Queuing management

1.0 Introduction

In service industry, queuing management or waiting line are played as important roles. Since the arrival of customer is unstable which is randomly coming, the queuing management is required to deals with random cases. It is important for queuing management adjustable to every situation. The most critical part of their roles is to reduce the waiting time of customers and improve the services they provided (MSG, n.d.). Customers will felt unsatisfied easily when they queuing for a long time. It will also influence the customer loyalty toward the company potentially.

We will faces waiting in line in our daily living such as buying something from retail shop, withdraws money from ATM and others. Thus, these are the reasons why the queuing management is important. A service organization with effective queuing management can reduce cost and improve its’ profits. There are two costs associated with queuing management which are increase the counters to reduce time of service and customers waiting in line (MSG, n.d.). Reducing waiting time of customers is able to satisfy and pleased the customers and it will prevent the management from suffering any unnecessary cost. Normally, queuing management is required to weight the circumstances between cost of additional machinery and cost of time spending in waiting line (MSG, n.d.).

The fundamental of queuing management system is moving customers quickly for their in through and out lines (WAVETEC, 2013). The competiveness in global is increase constantly and every organization should stay along with global trend. Queuing management is one of the operation management that important for organizations to gain their competitiveness in business area. The efficiency of the system is able to increase and handle the customer flow. There is a positive relationship between customer flow and business profitability. Thus, the increase of customer flow will increase the profit of the organization. As a result, the organization will increased their global competitiveness if it is performed well in queuing management. Queuing management is not only important for customer flow but also established a large impact on customer loyalty, economic value, operational efficiencies and globalization competitiveness (WAVETEC, 2013).

Discussion

Existence of a good queuing management is essential for the company future development. It will bring a lot of benefits to the company such as customer loyalty, economic value, globalization competitiveness and operational efficiencies (WAVETEC, 2013). Queuing management has significant impart towards services and retails industries. It is more related to the waiting time of the customers or users. Hence, companies with better queuing management will gain more competitiveness than other companies which did not emphasize on it.

Based on the literature review and case studies above, we have already identify and explain the strength, weakness, opportunity and threat (SWOT) for three companies which are Standard Chartered Bank, Morrisons and Tesco. Standard Chartered Bank is using Smart-Q System in their queuing management and the system has been discovered that consist the weakness which is do not expose the customer’s queuing time. We suggested the Standard Chartered Bank to use Irisys people counting technologies in order to know the correctly number of customers entered the bank and left without any banking transaction. Conversion Ratio is a key metric which is number of consumers to the total number of people entering the bank. Thus, it will provide the accurate analysis of customer flows and measuring customer conversion rate to identify the bank’s customer service quality. Other than that, Standard Chartered Bank is facing a threat which is competing with other international banks in global. We suggested the bank to emphasize on its queuing management. There are a lot of bank users from business industry and time management is important for them. Thus, Standard Chartered Bank should enhance their queuing system and served customers as many as possible in shortest time.

Morrisons supermarket has a weakness in their operations management which is the bad layout design. It is important to let customers feel free and convenient when they shopping in their store. Customer will felt unsatisfied easily if they felt troubled or confused about the layout design of the store. Morrisons should put more effort on the layout design in order to gain the strength against other strong competitors in the same industry such as Tesco and Walmart. Besides, we suggested Morrisons to expand their types of goods. Customers are preferred to buy various goods that they needed at the same place. Therefore, Morrisons should widen their business area such as electronics, clothes, entertainment and others. As a result, it will increase customer satisfaction and competitiveness of Morrisons.

There are some issues related to Tesco’s human resource and job design about the management of their employees. A bad human resource management will lead a company toward the path of failure. The employees’ motivation will reduced if they felt unsatisfied with company human resource. Especially in service industry, the bad feeling of employees will influence the customer indirectly. Customers will felt displeasure when the attitude of cashier or service counter is poor. It will caused a seriously consequences which are decline performance and profits of the company. Hence, we recommended Tesco to improve their human resource management and hired some experts to create solutions. The company should always concern about the feelings and emotion of employees. Employees are essential for a company and they are the valuable asset which will bring the company toward successful.

Conclusion

In conclusion, queuing management is a major element in operations management. Companies are required to enhance their queuing management in order to follow the pace of globalization. It will bring plenty of benefits to the company such as increase of customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, service quality and competitiveness. Queues are common thing that happened and repeated frequently in our daily life. Thus, it is important for companies to emphasis on the queuing management in order to meet the satisfaction of customers.

From the case studies, we found that even the reputable company such as Standard Chartered Bank, Morrisons and Tesco are facing intensive competition in their industry. The companies are using different types of queuing management and all of them are trying to strengthen it and gain the competitiveness against other companies. Other than that, it is important for companies to analyze their strength, weakness, opportunity and threat (SWOT). From doing SWOT analysis, the company is able to discover and improve the weak point or defect. It will also help the company to develop their current and future operation strategies.

Lastly, successful of a company is closely related to queuing management. A company which is executed better in queuing management will gain more advantages. The company must lay down the strategies for queuing management and implemented it efficiently. It is concerned about long-term profitability over the time for company. The company should treat it as their competitiveness and it will lead the company to a better future.