| | A Haunted House attraction only open during the month of October. The attraction typically has a long line. They have trained specific employees to dress up in costumes and interact with customers in line telling jokes or providing a quick scare to keep everyone smiling and laughing. This limits the number of customers that get angry due to a long wait. |
| | A Hair Salon has installed a computer screen that shows each customer's position in line waiting to get a haircut. They designed the screen to show customers that have an appointment and a check mark of whether or not they have checked-in (unchecked means they have yet to arrive to the salon). An appointment saves a spot in line without having to be present in the Salon. This helps customer's understand why a person that arrives after they do gets served first. |
| | A Car wash recently added a timer that shows the amount of time the last car to enter the line must wait before getting their car washed. This time is determined by using the following: - Count the number of cars that enter the line and those that have exited to determine how many are in the process and queue - Each car takes 5 minutes to go through the wash so they added 1 minute as a buffer. Time to wait = Number of cars in system * 6 minutes One minute is added as a buffer to ensure no one waits longer than the estimated time. |
| | Build-A-Pot is a pottery store that allows customers to mold and decorate their own pottery. Upon entering the store they are greeted an sent to station #1. Each station has signs with a list of instructions informing customers of all the steps to be completed before moving on. They also have a TV that shows a demonstration that customers can follow. The instructions and demos have reduced the need for hiring experts for each station. |
| | A Go Kart racing track can have a max of 8 customers racing on their track at one time and each race lasts 15 minutes. Based on data captured, on average 16 people are waiting to race. Recently, they added a 8 person race car simulator that allows 8 people to race in a virtual simulation of their exact same track. The simulation lasts 10 minutes which allows 5 minutes to brief customers on safety information before their race. Everyone else waiting can both watch actual races or virtual ones. |
| | A theme park has a roller coaster that most customer's consider to be amazing. The park installed a digital camera at the end of the ride to capture all the smiling faces of all customers and provide those pictures to customer's for free. Although many at the park wanted to charge for the pictures, offering them for free resulted in tons of customer's posting the pictures on social media. 9/10 customer's that posted a picture never remove it so they can recall their their experience and remember how fun it was. |
| | A Ferry Boat has experienced a problem in the past due to the water's current being stronger during the summer months. In the months of June - July the current is strong and the duration of a trip goes from 15 minutes to almost 30. Many customers complain because they are used to a 15 min ride. The boat has recently started announcing the increased current during June - July and explains to customers the increase in trip duration as being appropriate due to the boat being limited in speed by the strong current. |
| | Dentist Offices realize children fear a teeth dental appointment. Staff is trained to smile and be very friendly when escorting children to the examination room. More importantly, they are more excited at the end and offer the child a candy sucker and get to pick out a sticker. Even though picking out a sticker adds time to the process that a child views as unpleasant, it may lower the level of unpleasantness of the appointment to the child. |
