted and the service personnel should be
well trained to overcome a delay at these points. For managing a waiting line a Service manager
may work out on the following service design issues :
Consumer numbers: This is to assess the approximate number of consumers to be served in one
go. Depending upon the service, either the consumer will be served individually or in a group.
Equipments used: The consumer may be served manually by the staff, with equipments alone or
a combination of personnel and equipments. Identifying the degree of dependence on technology
and amount of involvement of the personnel is assessed.
Capacity: For management of waiting lines, it should be evaluated as to how many service
transactions can be successfully completed in how much of time. This facilitates in working out
the number of customers who can be efficiently served at a time.
Service delivery location: The manager proceeds with working out the place at which the service
is delivered to the consumer. For instance, whether the consumer comes to the service site as in a
restaurant or a Bank or if the service is delivered to the consumer doorstep as in the case of free
home delivery of food, opening of bank account at the consumers doorstep. There could be a third
location for the service delivery as in eth case of cash withdrawals at ATM.
Waiting experience: This refers to the experience a waiting consumer goes through. A smart
service manager ensures enough distractions in the comfortable waiting zone for pleasing the
waiting consumers. For example, at the car service outlet, drivers may be offered free meals, a
comfortable waiting area equipped with mobile charging points and with magazines and television
to keep them occupied.