{"id":4752,"date":"2010-09-16T05:36:27","date_gmt":"2010-09-16T12:36:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/?p=4752"},"modified":"2014-10-04T05:11:33","modified_gmt":"2014-10-04T10:11:33","slug":"back-to-school-revenue-loss-waiting-line-frustration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/back-to-school-revenue-loss-waiting-line-frustration\/4752\/","title":{"rendered":"Back to School Shopping and Revenue Loss from Frustrated Customers that Wait in Line and Decide to Leave"},"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>My kids have been in school now for about a two weeks. So, the whole back to school\u00a0shopping thing is still all-too fresh in my mind. Which is why this recent article on back-to-school and Queueing was so relevant.\u00a0You 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>According to a recent study, back-to-school retailers are losing up to 39% of revenues due to long lines and in-line frustration. With overall K-12 and college spending combined expected to reach a whopping $55 billion this year, back-to-school shopping is the second largest event for retailers, right behind the winter holidays.<\/p>\n<p>According to the study, <strong>$21 billion of that revenue is lost to poor customer queue management<\/strong>. That is an outstanding number &#8211; and tremendous opportunity.<\/p>\n<h2>Back to School Shopping Waiting Line Survey Data<\/h2>\n<p>According to the survey results,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In the nationwide study of 500 parents with school-aged children, the vast majority, 75% of respondents say long lines are the worst part of the back-to-school shopping experience. Nearly four in ten (39%) parents, leave stores while back-to-school shopping without purchasing a single item because of long lines. Long lines are cited by 35%, 1 in 3 parents, as the primary reason for leaving the store &#8212; worse than high prices, lack of supplies or inexperienced sales personnel.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>According to the researchers,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Time is money &#8212; reducing walkaways&#8217; and optimizing queue time is the end game. By deploying a smart queue management strategy, retailers can take control of and ideally manage the customer journey, from when they enter the store, at the retail point-of-sale, in-line at checkout and once they walk out the door.\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<h2>Convert Wait Time to Shopping Time<\/h2>\n<p>This is a tremendous opportunity for the retailer &#8211; by converting Queueing Time or Wait Time to extended Shopping Time. Potentially,\u00a0retailers can cost-effectively convert waiting time into extended shopping time, boost impulse sales, improve retail efficiencies and eliminate customer frustration and employee stress during the back-to-school shopping season, enriching the overall customer experience and ultimately increase margins.<\/p>\n<h2>Lean Thinking Applied to Queues<\/h2>\n<p>How might Lean Thinking be applied?<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"what is the theory of constraints\" href=\"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/the-theory-of-constraints-the-fundamentals\/2632\/\">The Theory of Constraints<\/a> teaches us that the overall output of any process is determined by the bottleneck. So it&#8217;s critical that we do the following at the bottleneck:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>eliminate or reduce steps at the bottleneck<\/li>\n<li>eliminate or reduce waste (muda) at the bottleneck<\/li>\n<li>create more capacity at the bottleneck<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>For a retailer, the point-of-sale or the cashier or the cash registers is the <a title=\"what is a bottleneck\" href=\"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/recognizing-constraints-bottlenecks\/247\/\">bottleneck<\/a> step.<\/p>\n<p>Ideally, we would want to design a <a title=\"drum buffer rope\" href=\"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/shmula-goes-camping-drum-buffer-rope\/138\/\">pull system<\/a>, such as as one customer leaves the system, another enters the system. But, in a point-of-sale queue, such as we see in retail, we do not see a <a title=\"drum buffer rope\" href=\"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/shmula-goes-camping-drum-buffer-rope\/138\/\">pull system<\/a> &#8211; we see a push system: customers line-up and wait, regardless of customers leaving the system or regardless of exit rate in the queue.<\/p>\n<p>In general, If a customer is already waiting in line, one can eliminate <a title=\"7 wastes, seven wastes, lean, muda\" href=\"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/the-seven-wastes-of-software-engineering\/2190\/\">waste<\/a> at the server (or point of sale). Doing this could potentially reduce wait time, increase flow, which means revenue recognition much sooner.<\/p>\n<p>Here are a few specific suggestions:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Make sure the cashier is only (a) scanning and (b) taking payment. There should be baggers to offload unnecessary steps that the cashier should not be doing.<\/li>\n<li>Make sure payment systems and scanning systems are functioning perfectly, are easy to use for the cashier; that the payment system is clear and easy to use for the customer.<\/li>\n<li>Make sure the customer is ready to pay, removing the need for the &#8220;search, reach, grab, pay&#8221; steps during the payment steps. If the customer is ready when the cashier if finished scanning, that could eliminate a few seconds of wait time for the entire queue.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<h2>It&#8217;s Your Turn<\/h2>\n<p>If you were to provide advice to Wal-Mart or some other large brick-and-mortar retailer, how might you suggest they manage their queues in order to convert wait time to shopping time?<\/p>\n<p>source: http:\/\/www.lawrencemetal.com\/about\/news.aspx<\/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>My kids have been in school now for about a two weeks. So, the whole back to school\u00a0shopping thing is still all-too fresh in my mind. Which is why this recent article on back-to-school and Queueing was so relevant.\u00a0You can also view all 40+ articles on Queueing Theory. According to a recent study, back-to-school retailers [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12327,"featured_media":10949,"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>Back to School Shopping and Long Waiting Lines<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Back to School Shopping and Long Waiting Lines is an article that discusses the revenue loss from 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