Colleges are mostly about students. And it turns out the best way to get students to rave about their college is to use QLess to liberate them from waiting in line. QLess was mentioned in 22% of the Yelp reviews 3-stars and above about WLAC since QLess was deployed. Just read what Aiden Y. of Irvine, CA wrote in his 4-star review :
Then there was Jennifer H. of Rosemead, CA, who wrote:
“Damn… Find that kiosk machine at the student service building when you’re seeing the admission records/business/financial aid service, enter your name or number and wait for update on the big screen t.v or on your phone. So hi-tech and I’m so glad!”
An extraordinary coincidence
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Today, the USA celebrates its independence. But July is a month of Independence celebrations in much more than just the USA. Argentina, my native country, celebrates its independence on July 9th. Peru, where I once lived, on July 28th. France celebrates La Bastille and Liberté, égalité, fraternité on July 14th.
When the Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776, they wanted the right to self-determination. However, self-determination is trickier than it seems. From the vantage point of a nation wanting independence from colonial powers, it is a righteous cause. Yet a movement for sovereignty is usually called secessionist by the empire that would be shrunk by the independence. They tend to perceive the separation as a loss.
Yet there are other types of independence that are universally welcome: freedom of spirit, the right to engage in the pursuit of happiness, and to decide what to do with the time that is given to us. That, my friend, is what our tireless Liberators at QLess have been engaged in for the last six years. A campaign to liberate humankind from the tyranny of waiting in line –by letting them use their cell phone to get in a mobile line and get notified when their turn approaches, allowing them to wait anywhere. Perhaps you feel a tinge of satisfaction from having a line wait for your services. Yet forcing your customers to wait in line benefits no one: not those in line, nor the institution attracting the line. We have long observed that lines lose a business up to 50% of their clientele. Those who wait an unexpected amount of time are up to 75% less likely to return. Liberating them to wait anywhere during their wait yields 99% customer satisfaction. QLess provides that liberation.
Today, most of us are not tied to a government in a different continent, but we are routinely tied to standing in line while we wait for service. Yet over the past six months, QLess has grown another 158% over the same period the year before. We have passed the milestone of ten million people served. More than the entire population of New York, Los Angeles or any other US city. Enough to load more than 4,000 Titanics to capacity. And exactly four times the population of the thirteen American colonies liberated on July 4th, 1776.
We’ve saved those more than ten million people 237 years of waiting in line. Which, coincidentally, is precisely the number of years since the Declaration of Independence was signed. So today, we celebrate having given the world one American lifetime. Not a man’s. But a nation’s.
Today, we toast to independence, to freedom, and to the pursuit of happiness. And to celebrate with you, we are extending a special gift to you and your friends: sign up for a year of QLess service during this month of freedom (yes, you can now create your own QLess account online and be up and running in minutes), and get this July and next July for free.
Happy Independence Day!
Alex
 P.S. Check out the recent TV news stories about the recognition QLess establishments are getting!
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Complaints from having people waiting at the DMV causes staff to be 31% to 76% less efficient
QLess Load Balancing reduces peak wait times by equalizing wait times across locations
If demand was evenly spaced across time and space, and assuming that every customer eventually gets served –not always true as our data shows that up to 50% of potential customers leave during their wait for service–, there would be no wait times. Yet demand inhomogeneities mean that wait times can be hugely different across locations, creating long waits at one while others are empty. QLess provides a simple solution for this by alerting your customers of real-time wait times at each of your locations, increasing demand for lower wait locations while reducing demand for higher wait ones, thereby smoothing demand across supply. The effect of this load balancing was staggering at Johnson County’s two QLess locations: the month that QLess launched, average wait time at one location was 250% that of the other location’s. By the next month, both wait times were within 1% of each other!
Obama Calls for End to Standing in Line
Last week, as we inaugurated our first Black U.S. President for his second term, we also honored the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.–a man who had a dream, and who against all odds succeeded in helping to make that dream a reality. The coincidence was fitting, and for many (myself included), inspirational.
Dr. King was a true visionary who saw the world through different eyes than his contemporaries. Whereas most people merely record their world as a status quo, Dr. King–like visionaries before and after–chose to rather see infinite possibility. He chose to envision a world without human prejudice based on skin color, religious views, or socio-economics. And finally, he chose to act upon his vision and to revolutionize a culture that had long been overdue for change.
But, change is not easy. One of my favorite quotes from Dr. King is:
“Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle.”
With change as inspiration, and knowing that it does not come easy, allow me to humbly share the vison we hold at QLess: to give people back the lost time in their lives. Billions of hours of humanity’s collective time are wasted waiting in line every single day. That’s 500 times the man hours it took to build the Empire State Building–wasted–every single day. And the kicker is: standing in line is an antiquated and obsolete activity, since we now have the technology to eliminate it.
President Obama seems to agree, saying in his inaugural speech:
“Our journey is not complete until no citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote.”
Indeed, eliminating voting lines was one of the first things Obama prioritized during his victory speech on November 6, which we captured in this minute-long musical video, with appearances from the President, Charlie Sheen and the Simpsons.
Can you imagine a world where people no longer have to stand in line? Can you imagine what people (what you!) might do with that precious time? We have the technology to eliminate standing in line not only to vote, but for any government service–really for anything at all. All we need to do is allow others to share in our vision.
Please help us share QLess’ vision–of a world without lines–with President Obama. To do so, simply sign our petition to the President to make standing in line for federal government services illegal:
One minute of your time now, in exchange for what can amount to years of your life saved for you personally, and billions of years saved for humanity. We ask you to join us now–help us give this time back to all of us.
After you sign the petition, don’t forget to SHARE it with your friends. Go ahead, do it now!
Then COMMENT below, and tell us what you’d do with your newfound time, if you never had to stand in line again.
Beginning with Denver, polling stations will serve voters with the first and only integrated, Mobile Queue Management and Mobile CRM platform.
This election day, you will notice fewer people lined up at Denver polling stations; but it’s not because voters are skipping the line, nor is it a drop in voter turnout. QLess, Inc. is providing its patent-pending Mobile Queue Management platform for several Presidential polling stations in the City of Denver on November 6, 2012, allowing voters to wait in line – without physically standing in line.
“QLess has been winning national awards for years and saving citizens decades of waiting in line. The City of Denver is now taking that to a whole new scale, and will enable polling station employees to more efficiently serve voters, putting an end to the era of endless lines for voters,” said QLess CEO, Dr. Alex Bäcker.
The City of Denver is already leveraging the QLess technology platform to quickly and effectively get people in and out of polling stations, with virtually no physical wait time. The Mobile Queue Management system offers voters the convenient option to “get in line” without standing in line, and to roam freely while they wait. QLess also provides voters interactive options allowing them to make adjustments to their place in line – for instance, if they are running late, they can push themselves back in line. Walk-in customers use the self-service check-in kiosks and will have the option of returning later, closer to the time they will be able to vote, notified by QLess via text or phone call as their turn approaches. This level of interactivity is unique to QLess, and allows for an unrivaled customer experience, effectively giving voters back lost time.
Mobile Queue Management for elections, powered by QLess, solves an oft-cited issue with similar approaches to reduce voting congestion. By virtualizing the wait–but not the physical act of casting a ballot – QLess allows Boards of Elections to avoid online security issues, identity theft, and software glitches that can compromise other electronic and online voting systems. With QLess, they can choose just how much technology to add into the process of casting one’s ballot, while still offering the convenience of not having to stand in line.
This means that people are given back the time they would normally waste standing in line, allowing them to spend it on more attractive alternatives. Under normal circumstances, this amounts to upward of one hour per day for the average person.
In addition to enjoying increased customer satisfaction, QLess customers gain access to an entire suite of QLess Analytics tools, which allow for rich data capture and analysis of voter and staff metrics unavailable anywhere else – including SMS exit polling. Rather than having to rely on verbal response, QLess can automatically send an SMS text message survey after the citizen has cast their vote, data from which can be aggregated in real time to help project election results.
With the announcement, QLess continues to advance towards its vision of liberating people from the act of waiting in line. Colorado is in good company, with QLess locations in Texas, California, Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, Illinois, Kansas, Missouri, Kentucky, Ohio, Mississippi, Tennessee, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Florida, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts, as well as around the world, from Barcelona to Winnipeg and British Columbia to Melbourne and Vienna.
The Denver announcement further solidifies QLess as the world’s premier provider of Mobile Queue Management and Mobile CRM. The QLess Mobile Queue Management platform is unique in many ways, not the least of which is that it works in any industry where people wait in a queue, allowing for rich ecosystem experiences when QLess merchants are in close proximity to one another. QLess can also be localized to operate in any geography and in any language, including English, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, German, French, Catalan, Dutch, and Arabic.
DPS Mega Centers in Texas Go QLess: Mobile Queue Management Launched to Reduce Driver License Lines
LOS ANGELES, CA – October 30, 2012 – QLess, Inc. is proud to announce that it has been selected to provide its patent-pending Mobile Queue Management platform for several new driver license mega centers being opened by the Texas Department of Public Safety. The first mega center opens its doors in Pflugerville on Tuesday, October 30, 2012.
“QLess DMVs have been winning national awards for years and saving citizens decades of waiting in line. The Texas DPS is now taking that to a whole new scale, and will enable DPS employees to more efficiently serve their customers, while improving customer convenience, which is a top priority for the department,” said QLess CEO, Dr. Alex Bäcker.
DPS mega centers will leverage the QLess technology platform to help DPS employees more quickly and effectively serve customers at these driver license offices. The Mobile Queue Management system will offer customers the convenient option to “get in line” without going to the office. Customers will join the virtual line online or via any phone. QLess will also provide customers interactive options allowing them to make adjustments to their place in line – for instance, if they are running late, they can push themselves back in line. Walk-in customers will use the self-service check-in kiosks and will have the option of returning later, closer to the time they will get served, notified by QLess via text or phone call as their turn approaches. This level of interactivity is unique to QLess, and allows for an unrivaled customer experience, effectively giving customers back lost time.
“We are committed to ensuring Texas driver license customers have a quick and efficient visit to our offices, and using the QLess system will give our mega centers the technology needed to take a major step in advancing our goals of providing effective and efficient service to our customers,” said DPS Director Steven McCraw.
In order to deliver a seamless experience for both staff and citizens, QLess worked in close partnership with DPS officials throughout the entire setup process. The result will be a Mobile Queue Management experience that is convenient for both the Texas citizen and for DPS staff.
With the announcement, QLess continues to advance towards its vision of liberating people from the act of waiting in line. Texas is in good company, with QLess locations in California, Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Kansas, Missouri, Kentucky, Ohio, Mississippi, Tennessee, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Florida, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts, as well as around the world, from Barcelona to Winnipeg and British Columbia to Melbourne and Vienna.
The Pflugerville announcement further solidifies QLess as the world’s premier provider of Mobile Queue Management and Mobile CRM. The QLess Mobile Queue Management platform is unique in many ways, not the least of which is that it works in any industry where people wait in a queue, allowing for rich ecosystem experiences when QLess merchants are in close proximity to one another. QLess can also be localized to operate in any geography and in any language, including English, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, German, French, Catalan, Dutch, and Arabic.
In addition to enjoying increased customer satisfaction, QLess customers gain access to an entire suite of QLess Analytics tools, which allow for rich data capture and analysis of customer and staff metrics unavailable anywhere else.
About QLess
QLess is dedicated to letting people live more and wait less. QLess Mobile Wait Management dramatically reduces waiting in line or on hold by letting people join a mobile queue from their phones, roam freely and get notified as their turn approaches. QLess also notifies hotel guests when their room is ready for check-in. QLess is the first true mobile CRM and boasts a powerful analytics & SMS surveys suite for brick-and-mortar merchants. QLess serves retail, government, education, hospitality, healthcare and everywhere people wait, and has saved millions of users well over a century of waiting. Customers include T-Mobile, Vodafone, the largest college districts in the nation, Rolex/Tourneau, DMVs and leading healthcare providers such as the Cleveland Clinic. Learn more about QLess at http://www.qless.com.
About Texas DPS
For more information about the Texas Department of Public Safety, visit http://www.dps.texas.gov.
It has long been known that the average shopper in a retail environment like a shopping mall spends about USD$1.5 per minute (see also this whitepaper).
Per trip, the average lifestyle center expenditure at retail stores was $75.66. Including food and drink, the average expenditure per trip at a lifestyle center totaled $79.80, yielding a productivity rate of $84.00 per hour.
But until now, whether giving people more of their time made them spend more minute was unknown. No longer. QLess conducted a study with a Fortune 500 retailer comparing QLess stores during 90 days both with the same stores before QLess was launched, and with control stores during the same period. Here are the results:
- 77% of staff wants to continue using QLess
- 77% of staff thinks QLess is easy to use
- 88% of staff thinks QLess is useful
- 88% of staff thinks QLess support has been good or very good
- Staff comments were very positive and included: ” With some improvements this could be one of the best changes to our company in a long time. Much less stressful for our staff = better customer satisfaction and staff leaders”
- 29% increase in positive guest comments about the wait experience
- 22% decrease in negative guest comments about the wait experience
- 34% decrease in guest comments about understaffing/capacity limitations
- Average conversion rate increase of guest to paying customer in QLess stores vs control weighted by category profitability: 7% (up to 12% for some categories)
- Average conversion rate increase of guest to paying customer during QLess use vs before weighted by category profitability: 29% (up to 55% for some categories)
- Sales went up for 3 out of 4 categories with respect to control stores
- 90-day ROI: 771%
Let your guests go QLess. Give your guests the gift of time, and they will love you for it. What goes around, comes around.
QLess eliminates waiting in line by letting guest join a mobile, virtual, interactive queue, then get notified on their phone and/or QLess Queue Monitors when their turn arrives.
–Alex
The beauty of living in the 21st Century is that for the thousands of people attending the 2012 London Olympics this year, tickets could easily be purchased online and from every corner of the world.
Just a few minutes are all it takes these days for one to acquire a virtual pass to witness history in the making. With such impressive technology widely available, you would naturally assume that standing in line for tickets at the 2012 London Olympics games would not be an issue that would disrupt one’s travel plans to England in this modern age.
But there have been a lot of surprises at these games so far. The Queen parachuting out of a helicopter, defending world champs not making the cut, and nearly every virtual ticket holder waiting in queues at least 100 people deep to obtain their previously purchased tickets!
With spectators coming in from around the world, many 2012 London Olympics patrons wisely felt that ordering tickets online and picking them up in London would be a safer bet than risking them arriving too late via snail mail. However, they didn’t count on the 2012 London Olympics committee engaging a company that would incorporate paper into the process. In this day and age, even the airport—notorious for delays and long waits—understands the logic and convenience of using timesaving kiosks. Efficiently located kiosks could have eliminated the long lines and time wasted.
Some fans spent up to six hours waiting for their already bought and paid for tickets. This is time that could have been better spent taking in all the wonderful attractions that the city of London has to offer. Furthermore, it’s time that could have been spent stimulating the city’s local economy. After all, isn’t that one of the major perks to hosting the Olympic games in the first place?
At the next Olympic games, we can only hope that technology has caught up. Maybe, the next city to host will have gone QLess by then. Which cities do you think have the worst queues, who could benefit the most from going QLess?
Here is a Fox News report on how Twin Peaks is growing fast in this economy. Want to know how? Here’s part of their secret:
Twin Peaks Webster has only 60 tables, but they do about 5000 customers per month on their wait list. They’ve tried calling people manually in the past, and it just didn’t work well. They were looking for restaurant pagers but discovered QLess and thought mobile wait management would provide a better solution.
We carried out an analysis to determine the estimated Return On Investment that Twin Peaks has seen from QLess so far. The executive summary is that, for every $1 that they’ve spent on QLess, based on our observed data at Twin Peaks, they’ve made $22 in additional revenue. We also further estimate that based on our observed data at other restaurants, and applying that data to Twin Peaks, they’ve made a total of $129 in additional revenue for every $1 that they’ve spent on QLess. The true ROI likely lies somewhere in-between, but we feel that even a 22x ROI on the low end is a huge success story.
Here are the details of the analysis:
No-show Reduction
QLess Mobile Queuing makes customers more patient, and willing to wait longer for a table, by allowing them to wait wherever they want, however they want. This effectively extends peak hours, and allows them to seat more customers with QLess Mobile Queuing than without. We can measure its effect at Twin Peaks by comparing customers entered into QLess without phone numbers to those entered into QLess with phone numbers. In this case, over the past 9 months, 21% of those customers who did not give the hostess a phone number were no-shows, and 18% of those who did give a phone number were no-shows. This is a decrease in no-shows of 16% due to QLess Mobile Queuing, resulting in 2000 customers seated who otherwise would have got tired of waiting, and left before you were ready to seat them.
Text-Ahead
QLess Mobile Queuing sends a message to customers that join the wait list that reads:
Save this # & text the words “Twin Peaks Webster” to it to join our wait list any time, anywhere! Happy? Post a review of us on Yelp! http://bit.ly/jeU0aZ
This has resulted in 146 customers who joined the wait list by texting in and were eventually seated over the past 3 months.
Increase in Yelp Reviews
The Yelp link in that same message has also increased the number of reviews posted on Yelp.com about Twin Peaks Webster from 1.7 reviews per month to 2.3 reviews per month.
Reduction in Turn-Aways
QLess Mobile Queuing also results in a reduction in turn-aways, which are customers who are given the forecast wait time for a table by the hostess, and then choose not to join the wait list because it’s too long. This effect is difficult for us to determine from your usage data. However, in multiple in-person case studies, we have done experiments where customers are given the forecast wait time, their reaction is recorded, and then they are told about the QLess Mobile Queuing option, to hold their spot on the wait list using their cell phone. We then record what percentage of customers change their mind and decide they’ll wait. Across all of our studies, we have seen a 75% reduction in turn-aways due to QLess Mobile Queuing, resulting in an average increase in the number of customers ultimately seated by 17.6%. As we have not been able to observe this effect directly at Twin Peaks, this figure is just an estimate, but we estimate that Twin Peaks as seen 10,423 additional customers seated due to the reduction in turn-aways.
Expansion to More Restaurants in the Chain
Twin Peaks has already gone from one QLess restaurant to many restaurants by word of mouth following the success of their initial deployment.
Your turn?
Want a free analysis of what QLess could do for you? Contact QLess today at http://qless.com or 800-4-0-LINES (800-405-4637).
Virtual (head)Lines 