Field notes
Reading Teller Load Across Peak Hours
How Bangkok branch managers separate genuine staffing gaps from lunch-hour spikes when reviewing teller utilisation charts.
Peak-hour charts often look alarming until you separate structural understaffing from predictable lunch and salary-day surges. In Thai retail branches, the 11:30–13:30 window and the first two days after payday regularly distort a single daily average.
Start with half-hour bins rather than daily totals. Overlay scheduled teller seats against tickets called. When seats match the roster but tickets still climb, the issue is flow design or product mix, not headcount.
Compare the same half-hour bins across a calm Tuesday and a salary Friday. If Friday’s curve is taller but the same shape, you are seeing demand seasonality. If Friday develops a second hump after 15:00 while Tuesday does not, look at cheque and remittance queues that open late.
Branch insight dashboards earn their keep when regional managers can annotate these patterns once and reuse the note the following month. A short annotation field next to the utilisation chart saves repeating the same debate in every review.