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Galaxy research has released a study that shows that queuing in stores is the fastest way to lose sales. In the Australian Queuing Behaviour  Survey it was shown that 67% of people will abandon their purchase if it means standing in line and 75% will take their money elsewhere in future. Danger times are queues over 5 minutes in length.

We are also less tolerant of queues in particular industries. If you have a queue at a fast food restaurant you will have more irritated people than if you have a queue at a supermarket.

And what the cashier is doing while the queues are in place are also a problem. If your cashier is not hurrying but is taking their time you can expect more people getting hot under the collar than if they appear to be moving quickly.

I will quite happily admit to being someone in the 75% category. Recently I had to buy joggers for my daughter so off we went  to Super Amart All Sports. There were about 4 staff at the shoe section – all milling around vaguely helping people and generally doing very little in particular. We ended up just locating the options ourselves and headed to the checkouts.

With three possible terminals, only one was working. There was only on assistant on the terminal – who just happened to be a person I had sacked in a previous role for poor performance – not a good sign. Well she hadn’t improved at all and if anything reinforced my previous decision. She was very slow (walking through custard slow) and pfaffed around with each item for the customer she was serving.

Did I mention that by the time we joined the queue there were 20 people already waiting – and it took her 5 minutes to process one transaction. A person at the back of the queue grabbed one of the sales team and directed them to the register (there was no manager in sight to control the rapidly worsening situation).

The sales assistant looked at everyone and said “we are out of register rolls for the other machines” . “Is anyone getting more” “I dunno”. The assistant then proceeded to slow down the processing even further for the lucky next in line.

At that point I put down our purchase of high priced joggers, and walked out. We were followed out by another 5 customers who put down purchases of everything from smaller items to some who were buying very high priced gym equipment.  A very expensive loss of sales for a few register rolls.

If you make people wait – you lose sales. It is that simple.

This is also true of online businesses. If you are selling a product and then don’t give people to opportunity to pay immediately you are losing sales.  The more hoops you make people jump through the harder it will be to get the sale. So asking someone to email you their order and you will call them to confirm it, is the equivalent of a queue over 5 minutes in length in a traditional shop. You will lose sales.

Ideally allow people to buy and then instantly download your product. People are time poor and want to buy and have it now.

If your product is a tangible product that you are selling on the net, the way to get around this objection is to specify the shipping time for your product – and deliver within those timeframes. Allow for express shipping wherever possible to make it even less of an issue. Many people will happily pay the premium for faster delivery.

There is a saying that time is money. It is!  Your money if you make people wait.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

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