Impact of Process Change on Customer Perception of Waiting Time

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Waiting times – If a customer has to wait less than this will mean that productivity within the business is getting

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Healthy and unhealthy individuals are being effected by long wait times everyday. Although it seems like a little problem, it is a big one.

Maastricht University School of Business and Economics Maastricht, November 7, 2012 Altrock, Felix Overkamp, Sasha Course code: EBC 4107 Course Tutor: M. Peeters

A commitment to providing quality customer service raises the competitive bar and is key to developing customer satisfaction and loyalty. According to Entrepreneur.com, the connection between customer loyalty and increased revenue has been confirmed. Process improvement projects can help to systematically identify, analyze and improve existing customer service management processes and thereby drive profitability.

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By: Toni Hilton, PhD Westminster Business School, UK and Warwick Jones, PhD University of the West of England, UK

Serguei Netessine 1 The Wharton School University of Pennsylvania Robert Shumsky2 W. E. Simon Graduate School of Business Administration University of Rochester February 1999, revised February 2002.

Aradhye and Kallurkar (2014) seem to agree with this sentiment that service-providing companies need to implement just-in-time practices to keep up with the rapidly growing global market just to stay alive (p. 2233). They take some of the core elements of just-in-time manufacturing and apply them to improve waiting times in the service industry. Aradhye and Kallaurkar (2014) found that waiting times can be reduced drastically by applying just-in-time principles to a service industry (p. 2237). Thus, Aradhye and Kallurkar reaffirm the argument for the necessity of using a just-in-time approach in services because if you can decrease waiting times, customers tend to be happier with your service. Waiting time satisfaction also has an influence on the

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Unpleasant waiting experience might accompany with customers go through the whole service process, which could lower the overall evaluation of service quality easily. Not only the queuing experience, a number of studies also investigated that queuing time in a service organization significantly influences consumer satisfaction. In general, increasing in waiting time is associated with decreasing in customer satisfaction (Katz, M.Larson & C.Larson, 1991). The graph (Dube, Renaghan & Miller, 1994) below shows the effect of waiting time on customer satisfaction in restaurant industry, and suggests that most consumers do not satisfied if the waiting time is longer than 8 minutes. In addition, another study (Jones & Dent, 1994) examined that 70% of respondents considered waiting time as a major

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