Do British people really like to queue?
They say that British people love queuing so much, they’ll join a line and then ask, “what are we queuing for?”
It’s true that we like to queue (although perhaps not to this extent). Forming a line to take our turn appeals to the British sense of fair play – something very close to our hearts. Take the Wimbledon tennis championships. Is there another place in the world where fans would start forming a queue – a physical line – for tickets, several days in advance? “The Queue” (yes, with a capital Q) even has its own code of conduct, detailed on the Wimbledon website, and there are fan sites dedicated to the art of waiting. (Your tent must be no bigger than two-person size. Don’t leave your spot for more than 30 minutes. And bring wipes.)
And all of this is totally normal to us Brits. Of course the first people to arrive should be the first to snap up tickets! First come, first served! The early bird catches the worm!
Right?
Online waiting rooms are all about fairness.
So, when we created CrowdHandler, we thought we had it all figured out. However, one of our early experiences forced us to rethink what turned out to be a very British idea of “fair play”.
A story of human behaviour
Back in the mists of time, one of the famous Icelandic alt-pop divas was performing at an iconic outdoor arena in California, and CrowdHandler was provisioning the waiting room for tickets.
When the onsale finished, we checked the reports to find out how long people had needed to wait in the queue. And it looked great! Everything had gone well. The website had not crashed; there was no chaos.
It was all very orderly. Very fair. CrowdHandler had done its job and we were happy.
That is, until we started receiving complaints.
What had gone wrong? Well, as it turns out, not everyone queues the way that British people queue.
Lots and lots of Californians had dutifully arrived at the appointed onsale time... to find a fully formed line of people ahead of them.
Despite following the rules, and getting there at the stated time, they had no chance of getting a ticket. It had seemed fair to us. First come, first served. The early bird catches the worm.
But, to a huge number of our client’s valued customers, it was Not Fair At All.
Making Crowdhandler truly fair
I’ll admit, we learned a lesson that day. I’d even go as far as to say it caused us to rethink “fairness”.
And it prompted us to change the way CrowdHandler works.
Now, when you set up your waiting room, you set the date that the room is going to open, then you set the date the queue is going to activate.
When the room opens, CrowdHandler starts to intercept the traffic, gathering users into a pre-sale waiting room.
But it won’t reveal a queue position to them until the activation time.
Instead, at that moment, everyone who’s already there is assigned a random position. And that is the point at which the queue forms.
If you turn up after the activation time, you may still have a chance, but you will go to the back of the line.
Rather than allowing users to turn up days in advance, with their virtual tent and toothbrush, it’s more of a mini lottery. As long as you arrive at some point between the room opening and the queue being activated, you have as much chance as everyone else in the room.
Our clients are happy: it’s a simple system, easy to understand and easy to set up. But more importantly, our clients’ customers also intuitively understand and appreciate the system.
In fact for many of our clients, who sell the kind of product where scarcity is a feature, the lottery aspect of the pre-sale has become key to the overall user experience.
If you want a good old British style queue, you can still do that by activating the queue well in advance of your products going on sale. But as it turns out, online, not even that many Brits want that.
CrowdHandler has always been about fairness. But now, whatever fairness means where you live, it truly is.