Waiting around for a customer experience is rarely a good thing. When customers are waiting for you, that’s usually a sign that not waiting would have been difficult or inconvenient (read: expensive) for your company. However, not valuing customers’ time is probably the most expensive mistake you can make. 

Then, of course, there are the times when the waiting is part of the experience. For example, the Peter Pan ride at Disneyland has several rooms you pass through before you get to the ride that set the mood and build anticipation of the adventure to come. When you skip it, you get to the ride faster, but you miss out on the building of the anticipation. 

Part of what makes the Peter Pan wait more beneficial than your average waiting around situation for an experience is that it make the waiting more enjoyable. Many would also argue that the ride—and the park itself—provide value to customers who are waiting. 

So, waiting isn’t always bad; like many things we discuss on the podcast, it depends. However, it does always reveal how internally focused you are and whether you place importance on the value of customers’ time.

In this episode, we explore what it means about your focus when customers wait and how you can manage or enhance the waiting experience to engage and enhance customers’ time spent with you. 

Here are some other key moments in the discussion:

• 02:59  After sharing some stories about waiting that made him feel cross, Colin explains that you need to value customers’ time in your experience.
• 10:33 We discuss how Disney manages wait time by offering Fast Track to reduce queue wait times, and signs in line that estimate how much longer you have to wait before the ride.
• 16:17  We talk about when waits are good for building anticipation; and how sometimes the wait is even better than the experience. 
• 24:21 Ryan explains that his kids are excited about some changes to Minecraft that are coming that they had to wait for; and what they were waiting for might surprise you.
• 26:59  We suspend the conversation, and explain that listeners will have to wait to hear about the rest of the topic on next week’s episode. (See what we did there?)

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