As a retailer today, you face many challenges. In the queue, where sales are won and lost, you need to maintain a high level of customer satisfaction. In most cases, customers simply aren't content to wait for too long. Keep them waiting beyond what they consider reasonable, and you risk losing business. At the same time, you're not ashamed to admit that you have merchandise in your waiting lines for a reason: you want to capture at least a few extra impulse dollars before those customers hit the register. So how do you accomplish both of these goals: keeping wait times in check AND maximize impulse sales in the queue? Here are 3 keys to success:
1. Capture the Right Queue Data
You can't manage what you're not measuring. With today's technology it's fairly easy and completely possible to capture a wealth of queue-related data that you'll need to optimize your "waiting-to-selling" balance. Measuring everything from queue length to wait time to service rate and empty queues, both in real-time and historically, gives you rich information from which to make staffing and resource-oriented decisions. You have several options when it comes to technology to make this happen. You can go with a sensor-based system, cameras, WiFi tracking, or heat mapping. Each of these has its pros and cons so be sure to do your homework.
2. Capture the Right SKU Sales Data
Since you're trying to balance waiting and selling, it makes sense that you've got to also be able to capture sales data by SKU for merchandise in your waiting line. We'd take this one step further and encourage you to break your queue into "zones" so you can look at how different areas of the queue perform in relation to others.
3. Marry the Queue with the SKU
The final and most important key to all of this is to marry the queue data you've captured with the SKU sales data for items in your queue. You’ll be comparing sales by item and zone with variables such as line length, wait times, abandonment, and arrival and service rates to help you proactively maintain acceptable wait times while optimizing the merchandising selection and placement in your queue. Finding that waiting-to-selling balance isn't simple. But it's made possible and a whole lot easier with the right merchandising analytics platform. Look for one that includes web-style reporting, real-time alerts, and decision making tools so you can take quick and confident action on everything you've learned.
