From Wait to Great!
When people have to wait in line you have a cognitive design problem. If you have customers (or employees) waiting in line you must attend to how they think-and-feel if you want a successful service experience.
The Psychology of Waiting Lines by David Maister, a well-known expert on the management of professional services firms, offers these insights (taken directly from the article):
1. Occupied time feels shorter than unoccupied time
2. People want to get started
3. Solo waits are longer than group waits
4. Anxiety makes the wait seem longer
5. Uncertain waits are longer than known finite waits
6. Unexplained waits are longer than explained waits
7. Unfair weights are longer than equitable waits
8. The more valuable the service the longer the customer will wait
Donald Norman from Northwestern University has recently reviewed and updated (2008) Maister’s original work on the Psychology of Waiting Lines .
He offers these eight design principles (taken directly from the article):
1. Emotion Dominate
2. Eliminate Confusion: Provide a model, feedback and explanation
3. The Wait Must be Appropriate
4. Set Expectations, Then Meet or Exceed Them
5. Keep People Occupied
6. Be Fair
7. End Strong, Start Strong
8. Memory of the Event is More Important Than The Experience
Finally, Richard Larson, an expert on the psychology of waiting lines, and director of MIT’s Center for Engineering Systems Fundamentals, suggested in a recent CNN interview that being fair and the dominate role of emotions are perhaps the most important cognitive aspects of waiting in line. He claims that “violation of fair play can lead to queue rage.” On the other hand, Larson also claims that if you follow the design principles “You can change a queuing experience into a very positive experience“
For a field work assignment, I ask students in my cognitive design class to go out and make observations on the employee and customer queues (waiting lines) in their organization. I challenge them to use Maister’s insights to redesign the queues for improved think-and-feel. Next year we will use Norman’s updated set of design principles to try and improve the psychology of waiting in line.
