If it often feels to you as if we spend our lives standing in line, you're right! Of the average seventy-eight-year life span, it is estimated that up to five years are spent waiting to be waited on. No one likes to wait in line when it's not necessary, and no one likes to see employees in your place of business doing things that aren't related to direct customer service. Although sometimes these other tasks are necessary, try to get that work done out of sight of your customers. The people standing in line won't become upset if they see every associate working busily to serve their needs.
Teach everyone to stay out of view when they are not directly serving customers. Perhaps more important, empower them to decide that customers are more important than what they are doing, and get them to help out with customer service. Customers just don't understand why they cannot be waited on.
The fast-food industry has gotten a black eye in recent years and their customer service rating has slipped in each annual survey, because customers often see twenty people working behind the counter—cooking, scrubbing, or cleaning—and only one person waiting on them. If you have situations where people need to work on things other than serving customers, get them out of sight so they'll be out of mind.
TAKEAWAY
Customers don't want to be served very soon;
they want to be served now. The business
that eliminates waiting in line will be the
one that wins the new customers.