Improving Service by Informing Customers About Anticipated Delays
Management Science
Access control of parallel multiserver loss queues
Performance Evaluation
Contact Centers with a Call-Back Option and Real-Time Delay Information
Operations Research
The Strategic Perils of Delayed Differentiation
Management Science
Analysis and Comparison of Queues with Different Levels of Delay Information
Management Science
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
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Many service providers use delay announcements to inform customers of anticipated delays. However, this information is usually not provided immediately but after a short period of time (spent either waiting or occupied by the system). The focus of this paper is on the impact of this postponement on the ability of the firm to influence customer behavior by communicating nonverifiable congestion information to its customers, as well as on the profits and utilities for the firm and the customers, respectively. We show that this postponement can actually help the firm create credibility and augment the resulting equilibrium. However, in other settings this delay can also detract from the resulting equilibrium. Furthermore, we show that whenever credibility is created it improves not only the profit for the firm but also the customers' overall utility under certain settings.