At the heart of the banking business lies the relationship of the bank with its customers. In such a service-oriented sector, the drive to provide greater comfort and convenience for the customer is of great importance. The increasingly widespread implementation of Queue Management Systems in banks is an indication of just how useful these systems are in improving the quality of service in the banking sector.

Modern queue management solutions from GMS go beyond providing greater comfort for the customers as they wait: they also allow the managers to easily collate and view information such as customer arrival patterns and real-time queue status for the various different banking services. Thus QMS enables the bank - whether head office or branch - to react dynamically to the information gathered, such as by opening sufficient service counters at peak times indicated by system-generated reports. The continual gathering of information also helps to improve teller productivity and allows for future planning based on statistical and management reports.

Below, we provide information on GMS’s development process of queue management in Malaysian banks, and the current top-of-the-line possibilities for the international banking sector.

Banks Adopting QMS | DG and DCS in Early 1980s | Introducing Single Queues | Queue Management Systems | Top-of-the-line Solutions

Banks Adopting QMS

GMS has worked closely with the banking sector in Malaysia since the introduction of Digicallers for Hongkong Bank and Perwira Habib (now Affin) Bank in 1981. Since then GMS has popularized the use of queue management systems (QMS) amongst local and foreign banks in Malaysia. This can be seen from the list of clients which includes the Central Bank of Malaysia (Bank Negara Malaysia) and Maybank, the largest bank.

DG and DCS in Early 1980s

Since 1981, a wide range of queue management systems has been developed for the banking sector. Different banks have different requirements and operational preferences. In the early 1980s, many banking transactions were two-stage operations - (1) submission of forms, cheques or cash to a teller and (2) collection of processed document or cash at a specific cashier counter, at a later stage. Often customers were given a Queue Ticket at the end of stage (1) and asked to wait in a common waiting area. Digicallers and Digital Calling Systems (DCS) were used to assist tellers in the calling of customers.

Introducing Single Queues

In the mid-1980s, banks computerized their counter operations and the so-called universal teller or uniteller concept was introduced. Most, if not all counters were equipped to handle all types of banking services. All customers were required to join a single waiting line and all uniteller counters served customers from this single waiting line, on a first-come-first-served basis. GMS designed a counter indicating system called Single Queue (SQ) to facilitate this method of calling and serving customers. The SQ system consisted of a short traditional customer queue, with the addition of a counter indicating system at the head of the queue which called the next customer and directed him to a free uniteller.

The use of computerized uniteller counters aimed to provide fast service to customers, so even though customers were required to stand in a queue, the waiting time was usually short. This mode of serving customers from a fast-moving queue is still currently used by some banks, sometimes in conjunction with a sophisticated QMS to call the customer to the standing queue.

It is however impossible to completely eliminate the 2-stage transactions mentioned above. Thus, a combination of SQ and DCS has been adopted by some banks. SQ provides fast service for all the single stage transactions while DCS caters for the 2-stage transactions.

Queue Management Systems

The ideal situation of a very short and fast moving queue is often hard to realize at banks, especially on peak days. Customers were often required to queue up for unacceptably long periods of time with the SQ systems. This was deemed unacceptable especially when one of the purposes of using queue management systems was to offer a high quality of service. There was also a strong separate need to gather, collate and report statistical information.

To meet these varied and demanding needs, GMS produced a number of computerized queue management systems, the QMS series. The QMS series now forms the core of GMS’s queue management solutions range, and has since undergone extensive development to incorporate the latest technology in both software and hardware.

Top-of-the-line Solutions

The QMS and DGcaller series available from GMS represent the best of current queue management technology. Both banks and their customers have received our QMS series very well, appreciating the added value of features such as voice announcements in the local language.

The sophistication and flexibility of both hardware and software is apparent in QMS. The modular hardware design means that upgrades to options such as the Multifunction Ticket Printer (with touch screen selection, voice feedback and personalized card/fingerprint sensors) are easily carried out. QMS software allows for multistage queuing, long waiting time warnings, comprehensive daily and monthly reports, Internet access and monitoring, and a host of other configurable features.

QMS is a powerful value-adding tool for any bank, with features that turn it into a powerful system with functions far beyond basic queue management. The systems enable premium quality customer service, with the personalization offered by our latest ticket printers and displays. The Multimedia Display does not simply display queue ticket numbers; it allows the bank to advertise and market its services by acting as a media player at the same time - a media player that all customers refer to very often. For managers, the monitoring and report generation provided by QMS is invaluable.