A mail order firm has a total of 12 Watts lines coming into the customer service department (CSD), which has five customer service representatives. On average, two potential customers call CSD every minute. Each customer service representative requires on average 2 minutes to serve a customer. On one of the days two of the Watts lines happen to be down (as a result only 10 Watts lines are available that day). As a result, the mail order firm can expect that
(a) The proportion of potential customers getting a busy signal will
(i) Increase
(ii) Decrease
(iii) Remained unchanged
(b) The average waiting time that customers experience will
(i) Increase
(ii) Decrease
(iii) Remained unchanged
(c) The average utilization of customer service representatives will
(i) Increase
(ii) Decrease
(iii) Remained unchanged.

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The Answer is (a) The proportion of potential customers getting a busy signal will increase, since the queue capacity has decreased
(b) The average waiting time in queue will decrease since customers that are blocked from entering the process now are those that would have waited a long time when the lines were up.
(c) The average utilization of customers will decrease since more are blocked and thus fewer are served.

A Mail Order Firm Has a Total of 12 Watts