The Hate2wait Story
I hope this does not happen in real life, but queues are an everyday reality. There is something about humans and ‘waiting’. We seem to hate it unconditionally.
Last year, I had 103 fever and I booked an appointment for 6.30 pm using a famous appointment booking website in India. I barely made it on time but my turn came at 7.15 pm (had to sit for 45 mins in the waiting area with other patients). It was clearly evident that everyone in the waiting area was as frustrated as I was.
A few weeks later, I visited a service center to get my phone repaired and I had to wait for 1 hour in the queue at the service center for my turn. All this while I was mostly staring at that boring TV screen — anxiously waiting for my token number to pop-up.
Be it at the restaurants, doctor’s clinic, hospitals, service centers, salons, government offices, airports — You name it, I hate it! It is surprising how quickly customers get annoyed and anxious while waiting for their turn.
Customers are more demanding than ever, they have more power and options than they used to have, they are smarter and have higher expectations than ever before. At the same time, customers now have lesser patience and tolerance than ever before.
A study concluded that six minutes is the average time customers will stay in a queue before leaving and 56% of customers would be less likely to return if they’d had a bad queuing experience in the past. When it comes to waiting, people use previous experiences to decide whether they will stay in the queue or leave it.
In this hyper - competitive world, customer service and customer experience is becoming a major differentiator among businesses in so many industries. Customers who are satisfied with the service they receive often refer their friends — and people who are dissatisfied aren’t shy about sharing their negative experiences.
It’s great to see businesses trying out various methods like traditional token-display systems, fixed time appointment systems to ease out the pain for their customer. But are they really working?
A new survey finds that the vast majority of customers — 85 percent — say they have to wait anywhere from 10 minutes to 30 minutes past their scheduled appointment time to actually get serviced.
Modern technology has enabled people to buy groceries, make payments, order food, buy clothes, mobile phones etc. within few clicks and swipes, without having to wait. But still, we often find ourselves stuck in such situations:
This made me think that there has to be a better way around and came up with something we called hate2wait.
How does hate2wait helps businesses?
hate2wait is now helping customers save ~25 million minutes of waiting time and loads of frustration every month and is trusted by brands like Apple, Xiaomi, Sachin Tendulkar’s Smaaash, famous doctors and restaurants in India.
P.S. If you want to deliver wait free, VIP service to all of your walk-ins and appointment customers, Try hate2wait now!
