Role Play How can you convince a customer to use product and service warranties for a product that is advertised for its quality of construction and durability?

Suppose the average time to service a Noodles & Company customer at a certain restaurant is 3 minutes and the service time follows an exponential distribution. (a) What is the probability that a customer will be serviced in less than 3 minutes? (b) Why is your answer more than 50 percent? Shouldn't exactly half the area be below the mean?

A fast-food restaurant has one drive-through window. An average of 40 customers per hour arrive at the window. It takes an average of 1 minute to serve a customer. Assume that interarrival and service times are exponential. a. On the average, how many customers arc wailing in line? b. On the average, how long does a customer spend at the restaurant (from time of arrival to time service is completed)? c. What fraction of the time are more than 3 cars waiting for service (this includes the car (if any) at the window)?

How can you convince a customer to use product and service warranties for a product that is advertised for its quality of construction and durability?

How much time, on average, would a server need to spend on a customer to achieve a service rate of $20$ customers per hour?

On May 5, Johnson Plumbing receives a phone call from a customer needing a new water heater and schedules a service visit for May 7. On May 7, Johnson installs the new water heater. The customer pays for services on May 10. According to the revenue recognition principle, on which date should Johnson record service revenue?

a. May 5 (date of phone call) b. May 7 (date of service) c. May 10 (date of cash receipt) d. Evenly over the three dates

Some suggest that customer expectation is the key to service success. Give an example from your own experience to support or refute this assertion.

A marketing manager wants to predict customers with risk of churning (switching their service contracts to another company) based on the number of calls the customer makes to the company call center and the number of visits the customer makes to the local service center. Data from a random sample of 30 customers are organized and stored in Churn.

a. Using all the data as the training sample, develop a classification tree model to predict the probability of churning, based on the number of calls the customer makes to the company call center and the number of visits the customer makes to the local service center.

b. What conclusions can you reach about the probability of churning?

Stone Pest Control offers extermination services to customers in various arrangements and packages. For example, a customer could call Stone as needed to come out and spray for insects; for this service, Stone charges $80 per service call. For a separate termite inspection, Stone charges a selling price of$100. Alternatively, the customer can sign an annual $300 contract with Stone for quarterly service visits plus one termite inspection. The annual contract also permits the customer to request spraying services at any time between quarterly visits, at no extra charge. Stone estimates that the average contract customer requests one service call per year, outside of the scheduled quarterly visits. For each of the following transactions, provide the journal entries that Stone would make to recognize revenues. Ignore the journal entries involving expenses.

b. January 2, 2013, a customer calls Stone to come out and spray for insects and inspect for termites. The customer has no contract with Stone. Stone performs the services on January 4, 2013, and the customer pays in cash.

Elements of the service process in which there is no contact with the customer are referred to as:

a. user-friendly.
b. robust.
c. back-of-the-house.
d. mission-consistent.
e. delayed differentiators.

Increasing the service offered to the customer makes it more difficult to compete on the basis of:

A. order qualifiers.

B. customization.

C. quality.

D. price.

E. flexibility.

Can you think of any products for which one or several of the elements of service, quality, and cost are not relevant to the customer? If so, explain why.

In what way might the first-come, first-served rule be unfair to the customer waiting for service in a bank or hospital ?

Suppose that customers arrive at a checkout counter at a rate of two per minute. If a clerk takes three minutes to serve the first customer arriving at the counter, what is the probability that at least one more customer will be waiting when the service to the first customer is completed?