Queue Management Needs an Urgent Overhaul

Brick-and-mortar retail has seen a huge rebound as consumers defied expectations and quickly returned to pre-pandemic shopping patterns. After a long period of isolation, shoppers flocked back to physical stores to reconnect with the brands and products they love.

In 2022, major U.S. retailers announced plans to open nearly 8,000 stores, almost five times the number of store closure announcements, according to the National Retail Federation. And Insider Intelligence reports that 84 percent of total retail sales will take place in physical stores this year.

Retailers have spent the last few decades perfecting their e-commerce strategies and the COVID-19 pandemic forced companies to double down on online shopping operations as public safety measures kept consumers at home. Some thought the pandemic was the death knell for physical retail, but in reality we’re experiencing a brick-and-mortar renaissance.

Although retailers are responding quickly to consumer demand for physical shopping experiences by opening new stores and refocusing on the omnichannel customer journey with services like buy online, pick up in-store (BOPIS) and curbside pickup, they’re sabotaging their efforts by ignoring an age-old problem: lines. Waiting in line has been called a “timeless form of torture” and queue management approaches have remained stubbornly antiquated, testing consumers’ patience.

Last year, I wrote about Waitwhile’s 2022 consumer survey, which found that people really don’t like waiting in line. We found that almost 70 percent of consumers associated waiting in line with negative feelings like boredom, annoyance, frustration and impatience. And though the vast majority of consumers said they prefer virtual queues to physical lines, Waitwhile’s survey found poor adoption of digital queue management solutions by businesses.

The response to our inaugural survey was so fantastic that we decided to make it an annual event to track how consumer sentiment is shifting and how businesses are responding. For The State of Waiting in Line 2023, we polled 1,000 U.S. shoppers to better understand where they stand when it comes to standing in line.

Here are some of our findings.

Waiting in Line is 3X More Common in Retail Than Any Other Industry

For the second year in a row, Waitwhile found that consumers face lines in retail more than any other industry. Americans spend more time waiting in line at retail stores than at pharmacies, restaurants, banks, and doctor’s offices combined. Notably, time spent waiting in line at retail stores has increased by 30 percent since 2022.

This trend is concerning, and it indicates that retailers are struggling to keep up with consumer demand for physical shopping experiences. Historic workforce challenges are making it difficult for companies to adequately staff stores, making waits longer and more frequent, which leads to poor in-store experiences that ultimately damage customer satisfaction.

82% of Consumers Avoid Businesses That Have Lines

Lines have real impacts on business. Strikingly, we found that the vast majority of consumers (82 percent) actively avoid going to businesses because there’s a visible line or because they think there will be a line. When asked about impacts on satisfaction, 44 percent of respondents said that they're less satisfied with businesses that have lines.

The mere presence of a line (or the assumption that one will exist) can have serious implications on not only customer satisfaction, but also brand loyalty. Our survey found that for the consumers that actively avoid businesses with lines, only slightly more than half (58 percent) will return to that same business either in person or online to complete their purchase or service. More than 40 percent of these consumers will go to a competitor instead.

Consumer Impatience is Skyrocketing

Consumers are still associating waiting in line with negative emotions. Of note, however, is that impatience increased by 176 percent this year — even as negative emotions have remained relatively stable year-over-year (67 percent this year vs. 69 percent in 2022).

Much has been written about how technology is ruining our patience. In 2015, Microsoft found that the human attention span was shorter than that of a goldfish. Studies over the past few years have shown that our ability to focus is decreasing even further.

“Instant gratification” is taking on a whole new meaning as consumers’ definition of “instant” is shifting. Retailers’ hyperfocus on gaining an edge in the world of e-commerce has had unintended consequences. Consumers have become accustomed to getting what they want faster, conditioned by online shopping to expect convenience and speed.

According to The Conversation, this expectation “ultimately sets up challenging and sometimes unrealistic expectations of those who are trying to serve us.” As consumers get less patient, their fuses are shortening and frontline employees are ending up bearing the brunt of the burden.

Earlier this year, Waitwhile conducted a survey of retail workers and found that 68 percent of frontline employees regularly deal with frustrated or angry customers. Long lines and wait times were the top cause of customer frustration according to these workers. Seventy-three percent said that long lines and waits are a persistent problem at work.

With both consumer impatience and employee unhappiness on the rise (not to mention the staffing challenges retailers are facing), time is quite literally running out for businesses to rethink their approaches to queue management.

Queue Management for Today’s Shopper

Consumers far prefer virtual queues to physical lines. Our survey this year found that 57 percent of consumers would rather wait in a virtual queue than a physical line if given the choice. We also found that nearly 70 percent of consumers would rather schedule an appointment than wait in a line.

Even though consumers are clearly craving alternatives, businesses are still implementing archaic queue management techniques that force shoppers to line up or wait in crowded areas. Only 20 percent of the consumers surveyed said they were able to wait virtually the last time they had to wait in line. Though there’s some incremental improvement in the adoption of digital queuing solutions (virtual queue presence increased by 11 percent YoY), the vast majority of retailers are not in line with consumer desires.

There’s little mystery to why virtual queues are far preferred by consumers. Because they let shoppers wait from anywhere on their phones, virtual queues free up time and give customers flexibility. Rather than standing in line or hanging out in a waiting area, consumers can do anything they would like while they wait, including continuing to shop.

Our survey found that 38 percent of consumers will actually continue shopping while waiting in a virtual queue. This creates a key opportunity for businesses to not only drive sales, but to also deepen consumers’ brand connection through unique in-store experiences.

The data are definitive: retailers are long overdue for a major overhaul of their queue management practices. Consumer patience for waiting in physical lines is running thin. Businesses must act quickly to eliminate lines and provide shoppers with other options.

The natural solution is to adopt a customer flow management platform. These systems are packed with features like virtual queuing, appointment scheduling, and two-way messaging that deliver on consumer desires while bringing key efficiencies to business operations: a win for customers, employees and retailers alike.

To access all of the findings from Waitwhile’s The State of Waiting in Line 2023 report, click here.

Christoffer Klemming is the CEO and co-founder of Waitwhile, a customer flow management solution that any retailer can use to create perfect end-to-end customer flows with virtual waitlists, appointments, messaging and analytics.