This article was originally published in Business Wire
This article was originally published in Business Wire
It is a well-established fact in the psychology of queueing that no one actually likes to wait in line. Time passes much more slowly to the idling human mind, and if individuals have nothing to occupy themselves with, waiting can feel very frustrating and time-consuming. Of course you can find all of this out just by talking to anyone on the street. No one likes waiting in line!
It’s no secret that brick-and-mortar stores are in deep, deep trouble. Major chains like Toys “R” Us are gone, and others like Sears and JCPenney are on life support. It’s not that Americans aren’t buying things – Amazon managed to bring in more than 8 billion dollars last year – but in a world of instant gratification the paradigm of walking into a store and walking out with a full bag just isn’t working.
Except it actually is.
Over the past 10 years, the Apple brand has become one of the most popular – and profitable – brands in the world, thanks in no small part to the company’s revolutionary products like the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Macbook.
With more and more people around the world pledging their allegiance to Apple products, many are beginning to wonder if the company has the capability to properly service its fan base. The average Apple store wait times suggests the answer is a resounding... maybe.
Many of us enjoyed an extra hour’s sleep this past Sunday, November 6th, thanks to Daylight Savings Time (DST). The practice of setting clocks back in the fall and moving them forward every spring to maximize evening daylight has its defenders and detractors, but nobody can deny the feel-good perk to “fall back” an hour once a year to sleep, play, read, finish projects, or go shopping.
Now imagine that you had an extra hour every day – imagine saving not one but dozens of hours a year. In fact, you can! That’s because all of us waste hours a year waiting in line. That’s useless, inefficient, frustrating time that we’ll never get back. By avoiding lines at the hospital, DMV, airports, and other places where people are forced to stand around, you can reclaim wasted hours every day. That’s where mobile queuing technology can play a key role in saving time.
As the old adage goes: time is money. But how much money? According to an economics feature on Nate Silver’s statistics-driven site fivethirtyeight.com, New Yorkers pay an average of $56 a month to shave a minute off their daily subway commutes. As such, renters in New York City are willing to pay that much more in rent for a one-bedroom apartment that is one minute closer to popular Manhattan business districts. Want to move 10 minutes closer to Wall Street or Times Square? That’s going to cost you $560 per month!
In the wake of the surge of complaints about long waits in Transportation Security Agency (TSA) lines and Veterans Administration (VA) facilities, our brave CEO offers a solution to the problem for both government agencies within 90 days:
This week’s news brought us a couple of stories about people lining up and what gives us the most satisfaction.
There's a lot of queuing going on today in the news with a variety of outcomes. We're calling it the good, the bad and the ugly.
Greg from Mobile Mixed, emailed us yesterday, after interviewing Alex (our CEO), expressing surprise at the amount of time people spend waiting in line:
As we mentioned in our last article, having to wait a long time in a queue has an enormous negative effect on customer satisfaction and therefore can also debilitate revenue growth.
Waiting in line is frustrating.
Given that access to information is available from anywhere in the world in the palm of one’s hand, how organizations address their queues and lines can determine their longevity and if they will operate efficiently.
Through analytics provided from the QLess services, it has been determined there is a clear relationship between positive customer experience and revenue growth, referrals, return visits and customers’ experiences when dealing with something seemingly as simple as physical waiting rooms and lines for service.
Dave Rosenthal, an engineer and MBA by training who has held positions as product manager, program manager, alliance manager, Sr. Consultant, Director of Development and VP Ops at Xerox, Deloitte & Touche and other companies including early stage start-ups, has joined our team to lead administration & finance. Welcome, Dave!
Alex Backer was appointed by Caltech President Jean-Lou Chameau, and joins a distinguished set of colleagues at the California Institute of Technology's IST Board.
One of our early investors was happy enough with what we are doing that he sextupled his investment in the abInventio fund. Thanks!
As Yahoo's Santa Monica offices dealt with an hour-long power outage and cell phones turned useless all day across Southern California, abInventio's websites remained fully operational through the 5.4-magnitude earthquake. None of our data centers serving Whozat, HoundWire, REPcloud and QLess in Altadena, Santa Monica or Texas were affected. Indeed, HoundWire was among the first news organizations to report the earthquake, within a half hour of the event.
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