Who’s Responsible for Choosing Your Queuing Solution? A New Perspective on Workforce Shifts

In an age where seamless customer experience dictates loyalty and operational function, a quiet revolution is underway: the decision-maker behind queuing solutions is no longer who you think.  Traditionally, selecting and implementing queue management systems (QMS) was the domain of IT leaders, operations managers, or facilities teams. But the post-pandemic landscape has altered both the nature of customer interaction and who owns that interaction inside organizations.  

A Changing Organizational Fabric    

Roles such as Head of Customer Experience (CX), Digital Transformation Manager, Journey Design Lead, and even Chief People Officer are emerging as key voices in shaping how citizens, customers, patients, or students interact with service environments. In the US, local and state governments increasingly recognize these roles as central to modernizing public services — with the Head of CX driving service outcomes, the Digital Transformation Manager ensuring technology adoption, the Journey Design Lead aligning processes with user needs, and the Chief People Officer making sure employees are engaged, skilled, and motivated. Similar functions also appear under titles such as Chief Customer Experience Officer, Digital Services Director, or even County and City Manager, often with a renewed mandate to strengthen community engagement.  

These leaders are tasked with a common mission: to remove friction from every step of the service journey. Whether the setting is a county service office, a hospital reception, a university admissions desk, or a financial branch, they are responsible for ensuring that the experience is smooth, efficient, and aligned with the organization’s brand promise.   

In this environment, queue management systems (QMS) have evolved from being perceived as “back-office traffic control tools” to becoming strategic enablers of citizen and customer satisfaction. They provide measurable impact in areas that these new roles are accountable for — from reducing wait times and improving accessibility to enabling data-driven service design and integrating digital channels with physical touch-points. 

Macro Trend: Service Design as Competitive Differentiator  

Recent labor market trends highlight a deeper shift. As physical and digital touchpoints blend, organizations are being forced to reimagine the service experience from a systemic perspective:  

• Hybrid workforces and labor shortages are requiring smarter staff allocation through real-time queue data.  
• Customer expectations are now shaped by mobile-first, instant-access platforms.  
• Sustainability and equity concerns push for inclusive, accessible, and flexible queuing options — reducing environmental impact through paperless, digital-first solutions, ensuring social sustainability by making services available to all groups (including elderly and people with limited digital access), and rethinking physical formats so that hardware and on-site installations are of higher quality and lower environmental footprint.  
• Hybrid scheduling is emerging as a best practice, combining pre-booked appointments with reserved drop-in capacity, allowing organizations to balance predictability with flexibility while optimizing staff resources.  

In this context, queue management is now often driven by cross-functional teams, for example involving:  

• Digital services  
• Operations  
• Marketing/Customer experience  
• Chief People Officer/Workforce management  

The Rise of the “Queue Architect”    

This isn’t a job title yet—but it might be. Increasingly, those responsible for evaluating queue systems need to integratedata, operations, UX, and compliance. Their priorities include:  

• Aligning queue data with business intelligence tools  
• Ensuring brand consistency across customer flows  
• Adapting queue logic to serve vulnerable groups (language, accessibility)  
• Embedding queue status into mobile apps or citizen portals  

These emerging responsibilities redefine the buyer persona for QMS—and open the door to solutions that combinesoftware, data, and service strategy.  

Source Acknowledgement 

This article draws on Qmatic’s own insights and data, as well as external perspectives from CB Insights (The Rise of CX as a Board-Level Agenda, 2024) and Harvard Business Review (Designing Services for the New Experience Economy, 2024).