Monthly Archives: June 2022

Application of Queuing Theory in Customer Service

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A study of Customers’ Evaluations of Queues found that 45% of customers think it is “very irritating” to stand in line.

Are you part of this statistic? Well, the good news for you is that the queuing theory can contribute to defeating this issue.

In queuing theory, or the branch of mathematics that studies how lines form and how they function exists some behaviors that customers practice such as jockeying, balking, and reneging. Below you will find an explanation of those three as well as its own way to reduce them.

Jockeying:

Occurs when a customer sees another lane moving quicker than his own, and rationalizes that it’s faster to jump ship and try his luck on the next lane. It is a line-jumping behavior.

How to overcome this behavior? By implementing a serpentine line where the law of first come, first serve is in full force, even though for many customers it appears to be moving too slow.

Balking:

When customers look at a waiting line and decide it’s not worth their time to queue up and wait.

How to overcome this behavior? Here are two suggested ways:

  1. Display the wait time: to anchor a customer’s patience.
  2. Sign-in to wait in line: trading physical lines for a virtual queuing system by allowing customers to reserve their spot in line.

Reneging:

It’s when a customer has joined the line but decides he doesn’t want to wait. Given that customers don’t want to waste their time, how can this situation be fixed?:

  1. Entertain the customers: keeping them distracted from waiting.
  2. Collect customer analytics: to discover how sales representatives are to communicate with customers. Thus, relaxed customers who receive a service they need are less likely to balk, renege, or jockey on lines.

How wood pallets form the foundation of basic supply and global goods traffic.

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In spring 2021, I was busy writing my Bachelor’s thesis. At this time, I thought about helping out at the local supermarket to earn a little pocket money on the side. My main task was to take the delivered goods from the warehouse and place them on the shelves.

During my work, I noticed that all goods were delivered on wooden pallets. That’s why there was a high stack of wooden pallets in a corner of the warehouse, because the goods were always put away and only the wooden pallets remained. On the pallets, all kinds of food and consumer goods were delivered that you can imagine around an ordinary supermarket (yoghurt, pizza, baby food, sparkling water, beer, etc.). However, the wooden pallets are not only needed for this segment, but also for others:

  • Pharmaceutical industry that is supplied with the important primary materials
  • Medicines and vaccines also need pallets to arrive at medical facilities
  • Power stations, wind turbines, telecommunication facilities, television, internet
  • Machinery and equipment, components and spare parts from the manufacturer to their final destination etc.

Wooden pallets on a forklift, Source: https://www.hpe.de/presse.html#!/blog/posts/Paletten-und-Holzpackmittel-Die-Blutkorperchen-der-Weltwirtschaft/128

The HPE (Bundesverband Holzpackmittel, Paletten, Exportverpackung e.V. ) predicts that around 119 million pallets were produced in Germany alone in 2021. If the foreign trade statistics are also taken into account, an import surplus of 39 million pallets is found. This results in a total market of around 158 million required pallets in Germany.

In Germany, pallet manufacturers are currently facing an acute shortage of nails. This means that there is currently a danger that the first companies will hardly be able to meet the demand for pallets and packaging materials. This will ultimately lead to a massive disruption of supply chains in Germany. It is therefore to be hoped that the situation will improve quickly, as otherwise the supply of basic goods and the global traffic of goods cannot be guaranteed.