Rational Abandonment from Tele-Queues: Nonlinear Waiting Costs with Heterogeneous Preferences
Queueing Systems: Theory and Applications
Call Centers with Impatient Customers: Many-Server Asymptotics of the M/M/n + G Queue
Queueing Systems: Theory and Applications
Call-Routing Schemes for Call-Center Outsourcing
Manufacturing & Service Operations Management
The Impact of Increased Employee Retention on Performance in a Customer Contact Center
Manufacturing & Service Operations Management
The Impact of Delay Announcements in Many-Server Queues with Abandonment
Operations Research
Information Sciences: an International Journal
Strategic Behavior and Social Optimization in Markovian Vacation Queues
Operations Research
Call Centers with Delay Information: Models and Insights
Manufacturing & Service Operations Management
Data-stories about (im)patient customers in tele-queues
Queueing Systems: Theory and Applications
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We address the modeling and analysis of abandonments from a queue that is invisible to its occupants. Such queues arise in remote service systems, notably the Internet and telephone call centers; hence, we refer to them astele-queues. A basic premise of this paper is that customers adapt their patience (modeled by an abandonment-time distribution) to their service expectations, in particular to their anticipated waiting time. We present empirical support for that hypothesis, and propose anM/M/m-based model that incorporates adaptive customer behavior. In our model, customer patience depends on themean waiting time in the queue. We characterize the resulting system equilibrium (namely, the operating point in steady state), and establish its existence and uniqueness when changes in customer patience are bounded by the corresponding changes in their anticipated waiting time. The feasibility of multiple system equilibria is illustrated when this condition is violated. Finally, a dynamic learning model is proposed where customer expectations regarding their waiting time are formed through accumulated experience. We demonstrate, via simulation, convergence to the theoretically anticipated equilibrium, while addressing certain issues related to censored-sampling that arise because of abandonments.