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.
___________________________________
* 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.
