Managing the customer queue in a bank environment has always been challenging. The key issue with banking is variable transaction time. This simply means that some customer transactions are fast, like making a deposit and some are slow, like arranging a cashier check.
With the traditional multi line queue with each service position having it’s own line customer suffered the frustration of being ‘trapped’ behind a customer with a slow transaction while others in the next line get served ahead of them.
Today most banks have adopted the single line queue system in which a single line serves all the cashier positions. This means that if one cashier is delayed by a slow transaction the queue is still served by the other cashiers and the line keeps moving. This format also guarantees that customers will always be served in the order that they join the queue.
The question for financial institutions now is how to continue to improve the customer’s branch experience. A certain amount of waiting is inevitable, the single line is the most efficient queue system so now the focus needs to be on turning waiting time into productive time. For customers who are in the queue being engaged by an activity make the wait seem shorter and reduces the feeling of time wasted.
