文档介绍：毕业论文(设计)外文翻译
一、外文原文
标题:Service process design flexibility and customer waiting time
原文:
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 bination. 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.
Introduction
Consumers today are more constrained by time than ever before. In an petitive world the pressure, expectation and need to plish more in less time is unlikely to diminish. Service providers understand the premium that consumers place on time they view as wasted while waiting for the delivery of services. A customer waiting in line for service is potentially a lost customer. Studies show that up to 27 percent of customers who can not get through on the telephone will likely take their business else where .As such, managers of service operations constantly strive to shorten customer waiting time during service delivery Firms across a variety of industries have introduced numerous peripheral service elements to the service package experience of their customers, in an attempt to shorten customer waiting times.
Such efforts are best illustrated by retail stores that have check-out registers which automatically print the date, amount and name of payee on the cheques customers use w