Most financial institution (FI) executives realize that business intelligence can provide powerful insight into service and productivity at the retail branch. To obtain this information, they may use data captured from DDA, time/deposit, loan, and credit card systems.

However, even those that can harvest this data often lack the ability to dedicate the necessary ongoing resources to aggregate the data and utilize it to consistently monitor and measure lobby performance.  Fortunately, an increasing number of FIs are turning to branch queue management systems to capture and analyze all the pertinent lobby metrics, giving executives a much greater understanding of the overall lobby picture.

Here, we’ll discuss how these systems work, identify the benefits of implementing them, and detail the key elements executives should look for if they pursue a solution.

During sign in, the account holder’s name, arrival time, and purpose for visit are collected and entered into the system, either by a greeter or a self-service station. The more robust solutions also provide a “notes” section where greeters or other employees can capture personal details, such as attire that makes a customer easy to recognize or a personal comment made that can be used in later conversations.

After sign-in details are input,  the system begins tracking wait-time. This is arguably the point in which tracking is most visible.  The information is visible in the system, usually on representatives’ desktop terminal screens.  A best practice included with some solutions allows you to incorporate pop-up alerts and email notifications, which are designed to warn representatives and their managers of excessive wait times.

Once a service representative is ready to work with the account holder, they transition their status in the queue from waiting-in-the-lobby (tracking wait-time) to being in their office (tracking assist-time).  During this interaction, all pertinent product and service information is captured by the service representative in the system for later analysis.  This information is beneficial to management for assessing actual happenings on the platform side of the branch; by supporting who, what, where, when, and why productivity and service questions.  When the account holder has no further questions or needs, the session is closed, which stops the assist-time clock.

The customer comes up to the ticket dispenser, reads a range of offered services and selects a service. Q Manage prints the ticket with his queue number and data and time of entry.

Now the customer may wait until he will be called without bothering himself to stand in line or not worrying about queue jumpers. Assessment of a preliminary waiting time is also an advantage for the customer.

While adjusting the system, each service and each counter is identified. With services and counters adjusted in advance, each staff member sees whether there are waiting customers.

If there are waiting customers, the staff member pushes a call key to process the customer request.

The system records information and its related history on every printed ticket. This data is useful for the managers who care about customer convenience and the efficiency of the staff members.

The system provides reports such as:

• Service wise log

• Counter wise log

• Customer wise log

• Summary Report

The detailed reports compiled from the data collected in a queue management system, allow for bank executives and/or branch managers to pinpoint specific performance metrics that fall outside industry tolerance levels or stated branch sales and service goals. With this information, management can provide more targeted coaching and address uncovered process inefficiencies.

The detailed information captured by queue management systems—over time at the institution level, branch level, and employee level—eventually turns into invaluable trending data  that enable executives to see a more complete picture, resulting in a more effectively managed and staffed lobby.

Queue management systems offer additional benefits beyond improving customer service and lobby productivity.

• Streamlines your customer flow and branch operation.

• Improves the level of service, enables focused improvement for specific customer segments and services.

• Entertains waiting customers with integrated digital signage.

• Increases sales by leveraging digital advertising, smart routing and agent sale-tips.

• They eliminate the privacy risks associated with manual sign-in sheets.

• Can deliver cross-sell metrics (what products/services were actually purchased versus what they came into the branch for) and can use this information to identify high and low performing employees.

• The cross-sell metric is particularly important in light of research indicating customers who purchase three or more products/services are the least likely to leave your financial institutions.