There’s a question that almost no facility manager asks precisely enough: are my customers complaining because they wait too long, or because they wait “badly”?
The distinction isn’t rhetorical. Research on the psychology of waiting—starting with the seminal work of David Maister at Harvard Business School—shows that customer satisfaction is determined much more by the perception of the wait than by its actual duration.
A ten-minute wait without visual cues, without information on the call order, without knowing how long it will be, is experienced as much longer and much more stressful than a twenty-minute wait managed transparently.
This has concrete and immediate implications for anyone managing counters, reception desks, pharmacies, public offices, and branch offices.
In our whitepaper “The Psychology of Waiting,” we’ve summarized:
- the scientific principles that explain how people perceive wait time
- why uncertainty, perceived injustice, and idle time amplify frustration
- how each psychological mechanism translates into a concrete design choice in queue management
This document is designed for those who make customer experience decisions, not for software developers.
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