How to Effectively Control Crowds

Crowds are a fact of life for businesses in many different industries, from retail operations, airports, and theme parks, to sports arenas and concert stadiums. How you deal with crowds is essential to ensure your business is delivering positive customer experiences. The last thing you want on your hands is a fight between two customers because they are fighting over the last “must-have hot toy” of the season or a mass rush, and pushing and shoving to get into the bathrooms in between periods at a sports game.  The best way to manage crowd control is with the proper utilization of crowd control barriers. The following ideas are for a wide range of businesses and are merely suggestions for you to consider for implementing effective crowd control.

• Manage Customer Flow: Regular guests will already be familiar with the layout of your business or the venue. They know where they need to go and how to find what they want. However, new visitors are not afforded this knowledge. One way to ensure visitors are able to find what they are looking for is to use sign stands and signs. Signs point the way to restrooms, seating sections, and the way to checkout lines, and they are hung above aisles informing people what they can find in each one.
• Manage Line Queues: People are accustomed to waiting in lines, whether they are at the grocery store or waiting to get into a venue to see their favorite sports team or performer. Waiting in line is a fact of life. How you manage line queues can make the difference whether or not people become irritated, impatient, or short tempered. The key to keep your guests happy is to distract them while they are waiting in line.
• Create Distractions: Hang video monitors over line queues in areas where stanchions and ropes are used. Play appropriate content or programming to fit with the business, like information about attractions at theme parks, recaps of previous games for sporting events, or featured services and sales items in retail stores. When people are distracted, they do not mind waiting in long lines. Another distraction is to place products within reach of the guests on the other side of the barriers. This can lead to impulse buys for magazines, batteries, chewing gum, event programs, or souvenirs.
• Leave Nothing to Chance: Whenever retractable belt barriers or other crowd control devices are not being used, make sure to store them in locations where they can be deployed and set up quickly. For large facilities, it is recommended to have multiple storage locations all within a few minutes of areas where you might need to implement crowd control. The goal is to be able to respond to the unexpected quickly, like needing to shut down a bathroom immediately, because a toilet is overflowing.

By effectively controlling crowds and crowd traffic, you make experiences more enjoyable for your visitors. To learn more about crowd control barriers and other solutions for your business, contact us today at 1-800-516-2115.

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