MobiQ: Mobile based processes for efficient customer flow management

Abstract

Queues are still a part of the everyday life, though Internet and mobile technologies are already available. Queues are formed whenever a bottleneck of customer demand for a service appears. There are workarounds for customer flow management or queue management in order to provide a level of freedom to the customers such as queue ticket numbers. However, there can be many more things that can be done to free additional time for the customer until his/her turn comes to be services. In this work, we propose an solution framework for servicing customer flow with live feedback. Our goal is to improve customers' experience and Quality of Services (QoS), by integrating mobile access with Short Message Service (SMS) to improve customer flow in popular crowded services, where long queues are created. A fully functioning real life prototype is presented, demonstrating the feasibility and effectiveness in terms of time and effort. © 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.