Benefits of providing amenities to impatient waiting customers

Abstract

This paper proposes an OR modelling approach to study the effect of managing queue reneging by providing amenities to improve customers' queueing experience. We evaluate quantitatively the changes in the servers' utilization and customers' satisfaction when the size and quality of the amenities are varied. We find that when the size of the amenities is increased to cover more and more customers, the incremental return in benefits will eventually diminish. So is the case when the quality of the amenities is improved to higher and higher standards for systems with sufficiently heavy workload. However, for systems with light workload, the models show that improving the quality of the amenities has an increasing incremental return in benefits. Scope and purpose. Reneging, the phenomenon of customers leaving a service system before finishing service, represents loss in revenues and goodwill to the service provider. Very often companies provide amenities to alleviate waiting customers' discomfort so that they would be willing to wait for longer period of time. However, there is the trade-off between investing in amenities and generating more revenue from customers. Our work investigates the optimal balance for this trade-off and the most effective approach for setting up amenities. © 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.