Modeling customer support performance in Indian IT hardware industry

Purpose – Customer support assumes strategic importance in India for branded IT‐hardware products. An authorized service center and a stream of specialized service centers undertake field services and represent a sale‐territory's support network. “Time constrained” service men have to deliver customized service meeting a promised time‐standard. The stochastic demand for support services severely mars the customer response resulting in poor service quality. A manufacturer has to address the following decisions under these conditions: what is the ideal staffing level in a territory considering restricted server availability? What will be the impact of changing the staffing levels on customer service level? This study develops an analytical model to address these decisions. Design/methodology/approach – The study identifies the variables underlying stochastic service demand through a field survey and determines the demand distribution. Applying stochastic principles the study derives relation between field staffing level and customer response considering server time constraint. Study performs statistical analysis to validate this model with real time data on variables collected from the field survey. Findings – The outcomes of analysis reveal the following findings: this model can be applied in service systems where a time constrained server has to deliver expected level of performance (research implication); and increasing field staffing levels obscures the significant difference between the customer waiting times under very high levels of uncertain demand (practical implication). Originality/value – The study derives relation between the staffing levels and customer waiting time considering uncertain demand with restricted working hour conditions.