Five "Service" Winners from the Wimbledon Queue We Can All Apply!

Yes, you can have a great experience while waiting (and waiting)!

Long lines and “wait times” are supposed to be unbearable, right??

These are the rage-inducing experiences I wrote about in “Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3000” (Random House).?

Then again, there are rare exceptions from which we can draw great insight.?One is the famous Wimbledon “Queue” which affords patient, devoted fans an opportunity (but far from a guarantee) to secure a ticket for the revered tennis championship.

Somehow the English have turned an activity most of us dread into an attractive, rewarding, and sharable experience.?In my case, my daughter Leila and I waited in line for nearly 8-hours — starting at 5 AM —?and we loved every minute of it.?

In fact, the worse it got — colder than expected, surprise raise showers, getting rejected for Centre Court slots — the better it got! ?Say what?

What's Going on Here -- Five Insights

How did the Brits suspend the instinct to HATE the WAIT, or induce me to take as many photos in the queue versus at the actual event? Heck, why am I writing about this! ?

Importantly, is there anything the airlines, cable, or utilities companies -- who frustrate us to no end, especially in the Covid era -- can learn this magic act? ?This is, after all, the season of understaffed customer service. ?Here are five observations:?

• Roll Out the Welcome Mat: When my daughter Leila and I arrived at the sprawling field and tent-colony outside the Wimbledon gates, we were made to feel special…even chosen…even though the availability of tickets wouldn’t be known for several hours.?We immediately received a?“Queue Card” — akin to a Willy Wonka “Golden Ticket” — with a number indicating our place in line.?It was far from a guarantee, but it made us feel important — the “Queue” version of the Welcome Hug.? Brands — especially those with uninviting “contact us” pages — can learn from this.

• Romance (and Gamify) the Monotony: In addition to the Queue card, we were also given 30-page pamphlet entitled “A Guide to Queuing.”?I kid you not!?In an instant, the Wimbledon staff reframed the experience from dreaded wait to “gamified” adventure.?Indeed, there are tips and tricks to the wait, the guide suggests. You even get a few "perks" like 30-minutes of "liberty" from the line. This also clearly reminded us we were part of a 100 year tradition, so hey, “make it count.”?They even handed out stickers — analog equivalents of “influencer NFTs” — for milestones in the line experience.?And so the mundane suddenly became a form of adventure.?Brilliant!

• Concierge the Crowd: Every 15 minutes Wimbledon staff of all ages would check-in on folks in the line had any questions or needed anything.?For these Walking Wikipedias, every question was an opportunity — to “surprise and delight,” to navigate the day ahead, or (again) romance the monotony. I was also struck at how well they were all trained in taking the perfect photo.?You never had to ask the staff — even the older set — to take more than one photo, or via different angles. ?(Paid shills for Instagram or TikTok?). They also understood the offline (timeless) version of "Social Media" and viewed it as their duty to get folks in line (from all over the world) to talk to one another.
• Clean Restrooms, Great Facilities: When we launched one of the web’s first feedback portals, Cincinnati-based PlanetFeedback, we quickly learned after analyzing millions of consumer complaints that the most "Tell 3000" viral negative was restroom hygiene.? This in turn generates "spurned media" (earned media gone negative). The Wimbledon Queue Team left nothing to chance here. Despite being surrounded by a tent-city, there was nothing "rustic" about the portable bathrooms. Wonderfully accessible and clean. ?Oh, the food rocked, and it was shockingly inexpensive.?

• Keep It Moving, Exercise Surprise and Delight. This is hardly a new insight — airports and theme parks do this reasonably well — but the staff at Wimbledon "kept the line moving," and they even dotted the long and meandering line with a host of “Roadside Attractions” like free coffee from sponsor Lavazza or TV monitors with highlights from the previous game.?As GPS goes, we must have walked miles but the "surprise and delight" element made it easy to forget the hour upon hour of waiting. Even the administration of colored wrist-bands (designating the level of access available to you) was a fun "Surprise and Delight" element. (We didn't make the cut for Centre Courts but were thrilled to get into Court #2 plus ground passes...and we somehow snuck into Centre Court anyway.)

Here I must tip my hat for the British.?Well done!??What they accomplished is both the riddle and the opportunity of great customer service and brand building.?If you can turn an ostensible bad experience into a good one, you are gold.?

They also reframed what's sometimes viewed as an exclusive, elitist "must know Royals to get in" event into something wonderfully accessible, fun, and certainly memorable.

Brands still fail on this front — and we experience this as consumer all the time.?The scourge of spam remains omnipresent.?Communication channels remain cluttered with noise. Trust remains elusive in "personalized" relationships.

Wimbledon got it right…and did almost all of it offline.?Well done.?Well done! ?

-c -?