Wait and See

Americans are in a hurry. We're impatient and we want it now!

Okay, we didn't need the Associated Press, or Ipsos News Center, its formidable research partner, to tell us that.

But a recent A.P./Ipsos poll did discover an impatient nation, one that “gets antsy after five minutes on hold on the phone and 15 minutes max in a line.”

This is not a huge revelation. Which of us doesn't go crazy after five minutes on hold and want to grind our pencil point into our palm? And it's not helped particularly by those occasional “your call is important to us” interruptions.

And it's probably not new information, either, that people hate to wait in line at the bank and at those bureaucratic government agencies, especially the Post Office and the Department of Motor Vehicles (which A.P. calls “the U.S. version of the old Soviet Union bread line”).

Unfortunately, I think we already knew this, too: Almost one in four in the A.P./Ipsos poll (of more than 1000 American adults) picked the grocery checkout as the line where patience is most likely “to melt like the ice cream turning to goo in their cart.”

And, of course, that all feeds the notion this industry has been dealing with for a few years: That Americans hold shopping up there, among their favorite things to do, alongside going to the dentist and getting an IRS audit.

By the way, it doesn't get any better with older consumers. (Baby boomers, remember, are the generation of instant gratification. We gave “instant” a whole new meaning, and that was way before we had to wait for our computers to boot up.) The survey found older people to be more impatient than younger people.

Nor is it better away from the city. Urban pressure, urban lifestyle, whatever – the poll says people in the country and the suburbs can bear only a few more minutes in a line than city inhabitants can.

Good news, perhaps is that women seem to be more patient than men. Women told A.P./Ipsos they were willing to wait in line an average of 18 minutes before losing patience. Men's breaking point came at 15 minutes. And people with college degrees and/or higher incomes are less patient, as well.

And that impatience quickly turns to vengeance. Half in the A.P./Ipsos poll said they refused to return to businesses that made them wait too long.

So once again, bad news for retailers. Shoppers hate you and the horse you rode in on. But this may be bad news with a light at the end of the tunnel. Because, remember why those lines are so long: They're filled with shoppers! People are coming into your stores, their strained patience and low expectations notwithstanding.

Now, how do you turn those frowns upside down? The A.P. went to our industry's own Paco Underhill for analysis. And he noted that it's not just how long we wait, but how we wait. For example, people are more likely to wait with something approaching patience if the line is orderly, with numbered tickets or some other form of identifying who's next. Belted line-management systems that guide shoppers to the next available checkout can help soothe frayed nerves.

And then there's the waiting-in-line experience. Banks were first to figure out that the wait would seem faster if customers were distracted by screens displaying information, entertainment and the occasional merchandise promotion. Now, that technology is being embraced by an increasing number of retailers. The devices are increasingly more sophisticated, the screens and images sharper, the information easier to control and update, the content more current, contemporary and relevant.

So maybe you can't get a shopper to the checkout counter any faster. But while she's in your line, try to organize her, try to accommodate her, try to distract her – just don't try her patience.