But I’m next

I noticed on my recent Alpine business trip that not all cultures share the concept of queuing, particularly in respect of hotel receptions and ski lifts. Queuing Theory might suggest that the tendency to queue jump may be cultural conditioning, diet-related impulse mismanagement, Asperger’s or even a highly competitive streak.

It would also appear that many service providers are less concerned about queue management and more about dealing with the most agitated service requestor.

Scale this to a global collaborative network where everyone is both a consumer and a provider and one can see the potential for chaos. Email is an example of poor queue management in practice.

Poor corporate performance results from a tendency to focus on:

• Urgent emails regardless of their importance.
• Fun over important emails.
• Easy to process over emails requiring thought.

In short email gives users the impression they are getting things done without any regard for the degree of triviality.

I believe there is an opportunity to apply service centre call management tools to the workforce. In other words incoming requests whether email, text or phone are prioritised based on corporate rules and are released to the recipient for processing in an order that benefits the organisation.

Maybe the real opportunity lies in the hotel and leisure industry? Perhaps queue jumpers will become an endangered species in the digital economy?!