Implementing a service software to relieve waiting line frustration

Abstract

Service companies have used waiting lines as a way of buffering the constant flow of providing a service for a long time. The introduction of hurdles, line numbers, time based appointments and virtualization have all worked for better and faster service, but the problem of long waiting lines has so far not been solved. The subject of this work is a startup company which has built a queue management service that enables smartphone users to wait in line remotely. The startup team to which I belong has built a product around the promise of allowing people to use the waiting time in their own terms. Therefore making the the issue of long period between request for service and actual service less important from customer perspective. By developing a minimum viable product for validating the market we have discovered that the customer pain of long queues does not convert into service provider’s pain: the combination of long waiting time, recurrence of the wait and option for replacement are rare combination that exists only on theoretical level. This work will concentrate on the findings on introducing new technology of remote queuing to the market and the specifics of waiting lines and the conditions where this technology would be most adaptable. This study maps out all the methods the team used for introducing the technology, all the findings and the conclusions that were made during the process. By testing different methods a model was developed that describes the problems of introducing new technologies that require personal hardware support from both parties in the context of physical services