The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Bangaloreans pay bills and fret

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jun 08, 2007
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Bangaloreans pay bills and fret

Staff Reporter

BANGALORE: Standing in queue is definitely a frustrating experience. Now, how about a record of the places where the frustration level is the highest? Doing precisely that, AC Nielsen went ahead and surveyed 1,782 working men and women in the age group of 25 to 45.

At the end of all that questioning and answering, the agency's multi-city "Queue Frustration" survey has discovered that 35 per cent Bangaloreans find bill payment as the single biggest problem area among queues.

At banks

Of the 360 respondents surveyed in Bangalore, 34 per cent were convinced that bank queues were the second most frustrating. Sixteen per cent of those surveyed found ticketing queues to be their nightmare come true while only six per cent had a problem with queues at shopping malls.

Across all the cities surveyed, banks were the most problematic queue areas. The agency had to explain what "frustration" meant. So they put the related questions on top of the questionnaire.

As the results reveal, 60 per cent got "really angry," 26 per cent changed the service provider, 23 per cent cancelled/rescheduled an important plan, 22 per cent got into an argument and the remaining 20 per cent just pushed the queue!

Apparently, the respondents from Kolkata and Chennai were among those who got "really angry" really fast.

Seventy-seven per cent of those surveyed in these cities had anger as the way out of their queue frustration. But only 39 per cent of the Mumbai respondents were prone to anger.

Bangaloreans, 54 per cent of whom got "really angry," also got involved in arguments.

The survey was not just a mirror of the frustration levels. It also suggested alternatives. Forty-eight per cent of the respondents preferred an area for a second line.

Solutions

Self-service solutions was the alternative for 46 per cent respondents, while another 45 per cent wanted more people to respond to the queues. Thirty-five per cent of those surveyed preferred to have the waiting time displayed.

Self-service solutions suggested by the respondents were ATM facilities, ticketing kiosks and self check-out kiosks at shopping malls and airports. The respondents were keen about these services, because, as the survey found, 60 per cent of them spent over half an hour a week in queues.

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