Nick Byrnes - vice president of sales and business development at Lawrence Metal Products Inc. - has a name for the "waiting rooms" hiding in plain sight at many retail stores. They're called checkout lanes. "It may not have four walls and a sign, but it typically is the only area where customers are asked to stand in one place and wait to be served," says Byrnes, vice president of sales and business development for Lawrence Metal Products.

Making the "waiting room" enjoyable can pay off for retailers. With the goals of reducing customer frustration and the number of customers who leave without completing their purchases, Lawrence Metal Products, a Tensator Group Company, has developed the eQ™, a range of next generation, state-of-the art electronic line management systems that increase efficiency and overall customer satisfaction. Lawrence offers an electronic call forward solution that alerts customers when a sales associate is ready for the next transaction and reduces the time customers spend in line by about 25 percent, Byrne says. To activate the alert, a sales associate presses a button once he or she has completed a transaction and closed the cash drawer. Displays at the register, as well as at the head of the line, indicate which register is free. (Each register can be set up to display arrows pointing to the now-open register -- helpful when columns or pillars make it hard for customers to see the displays at each register.)

Making the Wait Fair, Efficient, and Profitable

A single-line queue is both fair and efficient, Byrne says: customers don't have to guess which line is going to move most quickly. Moreover, the queuing area typically can be smaller than for the other methods, although it's easy to extend the lines to accommodate larger groups. The system also can be linked to the corporate network; doing so allows for a few more features. For example, the marketing department can program the displays to run promotional messages when they're not displaying a register number. The eQ™ system uses the electronic element to speed customer flow and reduce delays that could affect quality. It then monitors and tracks activity and can provide reports of average service and wait times that can be used by organizations to determine peak and off-peak activity, enabling them to determine where to add or modify staff for optimum efficiency and make other improvements. System generated text messages instantly alert managers when queue line efficiency can be optimized.

From a customer's viewpoint, whether in a line or seated in a waiting area, the eQ™ system guides the customer to the next available service position, guaranteeing they are served in order, thereby reducing stress and providing the utmost in satisfaction. The product is available in two formats: electronic call forward for managing waiting lines of customers and electronic ticketing for dispersed queues. With online multimedia scheduling capabilities and opportunities for point-of-purchase advertising and information distribution, the eQ system can be custom-designed to meet specific needs that further improve the customer's queuing experience and drive sales revenue.

Prime Real Estate

The system offers several other benefits. Transactions are completed more quickly, so salespeople can check out more customers. Because the line steadily moves forward, customers don't feel trapped in place; as a result, they're less likely to leave the store annoyed and without buying anything. At the same time, customers recognize the inherent fairness of the line, since they know they'll be served in the order in which they arrived. In addition, because every customer will spend some time within the queuing area, it's prime real estate for merchandising. Case in point: one client of Lawrence Metals placed impulse items in its queuing area. Management found that 75 percent of customers looked at the items, more than one-third interacted with them and 10 percent purchased at least one of the items. Several other retailers have placed bowls of small impulse items like lip gloss, candy and tissues within their queuing areas, boosting sales of those items by as much as 800 percent, Byrne says. (Retailers don't want to over-merchandise the queue, however; if they offer too many options, customers can spend so much time making their purchasing decisions that the line actually slows down.)

Based in Bay Shore, N.Y., Lawrence Metal Products manufactures crowd control and line management products, offering a wide portfolio of customer guidance and queue management systems.