Improving Service by Informing Customers About Anticipated Delays
Management Science
Management Science
Designing a Call Center with Impatient Customers
Manufacturing & Service Operations Management
Commissioned Paper: Telephone Call Centers: Tutorial, Review, and Research Prospects
Manufacturing & Service Operations Management
Call Centers with Impatient Customers: Many-Server Asymptotics of the M/M/n + G Queue
Queueing Systems: Theory and Applications
Contact Centers with a Call-Back Option and Real-Time Delay Information
Operations Research
Computers and Operations Research
Analysis and Comparison of Queues with Different Levels of Delay Information
Management Science
OM Forum---Managing Customer Experiences: Perspectives on the Temporal Aspects of Service Encounters
Manufacturing & Service Operations Management
The Impact of Delay Announcements in Many-Server Queues with Abandonment
Operations Research
Real-Time Delay Estimation Based on Delay History
Manufacturing & Service Operations Management
MMAP|M|N queueing system with impatient heterogeneous customers as a model of a contact center
Computers and Operations Research
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In this paper, we analyze a call center with impatient customers. We study how informing customers about their anticipated delays affects performance. Customers react by balking upon hearing the delay announcement and may subsequently renege, particularly if the realized waiting time exceeds the delay that has originally been announced to them. The balking and reneging from such a system are a function of the delay announcement. Modeling the call center as an M/M/s + M queue with endogenized customer reactions to announcements, we analytically characterize performance measures for this model. The analysis allows us to explore the role announcing different percentiles of the waiting time distribution, i.e., announcement coverage, plays on subsequent performance in terms of balking and reneging. Through a numerical study, we explore when informing customers about delays is beneficial and what the optimal coverage should be in these announcements. We show how managers of a call center with delay announcements can control the trade-off between balking and reneging through their choice of announcements to be made.