It is a fact that customers come into a purchase transaction with certain expectations. Expectations of the quality of the product or service. How reliable is the product or service? Will it perform as expected? Will it be worth the price? Expectations of the quality of the interaction with those who will play a part in the interaction. Will they be nice? Will I regret making this purchase decision?
There is also an expectation of how much time it would take to receive the product or service. In a world where time seems to be running on supersonic speed, time spent waiting for service has assumed a more important role. Responsiveness, an element of time, is included in the very popular RATER Model of customer satisfaction for a reason. It is an expectation of customers that businesses are very responsive to their needs.
From this opening, it is clear that the customer’s expectations has everything to do with the quality of the customer’s experience in every business transaction. As a matter of fact, expectations are so important that they ensure that different customers have different experiences under the same conditions. Two customers might go the same restaurant, order the same food and walk away with two totally different experiences. The reason? They had two totally different expectations. One’s expectations might have been met whilst the other’s expectations might have been dashed.
When the issue of expectation is applied to the time spent waiting, the entire customer experience can take a whole new turn. Based on their expectations of how long they would have to wait for a service, two different customers can have two totally different responses to the same waiting period. A customer who is not in any hurry and has all day to spare would definitely react differently from a customer who has a very important appointment to meet thereafter.
Depending on what value customers put on their time, they are sure to have different reactions when they are forced to wait longer than they had anticipated. The customer who undervalues their time—one who believes she really has nothing more important to do with that time—would not be too bothered. However, a customer who places a higher value on that period of time would not be too pleased, even if the wait is just for a few minutes.
It is even interesting to note that due to the value customers place on their time, shorter than expected waiting periods might not always be positively viewed by customers. For instance, a customer who has programmed her day to spend an hour at a particular business, might not see it as something positive if she is served within a quarter of an hour. The “gift” of free 45 minutes might not be seen as something to be excited about. The customer might see no psychological benefit for the time she might have gained because she might not have had anything planned for that time.
A recent Norwegian study published in the March 2023 online edition of the Journal of Retailing threw some interesting light on the subject of customer experience during the waiting period. The title of the results of the study was “The clock is ticking—Or is it? Customer satisfaction response to waiting shorter vs. longer than expected during a service encounter”.
The average customer will always prefer a shorter waiting period. That is a fact. You will struggle to find many reason why customers will be very, very satisfied with waiting for longer than expected. When a customer gets ready for a transaction, the one prays that the time spent waiting is shorter than expected. This is especially true if the customer has effected some form of payment.
It is also true that customers are not too concerned when they have to wait slightly longer than expected. In such a situation, customers are relatively indifferent because they know things like that happen. Customers will patiently wait, even when their expectations have not been met. It is important to note that this patience is only up to a certain point. It is beyond that point—that critical threshold—however, when the wait period is much longer than expected, that the satisfaction level of customers begin to drop.
One of the key findings of the above-mentioned study was that the frustrations customers experience when they have to wait longer than expected is a more intense feeling than the joy they receive when they have to wait shorter than they expected. This finding is in line with the known fact that the fear of loss is a greater emotion than the desire for gain. Customers who are made to wait longer believe they are losing something and therefore would be more frustrated. Those who wait for shorter periods might be pleased with the extra time they have on their hands but their joy cannot be compared to the frustration of those who have to wait for a longer period.
There is a psychology to the waiting game that affects all of us when we are waiting for a service. I have found that it is not the waiting per se but the uncertainty that accompanies the waiting period. Not knowing when the service will finally arrive is the real challenge. It can be pure torture, especially if the service is of utmost importance to the individual. Waiting to meet a medical practitioner or health professional when the one, or someone dear to the one, is not feeling too well can be quite challenging.
Customers really detest waiting too long for service. As a matter of fact, there is a study that claimed that waiting for too long is the second most complained about aspect of service. The frustration of waiting beyond the expected time is only second to having to deal with rude front line employees. That is how important waiting too long is considered by customers.
To handle the effect of waiting time on the experience of customers, it is important for businesses to manage the expectations of customers with regards to how long it would take for the service to be delivered. Smart businesses know this and therefore they ensure that they overestimate the time expected for the service to be delivered.
It is widely known that a business like Disney uses this technique a lot in their theme parks across the world. If it would take a ride to come around in five minutes, customers might be informed that the ride would take about eight minutes. What this does is that it gets customers to relax their expectations. Therefore, if the ride happens to arrive sooner than expected, the customer is impressed and equally elated. This is a simple trick that works wonders for the expectations of customers.
It is important to note that the expectations of customers with regards to how long they are to wait for a particular service can be formed either internally, i.e. the customer’s own assumption, or externally, i.e. from the service provider or the business in question. If the wait goes on longer than the expected time assumed by the customer, the dissatisfaction that occurs can be frustrating. However, this frustration is not as intense as it is if the expected time had come from the service provider. It is much more frustrating for the customer if the business fails to meets its own expected time. This is why businesses must be double sure of the promises they make to customers. A business must be sure that it can perform the service within the exact time that it promises to do so.
Businesses must know the difference between two kinds of assurances when it comes it setting the time customers are to wait for service. The first kind of assurance a business can make is the Assurance of Effort. In this situation, the business knows that the final result does not rest with it. The business knows that there are intervening factors that it has no control over. If the business has to wait for another entity to supply an input before the service can be provided to the customer, then the best that business can do is to the assure the customer of all its efforts in ensuring that the customer receives the service on time.
The case is different if the business knows that it has everything it needs under its absolute control to provide the service. In that cases, the business can go ahead with the second kind of assurance—the Assurance of Results.
Waiting is always going to be a part and parcel of our existence as civilised beings. In fact, in this country, one can confidently say that the three certainties in life are Death, Taxes and Queues. Waiting in queues is one of the few things we do very well in this country.
So yes, as customers, we would continue to wait and therefore the smart thing for any business to do is to adopt strategies and management techniques to better manage the waiting period. If that business happens to find itself in a very competitive field, then there is a need to put these strategies and tactics in place as quickly as possible. There is no time to waste. Tick, tock. Tick, tock. The clock is ticking.
