Delivering great customer service is critical to achieving customer satisfaction, loyalty, and value. Market research published by Brickstream Corporation, in conjunction with Gartner Group and A.C. Nielsen, show that waiting in line is the most annoying service attribute as ranked by customers. Customer tolerance for waiting in line deteriorates rapidly after five minutes and one-third of customers will not even join a line if more than five people are already waiting. Reducing the time customers wait in line and improving customer satisfaction suggests that retail organizations need systems that can proactively and continuously monitor and manage customer service performance.

Brickstream Real-Time Service Management is a real-time behavior tracking application that reports actual and predicted in-store service performance.  Often times managers are pre-occupied or are not in line-of-sight of the front line to be able to immediately view potential or actual service breakdowns.  The dashboard portion enables managers to proactively respond to breakdowns, such as excessive customer wait times and cashier transaction times.  Exception-based alerting notifies managers of events that have exceeded pre-determined thresholds, allowing management to prevent breakdowns before they occur – such as when the predicted wait time of the next person to join the line will be longer than five minutes.  Managers are able to dynamically adjust staff positions depending on which parts of the store or branch require immediate assistance.

Brickstream Dashboard customers have experienced up to a 50% decrease in customer wait times and up to a 25% decrease in customer service times in less than 3 months.  Such improvements have directly translated into higher overall customer satisfaction, customer retention and higher overall revenues.    

“I thought I instinctively knew what was happening within my branch until Dashboard showed me the facts.  I cannot envision managing without it now.”

- Manager with 35 years experience

Sensors placed strategic areas in the store or branch continuously capture customer presence, activity and movement. As that data is captured, the BehaviorIQ™ technology automatically transforms and analyzes it.

The information is then delivered to the dashboard in real-time.  In this branch banking example, the manager can see how many tellers are open, how long each teller is taking with their current customers, how many people are waiting in the queue, and how long the next person to enter the queue will wait.

If any of the pre-set thresholds (queue length, queue wait time, service time) are exceeded resulting in a service breakdown, or a potential service breakdown, the manager or associates can be alerted via pop-up alert, pager alert, PDAs, or even an intercom alert.   In this example, if the next person were to join the queue at this time, they are predicted to experience a wait above the five (5) minute threshold.   

The alert pops up on the screen. Alternatively, the alert could be sent to the manager’s pager, and any number of pre-defined steps can be taken to address the service breakdown.  In a retail store environment the alert could even automatically be sent over the public address system requesting additional cashiers to the front of the store.

Historical alert history is also available for review by the service team in order to make measure progress and compliance to the store thresholds, and to allow for pre-remedial programs to be put in place over time, and to measure their success.

The Dashboard runs continuously, as opposed to being just a sample in time, so the desired service delivery is provided to all customers throughout the entire day resulting in an increased customer satisfaction, and ultimately an increase in sales.