Customer dissatisfaction with waiting lines is widespread in urban service settings, yet general satisfaction ratings do not reveal which aspect of queue management is responsible. This study compares queue management practices across Healthcare Clinics, Banking Institutions, Restaurants, and Retail Outlets in Bengaluru; assesses customers’ perceptions of five queue-management dimensions; and examines their relationship with overall waiting and service experience. A quantitative, descriptive, cross-sectional, within-subjects comparative design was adopted. A structured Google Forms questionnaire was completed by 121 conveniently sampled respondents, each evaluating all four sectors. The instrument measured Waiting-Time Management, Queue Discipline and Fairness, Waiting Environment, Staff and Service Management, and Information and Technology using five-point Likert items, together with one overall experience rating per sector. Internal consistency was assessed using Cronbach’s alpha. Repeated-Measures ANOVA and the Friedman test were used for sector comparisons, followed by Bonferroni-adjusted Wilcoxon signed-rank comparisons where omnibus differences were significant. Spearman’s rank correlation examined associations between composite queue management scores and overall experience ratings. Composite queue management differed significantly across sectors (F = 95.863, p < .001), with means of 2.95 for Healthcare Clinics, 3.15 for Banking Institutions, 3.35 for Restaurants, and 3.54 for Retail Outlets. Waiting-Time Management, Waiting Environment, and Information and Technology differed significantly across sectors, whereas Queue Discipline and Fairness and Staff and Service Management did not. Composite queue management was positively associated with overall experience in all four sectors (ρ = .436, .386, .227, and .229, respectively; all p < .05). The findings indicate that customer-perceived waiting-time management and information/technology are important areas of cross-sector differentiation in this Bengaluru sample, while the correlational results should not be interpreted as causal effects.

Keywords— queue management; waiting-time perception; service operations; customer service experience; within-subjects design; Bengaluru