Waiting Line Management

The topic of this report is an analysis of a Shopper’s Drug Mart queuing system. At Shoppers Drug Mart, there are multiple places where queues are formed; regular check-out line, beauty check-out line, at the pharmacy and at the post office. For this analysis, we only looked at the two different check-out lines, the set of regular servers near the front of the store and also the check-out line for the beauty department. At this location, we noticed there were only two cashiers (servers) handling all the transactions for the regular check-out line at the time we went. There was only one cashier (server) at the beauty department handling all the transactions done for beauty products. While in reality anyone with any products can check-out

keep an existing customer than finding new ones. A major part of the customer service, especially in a retailing

quality products and services is also what makes customers want to come back to an organization.

Over the decades there were tremendous amount of challenges for every business. Customers have more knowledge, they have more options, and they have higher expectations. Customers are more informed with the humungous development in technology. Having more options in front of them, expectations has surpassed in retail industry. Loyalty is a customer having faith that your organization’s product or services offered is the best for them. It is the process of tapping the buying pattern of customers in a store based on their preferences. Customer loyalty is significant because it is economical to retain the old customers rather than acquiring new customers. So, organizations employ loyalty programs which reward customers for their repeat business.

Employees must first align their perceptions of service quality to what the customer’s perceptions are (Becker & Wellins 1990). Understanding what drives the customer establishment relationship is important to turning one time customers into loyal

The author knows that a business will not succeed if the employees do not give the customers a quality customer service. Customers are most likely to come back to a place where they feel welcome, where they feel like they are being well treated.

Also, in terms of efficiency, customer loyalty is very important in these days. First, getting new customers is very hard and ineffective. It costs 5 to 10 times more to attract new customers than retaining the existing ones. In addition, even if companies succeed to get new customers, they cannot be sure that new customers will continue using their products or services. However, if a company has many loyal customers, they don 't need to be worry about that. Not only is it less expensive to retain a customer than to acquire a new one, loyal customers spend more and purchase more profitable products and services. It is already proved as 'Pareto 's Law '. The longer the customer is loyal, the more profit the company gains. Therefore, if companies care about not only long term growth and profits but efficiency, customer loyalty has to be a top priority.

Each organization has its own strategy in order to achieve company’s aim such as grow in the market, especially by considering there would be many more competitors around. Due to that, the company require to have very good tactic in order to gain customer’s trust so that they can lock in the customers. By having good strategy, the company will have its own uniqueness which makes it different from other company. As the result, it could support the company to succeed in competitive advantage, since understand all the threats that might prevent to accomplish the objectives through analyse on the current business atmosphere and industry circumstances. In this case, the customers would satisfy with the company services because it is

d. Small grocery store: usually a single-channel, singleserver system. Arrivals Waiting line customers buying food items customers with carts or baskets of groceries who arrive first at the cash register; sometimes not FIFO; grocer may care for regular customers first or give priority to person making a small, quick, purchase ringing up sale on cash register, collecting money, and bagging groceries

With the advent of technology, consumers expect quick service and immediate gratification from retailers. As they become more empowered and time constraints increase, loyalty to a particular outlet is incumbent on the speed of service. To meet these consumer needs, hypermarkets use technology for queue management by monitoring arrivals and forecasting the time consumers will spend in the store, staffing their billing counters accordingly. At busy times, many transfer staff engaged in other activities to till points. But such solutions necessitate extra staff. Following are outlined some existing practices to improve queue time and queue length.

1970). Exit implies that the customers stop buying the company's services while voice is customer complaints expressing the consumers dissatisfaction directly to the company. Customers' exit or change of patronage will have an impact on the long-term revenue of the company. Customers may be loyal due to high switching barriers or lack of real alternatives. Customers may also be loyal because they are satisfied and thus want to continue the relationship. History has proven that most barriers to exit are limited with regard to durability; companies tend to consider customer satisfaction the only viable strategy in order to keep existing customers. Several authors have found a positive correlation between customer satisfaction and loyalty (Bearden and Teel 1980;Bolton and Drew 1991; Fornell 1992; Anderson and Sullivan 1993).

In this essay, two companies will be identified and described on how they utilize a queuing system. Only two of the four most basic waiting line structures will be discussed: single-server and multiple-server waiting lines. Since waiting is an integral part of many service related operations, it is an important area of analysis. Each queue system has its advantages and disadvantages, but with no doubt each company’s goal is to cut down on the waiting time and that customer returns. In particular, we examine their implementation of both processes and try to find solutions to improve the waiting line process.

Customer Satisfaction Index) cannot really present these characteristics. (3) Inertial behavior exists in the food purchasing behavior (Carrasco et al., 2005). However, there have been no scholars who have applied it to explore the relation between customer satisfaction and loyalty in the fast food industry. It can be seen that there is an important study gap that exists in the exploration of customer satisfaction and loyalty in the fast food industry; therefore,

Customer loyalty is much harder to obtain that customer service satisfaction. The most important first step is to satisfy the customer by meeting their expectations. Customers only give a company one chance and if they aren’t satisfied they will not do business with that company again, as well as tell others of their experience. The next step would be to exceed the customer’s expectations. If a business goes above and beyond to assist the customer they begin to build loyalty. The next step is to truly surprise the customer. In order to dominate the marketplace the company must find a way to make them selves stand out with their product or service, accompanied with phenomenal customer service. Once this has been done customer satisfaction and loyalty will be gained. “Acquiring a new customer can cost four or five times more than keeping a current customer” (Bestmark, 2013). So it’s essential to keep the current customer’s happy and coming back for more.

It is imperative to satisfy customers and give them an amazing experience at the company. While it cost less to sell to existing customers and companies can increase profit by selling to the same customers; if customers are satisfied, there is more chance they will come back for more services or products. Satisfied customers are a free marketing for the company. However, it is the opposite if customers are dissatisfied. Dissatisfied customer will tell 8 to 10 people about his or her experience (O’Brien, A & Marakas, G. 2004). If by any reason, representatives see that the customer is not satisfy, they should act fast and fix the problem. Furthermore, there is more chance for sale representatives to sell to an existing customer that to a new customer. A good strategy for customer retention is to reward good customers. Companies can easily do