Available online at www.sciencedirect.com Omega 32 (2004) 77–83 www.elsevier.com/locate/dsw Impact of process change on customer perception of waiting time: a eld study Wenhong Luo * , Matthew J. Liberatore, Robert L. Nydick, Q B. Chung, Elliot Sloane Department of Decision and Information Technologies, College of Commerce and Finance, Villanova University, Villanova, PA 19085, USA Received 7 February 2002; accepted 26 September 2003 Abstract Studies in process change have focused on the improvement of operational performance measures such as the actual waiting time of a service system. However, process redesign may not only change the actual waiting time but also have signicant impact on perceived waiting time. We examine how process changes aect customer perceptions on waiting and customer satisfaction. We describe a eld study in which customer waiting times, both actual and perceived, were measured and compared before and after a process change. Our results show that process changes can have signicant impact on customer perception of waiting time as well as the actual waiting time. This study illustrates the benet of piloting a proposed process change and measuring key process performance and customer assessment prior to implementation. ? 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Customer satisfaction; Field study; Perceived waiting time; Process change; Waiting line 1. Introduction Process changes can bring about improvements in the operational performance measures such as average waiting time. However, customer satisfaction may not be realized from such improvements if they are not perceived by the customers. In this study, we examine the eects of process change on perceived waiting time and customer satisfaction. Our study shows that process changes can have signicant impact on customer perception of waiting time. In any high-contact services where customers must be present, waiting is inevitable due to uncertain and uctuat- ing demands. Conceivably, service providers can increase capacity by employing more people and investing in more facilities to reduce waiting time but it still would not be economically feasible to completely eliminate waiting. In- creased competition in the marketplace, however, demands service providers to continuously improve service quality * Corresponding author. Tel.: +1-610-519-5592; fax: +1-610- 519-5015. E-mail address: wenhong.luo@villanova.edu (W. Luo). and customer satisfaction. The amount of waiting time has been shown to negatively correlate with customer satisfac- tion [1]. Extended waiting has been cited as an important source of customer dissatisfaction in many service industries [2]. Further, customer evaluation of service quality is partly determined by how long they have waited for the service. As a result, many companies in the airline and restaurant in- dustries have included waiting time as a measure of service quality [3]. Service providers are paying more and more attention to service process design and experimenting with alterna- tive service congurations. For instance, retail stores have widely adopted the express checkout system in which one or more checkout lines, designated as express lines, are converted to serve only those customers with small number of items, typically less than 12 items. The express lines can serve more customers in any given time period than regular checkout lines. By cutting down the waiting time for cus- tomers with fewer items, the express checkout system helps to reduce the average waiting time of the system, as well as the average length of the waiting line. The focus of such process redesign has been the reduction of average customer 0305-0483/$ - see front matter ? 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.omega.2003.09.010