Like the late Alan Clarke, who "would not queue for anything under any circumstances" I am driven practically insane by the time-wasting procedures of many service industries. For example the check-in procedure at hotels regularly induces a kind of Tourette's: "You've known I was coming for the last two weeks - why couldn't you have my twatting key ready, you ****s! " *.
If hotels are bad, car rental firms are worse. Far worse. Two weeks before my arrival I have dutifully logged on and, in my own time, typed in to the rental company's database every conceivable detail about myself. My driving licence number, my address, three telephone numbers, the address where we shall be staying, my credit card number and the number of my incoming flight..... so why in God's name does the person at the rentals desk need to spend six minutes incessantly tapping on a keyboard for before handing over the keys? Are they secretly writing a novel while pretending to work at an airport car-hire desk? Maybe a novel drawing heavily on their real life experiences and featuring an angry fat man from England who swears a lot?
Now, at the moment, I am probably unusual in this impatience. But - and here's something every service industry needs to know - my annoyance will become less and less rare in the next ten years. Why? Because one massive effect the Internet has had on all of us, but disproportionately more on the younger amongst us, is that our expectations of immediacy and speed of response have been transformed.
When you are accustomed to living life at an online pace, you live in a world where every action results in an immediate response. Click on the link and, after just a few seconds, up comes the page. Hence when you order a coffee and ten minutes later it hasn't arrived, your first response is no longer "Gosh, they must be quite busy!" No, your autonomic response is that "Something must have gone wrong" - or, if you're me, it's "They've f***ing cocked it up completely, the incompetent, c***ing bastards!"
Recently we at Ogilvy had an HR presentation on the foibles and peculiarities of Generation Y. This impatience, this expectation of instantaneous reaction is high among them. When they send an email, for instance, or text a client, they are reduced to complete befuddlement if they do not get an answer within twenty minutes - or at most an hour. They start emailing and texting incessantly. To older clients, this is unbelievably annoying. To the young, this is normal behaviour.
In the words of one twenty-year-old: "The trouble with McDonald's is it's too bloody slow."
In a few years time, young people may expect to text their burger order when they're ten minutes away.
Now, if you are any kind of service industry, you need to be preparing for this insane new expectation of speed. To do so, what you need to understand is that not all waits are equal. In fact it is possible to transform a customer's perception of speed by some clever behavioural psychology.
The expert on this is a splendid man called David Maister, and his basic principles of queueing are to be found here:
There are a few splendid principles. For instance, if you let people at least make a start on the process, they mind waiting less. If Starbucks let me place your order when you walked in - ie at the back of the queue - I wouldn't mind waiting for my coffee nearly so much - what I find really annoying is waiting to tell them what I want.
A second principle: people dislike waiting much more when the length of the delay is uncertain. Tell them an expected wait-time and (as the London underground discovered) people are much less paranoid about any delay.
Another great book to read on this subject is Traffic by Tom Vanderbilt. He adds some superb insights into the psychology of traffic jams and why they are so frustrating.
These are both worth reading, especially in a recession. After all, by streamlining service, it's possible to reduce the cost of your service dramatically without reducing the price at all.
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* The Beverly Wilshire Hotel has a system where the driver of your Lincoln Towncar furtively texts ahead to the hotel to announce your impending arrival. This meant that, even though I had never been there before in my life, the staff opened my car door for me with the words "Welcome to the Beverly Wilshire, Mr Sutherland." This was so cool I nearly soiled myself with the excitement.
Have you seen Don Normans update on Maister. Maister wrote his paper in 1985 so an update is needed....
www.jnd.org/.../the_psychology_of_wa.html
You're not alone in this Rory. I always envy English who are transcendentally patient as if it's a mark of good breeding but I've just had the 'i'm writing a novel in my spare time' waiting experience at a hospital in Bangkok where I finally lost patience when they wanted to confirm the date of the last time I visited which given I'm the only Charles Frith in Bangkok at the moment was just one more detail too many. I also have no idea of the exact date except it was a few weeks ago. Bless the poor girl doing the 'procedures' because I don't think they are trained to put themselves in the customers shoes. It looks like they are doing a sterling job if they are tapping away on a computer screen and heaven knows there are a lot of office staff around the world who are blagging their work by doing the same ;)
Love the line about McDonald's - will be recycling that one in future presentations
Thank you, James, for the Don Norman piece..... wonderful.
"nearly soiled myself with excitement" is not the way the doorman tells it.
I read this piece while waiting in a queue
I suppose the ordering system for the drive through at Macdonald's is spot on then: you order at an earlier point in the queuing process than where you collect the food.
Virgin do the same on upper class - the driver who picks you up at home texts them as he's about to pull in, so they open the door and greet you by name. Its magic.
Indeed my whole first Virgin experience was wonderful until i got to my hotel in NY - where Virgin had left a message to say my return flight was cancelled and there was no other flight available on the same day. Which rather spoilt all the good wok of the previous 8 hours or so
I think it is important to make a distinction between the act of waiting, be that for Godot or at Tesco, and the noble art of queuing.
I'd like to say a few words regarding the post-WWII art-form, commonly referred to as the queue.
The queue and our commitment to it, has been a multi-syllabic celebration synonymous to the British way of life for over half a century. From its noble beginnings, it has evolved to touch every area of our lives. From the daily commute, to the lunchtime post office dash, to the security check procession at Heathrow.
Indeed, I’m told 20% of our wondrous urban lives are spent in a line of some sort or other, peering at the dandruff and the moulting haired manes of random strangers.
How have we for so long overlooked nape media space – skincare brands take note.
I would like to urge David Maiser and palsl to consider cultural differences between ourselves and our mainland European cousins toward this 20th century phenomenon. In particular, my experience of New Europe suggests the value and artistry of a decent queue has yet to be translated. The post-communist nouveau capitalist mentality does not correspond well with the courtesy and love thy neighbour attitude intrinsic to our good old British queue. Indeed, the word 'queue' itself has no equivalent in Belorussian, Latvian or Estonian.
That said I can fully understand a release from Communism would have born a powerful survival of the fittest attitude.
After all, one wouldn’t have expected Darwin to queue.
I always thought Disneyland in Orlando understood queueing best.
The queues are thinner, so they move faster than wider ones.
They snake all the time, so you can never see the end, so it never feels a long way away, and going round corners gives a greater feeling of movement.
Finally the platforms move alongside the ride. So although you feel as if they are stationary when getting on or off, the ride never has to stop. So the whole process is much faster.
The snaking queue which keeps moving is great. Also one long queue prevents the irritation of parallel queuing where people become convinced the other queues are moving faster than their own.
When joining parallel check-in lines at airports, I always seem to join the queue behind someone trying to check-in a euphonium on an out-of-date Laotian passport, which then stands still for 30 minutes while all the other lines sail past me a gentle trot..
I have depressingly bad Feng queue-ee. My ability to choose the wrong queue knows no bounds and has no basis in logic. If one queue has 12 and the other has 2, I will join the two, only to find that one of the people in front has an item that won't scan or a woeful grasp of English. If I join the 12 out of a perverse desire to beat my own bad luck, I'll still be waiting long after fifteen more have joined the other line.
All queues must be a single queue for all tellers/cashiers so that I stop getting annoyed enough to wish death on innocent strangers.
I was called late last night by a Darwinian scholar who informed me that queue selection has its origins in natural selection. From birth or before if you are a twin or triplet, we are learning to queue. Studies linking queuing efficiency to heritability have not been proven, probably due to 50 years not being sufficient time for DNA coding. We’ll need another 10,000 years or so for that.
Where did that come from? I'm a name not a number - even though 205526 happens to be my lucky number, even so. Andy Knell
As long as we have something to do in queue it's fine - I usually if see it being a long one start to de clutter my contacts on my mobile. But I do agree - with everything be so fast online I have started to expect the same speed offline. Queueing in costa makes my blood pressue rise and it's only usually for 5 minutes. I suppose we need to remember human's are involved so our expectation of instantaneous reaction needs to be reduced...hard though I find.
I've been in this queue for nearly two weeks now, waiting for a new post on this blog.
Are you moving forwards or has someone just joined on at the back?
Rory Sutherland
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Last login: 08 Jan 2009
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