Customer Roles in Queue Management 21 Understanding the Roles of the Customer and the Operation for Better Queue Management Mark M. Davis Bentley College, Waltham, MA, USA and Janelle Heineke Boston University, Boston, MA, USA Introduction Every organization which directly interacts with its customers confronts the issue of queues. Customers wait for service in a wide variety of settings, including manufacturing and service businesses, profit and not-for-profit organizations, and private and public agencies. The problem of customers queuing occurs in hospital emergency rooms, on 0800-number telephone lines for everything from software support to information on laundry detergent, and in virtually every other type of service operation from banks and retail stores to hotels and restaurants. In each and every instance the key issue associated with queues is this: customers do not like to wait. The actual performance of different queue configurations has been thoroughly researched and the issues of managing customers’ expectations and perceptions of the queuing experience have been previously studied and presented. This article builds on that previous work, presenting a taxonomy based on the service manager’s ability to control the customer’s perception of the queuing experience. It defines which queuing factors can be controlled by the firm, which factors can partially be controlled by the firm, and which factors are entirely outside the firm’s control, and identifies tactics for managing queues for each category of factors. The Importance of Queue Management The management of queues has received increased attention recently, owing in part to the fact that speed of service has been shown to provide a firm with a competitive advantage in the marketplace[1]. This emphasis on speed of delivery can be attributed both to the increasingly intense competition that is associated with the emergence of a single global economy and the increased criticality of time to consumers, especially in highly developed countries with high standards of living. As the standard of living in these countries increases, the value of customers’ time also increases, and consequently they seek out those goods and services which will minimize the expenditure of their time. Received May 1993 Revised December 1993 International Journal of Operations & Production Management, Vol. 14 No. 5, 1994, pp. 21-34. © MCB University Press, 0144-3577