Page 40 - November 2020

RLI RETAIL INSIGHT

The Cost of a Queue

Simon Hedaux, Founder and CEO of Rethink
Productivity, a world leading productivity partner
which helps businesses to drive efficiency, boost
productivity and optimise budgets, takes some time
out to discuss the cost of queues and how much
revenue business are losing to this.

study of US supermarkets, reported in Harvard Business CASE STUDY: HOW COSTA COFFEE TRANSFORMED
Review, found that increasing line length from 10 to 15 WAITING TIMES
people dropped sales by up to 10 per cent. While most The UK’s biggest coffee shop chain is Costa, with over 2,400 stores.
o
t
A res won’t have lines that long, a UK study found that How could they make sure they have the right number of people to
s
grocery queues are the ones customers like least and 44 per cent deliver a great customer experience and grow sales? It’s a question that
of people report they will leave their planned purchases after six Costa had to ask when they brought in a new workforce management
minutes queuing. system to help with team scheduling. Until then, they’d been busy growing
A UK university psychology professor, Adrian Furnham, studied queues and not had time to stop and look at efficiency.
and came up with his “rule of six”, which says customers are reluctant to An external team set up camp in 15 stores and used a mix of workstudy
join a line once it has six people in it. While this is a simplification, it’s a techniques to get under the skin of their operation. Modern workstudy
useful rule of thumb for looking at your own business. creates evidence-based insight into each stage of the customer journey.
The reason a line develops is there’s a mismatch between customer Using a mix of data collection and analysis techniques, they create a
numbers and the colleagues available to serve them, so demand rounded view of the operation that is applied to optimise productivity
outstrips capacity. and customer experience.
To minimise lines forming, dive into the detail of your operation and Study techniques included accurately timing tasks, such as how long it
understand what the drivers of your queues are. The common causes took to brew a Cappuccino or set up at the start of the day. These times
we see include: helped Costa quantify the workload and plan their resources better.
They looked at how time was spent and identified things that prevented
• Stores not planning effectively for their trading patterns colleagues spending more time on activities that customers value.
• Are your busy times related to commuter patterns, school runs, or The analysis and observations created insights that Costa used to
the evening dash to get emergency snacks and beer? increase efficiency and reduce lines. For example, it was found that
• Team breaks planned at peak customer times, reducing capacity just the layout of the counters was causing customer bottlenecks and
when it matters most contributing to longer lines. So, Costa developed a new counter that
• Colleagues focusing on tasks rather than customers, for example improves customer flow and experience.
being engrossed in putting stock on the shelf It was also highlighted that food took longer to prepare than coffee in
• Click & Collect and kerbside Collection that reduce checkout cover drive-through stores, which meant customers had to park and wait. So,
• Slow technology connections that add a few seconds to the average they introduced a faster panini press that means customers no longer
transaction time wait and baristas don’t lose time walking across the lot.
It became clear the value of having everything needed to hand and in
It’s a tricky commercial trade off – too few colleagues and there’s a exactly the right spot for Baristas to create a consistently great cup of
line; too many and you are wasting salary spend that could be invested coffee as efficiently and as quickly as possible.
in adding value. Costa pay attention to every little detail that goes into serving
customers their signature blend coffee as efficiently as possible - no
Businesses are coming up with good ways to reduce their lines: wonder they’re the UK’s favourite.
1. Reviewing their rotas against their business pattern to make sure
they have the right team members available to provide a great
service for their customers
2. Encouraging use of contactless cards – in these health-conscious
times, it not only reduces potential virus transmission; contactless
payment also takes half the time of chip and pin and is usually
quicker than cash payments too
3. Using self-checkouts alongside traditional check outs to give
customers a choice and keep the lines moving
4. Scan and go – using apps or handheld tech so customers do their
own scanning and packing with just a quick drop into a payment
point as they leave

Tokyo shoppers have been avoiding queues for many years, since Japan
became the vending machine capital of the world, with everything imaginable
available in shop front vending machines.
Amazon is using technology to eliminate lines with their Amazon Go stores.
Shoppers check in using their app and clever trackers, combined with integrated
payment, mean they just walk out with their items. There are currently 27
Amazon Go stores and reports of more to come across the world.

40 RETAIL & LEISURE INTERNATIONAL NOVEMBER 2020