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!