Queuing

Mobile

All of the above methods, however, suffer from the same drawback: the person arrives at the location only to find out that they need to wait. Recently, queues at DMVs, colleges, restaurants, healthcare institutions, government offices and elsewhere have begun to be replaced by mobile queues or queue-ahead, whereby the person queuing uses their phone, the internet, a kiosk or another method to enter a virtual queue, optionally prior to arrival, is free to roam during the wait, and then gets paged at their mobile phone when their turn approaches. This has the advantage of allowing users to find out the wait forecast and get in the queue before arriving, roaming freely and then timing their arrival to the availability of service. This has been shown to extend the patience of those in the queue and reduce no-shows.