Service process design flexibility and customer waiting time

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.