{"id":1277,"date":"2009-04-02T06:02:30","date_gmt":"2009-04-02T13:02:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/?p=1277"},"modified":"2014-10-18T16:28:27","modified_gmt":"2014-10-18T21:28:27","slug":"on-queueing-oil-change-customer-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/on-queueing-oil-change-customer-experience\/1277\/","title":{"rendered":"Jiffy Lube Waiting Room and the Role of the Bay Window"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"a296a24fa2fc69ef5487857f02f111e8\" data-index=\"9\" style=\"float: none; margin:10px 0 10px 0; text-align:center;\">\n<script async src=\"\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js\"><\/script>\r\n<!-- Single Post readerboard -->\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:inline-block;width:728px;height:90px\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-8207522353004717\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"1144967431\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script>\n<\/div>\n<p>Earlier this week, I went to <a title=\"jiffy lube oil change waiting time example\" href=\"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/jiffy-lube-oil-change-and-queueing\/9986\/\">Jiffy Lube to get my oil change<\/a>. I once worked for a person responsible for the redesign of many waiting rooms in various industries, so I went with an observant eye, looking for the items that he taught me about in his <a href=\"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/shmula-on-ethnography-and-product-design\/144\/\">ethnographic<\/a> work. \u00a0 It was a very interesting 30 minutes, free of <a title=\"multitasking makes you unproductive\" href=\"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/5-life-lessons-learned-from-multitasking\/8371\/\">multitasking<\/a>. Here&#8217;s what I saw and learned.<\/p>\n<p>You can also view all 40+ articles on <a title=\"articles on queueing theory\" href=\"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/queueing-theory\/\">Queueing Theory<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>This person taught me a few things about observational research:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Look for the ordinary, not the extraordinary: &#8220;ordinary&#8221; is what you are there to observe<\/li>\n<li>Nothing people do is &#8220;natural&#8221;: whatever happened could have happened differently.\u00a0 Be the Master of the Obvious.<\/li>\n<li>Don&#8217;t fear the details: People nodding, pacing, worn-out carpet, etc. &#8212; details that point to a need or desire, but is not articulated by the customer.<\/li>\n<li>The most obvious things are only obvious in hindsight, and context doesn&#8217;t appear until you see it in real action.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>The waiting room was rectangular shaped, with 8 chairs.\u00a0 There was a large bay window on one end of the room and four chairs on the other end of the room.\u00a0 The first thing I noticed was that those four chairs with direct view into the car bay were filled and the lone chair, facing away from the window was empty.\u00a0 Here&#8217;s my first observation:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Observation 1<\/strong>: Those four chairs, with direct view into the car bay (where the cars are being worked) were filled because customers want to see their cars being worked-on.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The car mechanic at the car register came to me several times during the 30 minutes I was there &#8212; probably 2 times &#8212; to give me an update.\u00a0 It was just an oil change, but he tried to up-sell me on other stuff, which didn&#8217;t work.\u00a0 Still, he gave me frequent updates, more than I expected.\u00a0 Here&#8217;s my second observation:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Observation 2:<\/strong> We know from our knowledge of the Psychology of Queueing that Uncertain Waits Feel Longer than Known, Finite Waits.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Giving me updates reduced my perception of waiting time.\u00a0 This is good, qualitative business practice in any waiting situation.<\/p>\n<p>There was a TV and plenty of magazines available.\u00a0 Here&#8217;s my third observation:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Observation 3:<\/strong> Unoccupied time feels longer than occupied time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In other words, if a customer is waiting and doing nothing, it feels longer.\u00a0 A simple magazine or a TV show can help time feel as if it is going faster.<\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"color: #800000;\">What A Customer Wants<\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Regarding Observation 1, Jiffy Lube failed to remember why they redesigned the waiting room in this way.\u00a0 See below:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-4475 aligncenter\" title=\"shmula-jiffylube\" src=\"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/shmula-jiffylube.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"480\" height=\"640\" srcset=\"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/shmula-jiffylube.jpg 600w, https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/shmula-jiffylube-225x300.jpg 225w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The Customer wants direct, clear view into the bay and to their vehicle &#8212; the car is the Center Stage.\u00a0 Yet, Jiffy Lube littered the window with stuff, propaganda, and ads.\u00a0 The candy machine is a smart move &#8212; some added revenue for the company in a spot where they knew people would be frequently pacing.\u00a0 But, by covering the window ruins the the main anchor and purpose of the waiting room &#8212; <strong><em>to ease the anxiety and impatience of the customer by providing a direct view into the very purpose of their being there<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>In the words of my former manager and mentor who redesigned waiting areas for many different companies:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The car repair story is real &#8211; I once spent a week watching people nod off waiting for their cars to be repaired. I was Jane Goodall and they were the chimps. And I got more and more panicky as I saw less and less &#8220;happening.&#8221; Then I started thinking about the obvious things I could see. One seat in the waiting room actually had a pretty good view of the car repair bays, and two or three had decent views. None of the others really let you see your car at all. Luckily, I had detailed notes: I knew where people had sat and how long they sat in each seat.<\/p>\n<p>As I reconstructed scenes, it became more and more clear that people tended to sit in one of the &#8220;good&#8221; seats unless they were occupied or someone was sitting in the next seat and there were a lot of other empty seats available. When the waiting room was empty, I looked carefully at the carpet and the upholstery of the &#8220;good&#8221; seats and, sure enough, the wear patterns showed that what I had seen that week had been going on for a long time. There really were good seats and bad seats and you could tell which was which by checking out the sight lines.<\/p>\n<p>Since the project was about developing criteria for understanding waiting-area designs, this was an important piece of information. A good design would put the car center stage and use the fact that customers were riveted to that stage as a way to organize the space and its communication elements. The path for the rest of the analysis was pretty clear.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<h2><span style=\"color: #800000;\">Psychology of Queueing<\/span><\/h2>\n<p>A reminder for those of us responsible for products or services, where waiting might be an element of the experience:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Unoccupied time feels longer than occupied time.<\/li>\n<li>Process-waits feel longer than in-process waits.<\/li>\n<li>Anxiety makes waits seem longer.<\/li>\n<li>Uncertain waits seem longer than known, finite waits.<\/li>\n<li>Unfair waits are longer than equitable waits.<\/li>\n<li>The more valuable the service, the longer the customer is willing to wait.<\/li>\n<li>Solo waits feel longer than group waits.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Please visit <a title=\"queueing theory page\" href=\"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/queueing-theory\/\">this page, for more on Queueing Theory<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"color: #800000;\">Design Thinking<\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Design Thinking doesn&#8217;t mean just aesthetics, but it is a blending of many disciplines to solve for the customer.\u00a0 In this example, we see Queuing Theory, Layout Design, Observational Psychology, and Lean Thinking working in concert, solving for a customer need.<\/p>\n<!--CusAds0-->\n<div style=\"font-size: 0px; height: 0px; line-height: 0px; margin: 0; padding: 0; clear: both;\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Earlier this week, I went to Jiffy Lube to get my oil change. I once worked for a person responsible for the redesign of many waiting rooms in various industries, so I went with an observant eye, looking for the items that he taught me about in his ethnographic work. \u00a0 It was a very [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12327,"featured_media":4475,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[641,643,642,640],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Jiffy Lube Waiting Room 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