Title: Waiting time influence on customer repeated behaviour in chat service systems with staffing policy

Authors: Ying Liu; Miao Yu; Tao Zou

Addresses: School of Business Administration, Northeastern University, Shenyang, Liaoning, China; School of Management, Shenyang Urban Construction University, Shenyang, Liaoning, China ' School of Management, Shenyang Jianzhu University, Shenyang, Liaoning, China ' State Key Laboratory of Robotics, Shenyang Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang 110016, China; Institutes for Robotics and Intelligent Manufacturing, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang 110016, China

Abstract: In this paper, we develop a behavioural queuing model with feedback for a chat service system, in which managers determine capacity sizing to maximise profit. We explicitly take into account customer repeated and queuing behaviour, which implies that the satisfied customers might return and have an impact on the arrival rate. For this case, customer satisfaction as perceived in terms of waiting time changes according to the capacity sizing. We define the staffing optimality of the chat service system as the number of agents maximising the profit, including the income from customers and the costs from agents. Using a numerical analysis, we make certain comparisons with the traditional models that do not consider repeated customer behaviour. Furthermore, we indicate how managers allocate the optimal staffing with various customer behaviour mechanisms.

Keywords: behavioural queuing; staffing; chat service system; customer satisfaction.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCAT.2020.106588

International Journal of Computer Applications in Technology, 2020 Vol.62 No.3, pp.216 - 226

Received: 01 Jun 2019
Accepted: 15 Aug 2019
Published online: 15 Apr 2020 *

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