Convenient experiences make for happy patients

When you get to a favorite shop and see a long queue ahead of you, maybe snaking out the door, how does that feel? Have you ever walked away from or even not gone back to a store because of wait times?

Pretty much everyone agrees: waiting in line is the worst.

But what can you do about it? Standing in line at a popular store has always been as necessary as it is democratic and effective. First come first served is the only choice, right? It seems the only ways to make a line move faster are either to increase your costs and hire more staff or let the patient experience suffer and rush them through in less time. Given that the only thing shoppers dislike more than lines in the retail experience is rude staff, that sounds like jumping from the frying pan to the fire.

What if you could cut your wait time significantly while simultaneously improving the patient experience, without hiring more staff? Now there is a better way to accomplish this: takeout orders.

That’s right, just like many of your favorite restaurants, dispensaries are increasingly giving patients the option of ordering ahead of time online, and then picking up their order when it’s ready.

In the past buying cannabis could be very inconvenient, and may have involved waiting around for hours or meeting in an alley trying to look inconspicuous. Transactions were often hurried or stressful, and it wasn’t uncommon to get flower that was damp, seedy and underweight. How far we’ve come since then.

Now patients are spoiled for choice. We have options, and lots of them. We might like the place near work more than the one near home. Maybe our favorite dispensary doesn’t deliver. Or maybe you want to pick up an order during your lunch break without running out of time to eat. Patients may prefer an up-market establishment or one that focuses on low prices, but no one wants the inconvenience of a long wait.

A national survey of 13,000 shoppers found that “after four minutes, the satisfaction levels drop considerably.” It also found long lines would affect the decision to shop a particular retailer in the future for 43% of shoppers.

But here’s the good news: “87 percent of consumers are willing to use some type of technology if it keeps them from waiting in line at retail stores, and 67 percent would use online check-in or download an app that saved their places in line at a retail business.”