About CFM

At face value CFM, as in Customer Flow Management, may sound just like any other three letter acronym, but it is a methodology that makes great business sense. CFM is all about managing the flow of your customers and their experiences from their initial contact with your company, through to service delivery. It also includes capturing their opinion after they have received the service.

Why should I care?

Are you interested in increasing sales, productivity, and reducing costs? And are you interested in doing this by ensuring that the right customer is in the right place at the right time - and is serviced by the most appropriate staff member? Are you interested in increasing your customer and staff satisfaction by reducing the actual as well as the perceived waiting time? Do you want to create a relaxed environment and establish a controlled and fair waiting process for your customers? Do you want to generate data and insights about how your customers behave and how your staff serves them? Data which can help you improve your business processes and raise customer service standards? If you say yes to any of the questions above, then CFM is worth investigating. Our CFM methodology covers six areas that answer all the questions raised above.

How does it work?

First you need to understand your customer flow and how it affects your customers, staff and operation. CFM will help you turn this understanding into real business value. The improvement in customer flow often needs assistance from a CFM system, implemented to meet improvement targets and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). We know that a system implemented without CFM knowledge is often worse than no system at all. Moreover, the six step CFM methodology helps us understand your challenges and the possibilities of your service operations.

And it works

The benefits of CFM are significant. In the short term sales and productivity can increase up to 30% and costs decrease up to 30%. CFM also increases customer and staff satisfaction. It creates a relaxed atmosphere with a controlled and fair waiting process. Furthermore, it generates data and insights to drive ongoing business improvements on a long term perspective. The most overwhelming proof of concept for CFM is the empirical evidence from the retailers, banks, hospitals and public service centres that have already applied CFM with successful result. Over time the approach has proven itself in a number of ways:

• It is substantiated: it has existed and been developed for more than 29 years
• It is market independent: it has been successfully applied in more than 122 countries
• It is industry independent: it has been applied in numerous industry sectors all over the world
• It is thoroughly tested: there are a minimum of 51,800 solutions implemented worldwide
• It is well accepted by users: it is estimated that 1.8 billion users, a quarter of the world's population, pass through the systems every year

Virtual Queuing - Time Virtually Flies

With virtual queuing, you sit down in a comfortable waiting area or move around without the risk of losing your place in the virtual queue.

Wherever people gather in need of service, you will find people waiting in one way or another. Waiting is what happens between the "wanting and the getting." If that waiting is structured in an orderly manner, the result is a queue of some sort. With virtual queuing, people can sit down in a comfortable waiting area, or move around freely while waiting their turn. Their place in the virtual queue is secured with some kind of identifier like a number that has been printed on a ticket or sent to them via their mobile phone by SMS. The identifier is often given upon arrival but can be provided in advance when they book an appointment. Clearly, this is a benefit to both the customer and the company. What are the benefits of virtual queuing?

• If not managed appropriately, queuing and waiting can have a negative impact on the customer’s service experience.
• Virtual queuing applied right treats customers fairly and makes them feel relaxed and comfortable whilst waiting.
• If you inform customers about expected waiting time, they will feel even more relaxed and in control of the situation. They can linger in your store and enjoy the waiting experience.
• If the customer wants to leave the premises to make use of the waiting time elsewhere, they can be called by text message or pager when it's time to return to get their service.
• The waiting time can be used for entertainment via media screens, preparation for the visit or used for shopping. The perceived waiting time could actually be much less than the actual time - which will definitely make the customer even happier.
• By using virtual queuing, the service provider will improve their operational efficiency, experience significant cost savings, and have access to vital statistics for accurately forecasting staff schedules.

Linear Queuing - Hold the Line!

Linear queuing can start with simply laying out the line better and using barriers.

Queuing, or standing in line, is a reality. We all do it and it’s usually frustrating. But it doesn’t have to be. The experience can be managed and we call it linear queuing - an important element of CFM. When linear queuing is well managed, the service provider can benefit from reduced till hours, a better use of floor space and big savings in the cost of resource. Linear queuing can start with simply laying out the line better and using barriers. This seemingly simple measure creates a great improvement and feeling of fairness. But to get the biggest business benefits you need CFM methodology and the introduction of Qmatic’s electronic call forward systems. Qmatic also provides CFM techniques to drive impulse sales, reduce the perception of the waiting time and deliver new messages to your shoppers. This will ensure your customers’ experience in your store is a good one and at the same time differentiate your business from the competition. As you can see, there is more to linear queuing than immediately seems obvious. To get the maximum benefit from your business when it comes to linear queuing