As I was reading Inc. this morning (yes, I live for Business magazines), I came across the following article entitled, “When Slow Is Better.” It’s quite interesting, though I didn’t feel like posting it in its entirety, so you can find it here. The article poses the following dilemma:
…[h]igh levels of customer service can alienate those waiting in line and, eventually, depress sales. So how can customer service-intensive businesses strike a balance between quality service and high profits?
It then goes on to detail the answer:
Limit the number of customers you serve, but charge them more, advises a recent study, “The Quality-Speed Conundrum: Trade-offs in Customer-Intensive Services.” Scaling back on customers runs contrary to many entrepreneurs’ instincts. But “for these businesses, there are no shortcuts around this need for individual attention,” says Krishnan S. Anand, a business professor at the University of Utah and co-author of the paper, published in the academic journal Management Science.
To that end, the authors have developed a set of mathematical formulas to construct what they call a queuing framework.
As an example of a business successfully navigating the quality-speed tradeoff, the researchers point to concierge medicine. … [But] the authors believe their work is applicable to other businesses. “Customers don’t want to wait while the person in front of them gets all the attention,” Anand says. “But we all want the same attention.”
Did you catch it? “What?” you might be asking yourself. Well, that bit about my former professor and my Alma Mater, that’s what! Professor Anand was one of the best at the Business school. I recommend him to both current and prospective students of Marketing at the U. And if you’ve read older posts, you may or may not be aware that I’m not too fond of some of the School’s practices BUT I’m nevertheless beyond proud that Professor Anand has been highlighted this way. He deserves it.
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| Image courtesy of that Inc. article. |