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Service experiences and waiting lines are often – unfortunately – seen to go hand in hand. This chapter explains why this is the case. Beginning with an exploration of capacity and operating constraints, discussion then delves into both the mathematical origins and psychological implications of waiting lines. The final section offers hope to managers and guests alike, with a survey of different operations strategies and tactics that can eliminate or abate the need to wait.

The purpose of this paper is to deliver empirical data comparing the effects of music with the effects of providing waiting time information on customers who are kept on hold when telephoning their bank. It aims to discover if either has a more positive impact on their affective responses (satisfaction), and to discern if these effects are measurably different to a telephone call without music, or waiting time information, and for different durations of wait.

The methodology is an empirical study using bank customers as participants. Questionnaires and user observations techniques are employed to collect quantitative data which are analysed using repeated measures ANOVAs.

Overall the presence of updates, or music, has a positive influence on satisfaction when compared to just a ringing tone, but for a waiting time of one minute music has no influence on satisfaction. The acceptable waiting time threshold plays a very critical influence on satisfaction with the service. A waiting time above this results in larger differences being observed in the responses to the four treatments, with music and updates both having greater influence. In general, the presence of music and updates are also shown to reduce the overestimation of perceived waiting time.

This paper reports findings from an existing UK telephone banking service with 197 customers in three different locations. Implications from the findings provide insights for telephone service managers when choosing between adopting music or updates for managing on‐hold periods.

Delay is an important issue for service providers. Indeed, previous studies have widely shown the negative effect of waiting time on consumer service satisfaction. However, being satisfied with the service seems to be insufficient for customers to remain loyal. Creating customer loyalty is even more crucial than just satisfying them. The paper aims to investigate how customers weigh up their service satisfaction and waiting time satisfaction in order to determine whether they will remain loyal or not.

A survey was conducted in the Belgian health care industry. The final sample includes 946 respondents. Regression analyses were performed and the Baron and Kenny method used to test moderator and mediator impacts of variables.

The results confirm that waiting time satisfaction is not only a service satisfaction determinant, but it also moderates the satisfaction‐loyalty relationship. Moreover, determinants of customer waiting time satisfaction include the perceived waiting time, the satisfaction with information provided in case of delays, and the satisfaction with the waiting environment. In addition, it is shown that waiting time satisfaction is a complete mediating variable in the perceived waiting time and service satisfaction link.

The paper suggests several implications about the waiting time impacts on service satisfaction and customer loyalty. They show the importance of this variable in the service process and explain how to improve it.

Queuing, a familiar element of most service delivery systems, has the potential for significantly affecting the customer′s overall satisfaction with the service encounter. A customer′s degree of satisfaction with waiting or with the service received in its entirety is dependent on the actual performance of the delivery system, the customer′s expectations regarding that performance and the customer′s perception of the service encounter. The actual operational performance of different queuing configurations has been previously addressed, as have the issues of managing customers′ expectations and perceptions regarding their queuing experiences. This earlier research has identified several factors which can affect a customer′s perception of waiting and consequently his or her satisfaction with that wait. Proposes a taxonomy based on the service manager′s ability to control the customer′s perception of the queuing experience. Defines which queuing factors can be controlled by the firm, which factors can partially be controlled by the firm and which factors are outside the firm′s control, and suggests tactics for managing queues for each category of factors.

E‐consumers consistently complain that the internet is frustratingly slow. Most existing research on this phenomenon is based on the concept of “download delay”, that is, the time required for a web page to fully download to the e‐consumer's computer screen. This paper reports on an exploratory study of the phenomenon of waiting for service on the internet with the intention of extending the narrow conceptualisation of the phenomenon of “download delay” to a more user‐based perspective of waiting on the internet.

The study is based on a qualitative research methodology. The research methods are seven asynchronous virtual focus groups involving 126 intensive internet users over 17 days and 92 participants who maintained personal diaries of waiting on the internet over a nine‐week period.

A new definition of waiting on the internet is proposed based on extensive virtual focus group research. Subsequently, 14 distinct types of internet waiting situations are identified based on the analysis of a total of 1,041 waiting situations as reported by the participants in the study.

A number of practical implications for various functional areas of the business are outlined. Conceptual and methodological contributions are also made.

The study is the first to present a broader conceptualisation of waiting on the internet from an e‐consumer perspective and based on empirical research. All previous research has been based on just one type of online waiting, i.e. waiting for web pages to download to the user's screen. This paper presents 13 “new” types of waiting situations on the internet.

Customer waiting is regarded as one of the most critical aspects of service quality. Research has suggested various approaches to reduce the negative impact of waiting. This article investigates the waiting time performance of alternative service process designs that consist of two operations, order taking and order preparation. The research premise is that no single service process design is the best in all operating conditions. Managers should build flexibility into service process design by using alternative designs in combination. Several break‐even models are developed to examine the contingent nature of the performance of alternative designs. The results point to the need for building flexibility into service process designs by demonstrating that waiting time performance can only be optimized if design strategies are altered in response to ongoing changes in service system input parameters.

Since waiting in a queue may induce both negative and positive effects on customers’ quality perceptions of which the queue is formed, an optimal queuing wait which is long enough but not too long to have positive effects on the pursued service is critical for successful queuing management. This study examined the existence of an optimal queuing wait at theme parks by merging the interpretative approach of institutional norms with the measuring application of the adapted Return Potential Model from crowding studies. Using quota and systematic sampling techniques, survey data were collected from 1,440 visitors to five leading theme parks in Taiwan. An optimal queuing wait represented by an institutional norm among visitors with moderate consensus for the longest acceptable waiting time (LAWT) was revealed in this study. As a critical reversal point of visitors’ quality perception, significant ascent of visitors’ crowding perception did occur when their actual waiting times exceeded their LAWT.

Discusses waiting as a part of the service experience, and thus its influence on customer satisfaction. Explains how to distinguish satisfaction and its role in determining customers’ future attitudes. Examines how to manage the waiting experience via two case studies, and concludes that successful management of waiting brings rewards to both the customer and the service provider.

The problem of waiting is important in service activities, when customers are passive, often standing in a queue. This paper reviews 18 published empirical studies to identify groups of factors and their influence on customers. Some groups of factors reveal significant effects, such as real waiting time or expectation; others such as environmental factors are disappointing. These results alter our vision of the phenomenon, and lead to new directions for further practical or theoretical investigations, for example reintegrating the non‐linear effects of time in the study of waiting, exploring the expectation phenomenon and its variations, classifying customers and situations in order to manage critical waiting circumstances better.