Long wait time can reduce add-on sales

Add-on sales, or in another words upselling, might take up a large part of the revenue a business makes. Upselling happens when a customer has already made a decision to purchase a product and is offered an additional benefit e.g. insurance, additional gadgets, etc.

Its important to understand, that at the point of add-on sale, the customer has already decided to buy the core product making them committed before stepping up to wait in a queue to purchase.

What do people do while standing in queues?

We haven’t done a thorough scientific research on this here at Qminder, but our experience show that some think of next tasks for the day, whether its the amount of laundry waiting for them at home or work assignment that needs to be finished before the upcoming deadline. Whatever the specific thoughts are, they mostly are not about matters related to the store they are currently in.

If their commitment level for buying a product is shaky in the first place, the worst case scenario is they are thinking weather they have the time to wait there (all of that laundry needs to be washed ASAP!) or if they need to buy the thing right now at all.

Openness is important when upselling.

Especially when the wait has been tedious (frustration builds up thinking about all that laundry they could be doing instead of standing here), there is a high probability that by the time the customer gets to the checkout counter, they just want to get out of the store. While the staff is offering other beneficial items the client could actually use, their thought is million miles away (“Why are you talking to me about the XYZ, I need to get my laundry done!”) and just don’t have the mental space to take into the additional benefits they could get.

Giving the client a chance to be the master of her own time, or in other words give them a chance to move around the store, doesn’t necessarily diminish the wish to get out of the store when she’s had too much time to check every detail of your offers, but her mind has been on things she theoretically could buy. Maybe now she has questions about something else too? Maybe he even found something else to buy on the spot. If a member of staff asks “is there anything else you are interested in” it gives her space to go through the things she saw.