There were 14 people in line at the post office Tuesday. The branch near me has 10 windows, but only 5 of them were staffed. It took me 25 minutes to get to the front, get my envelope weighed, and hand them my $1 postage.
The post office can operate like this because they have a semi-monopoly. There are other choices for packages and specialty shipping, but for ordinary mail and stamps, they’re pretty much it.
Now, imagine the post office worked like The Gap. There would be a floor manager with a headset. She’d direct people to the right line and offer assistance finding stamps or forms. If it got busy, she could call into the back room and get more clerks out to staff the windows. The line could move faster, customers could be helped more quickly, and waste less time standing in line.
Your business probably isn’t a monopoly, and it’s likely you don’t have the luxury of running it as if it is. So, are you making it hard for your customers to buy your products? Is your staff helpful? Are you more like The Gap or more like the Post Office?