Find the average number of callers

Assignment Help Strategic Management

Reference no: EM1331101

Ashley's Department Store in Kansas City maintains a successful catalog sales department in which a clerk takes orders by telephone. If the clerk is occupied on one line, incoming phone calls to the catalog department are answered automatically by a recording machine and asked to wait. As soon as the clerk is free, the party that has waited the longest is transferred and answered first. Calls come in at a rate of about 12 per hour. The clerk is capable of taking an order in an average of 4 minutes. Calls tend to follow a Poisson distribution, and service times tend to be exponential. The clerk is paid $10 per hour, but because of lost goodwill and sales, Ashley's loses about $50 per hour of customer time spent waiting for the clerk to take an order.

(a) What is the average time that catalog customers must wait before their calls are transferred to the order clerk?

(b) What is the average number of callers waiting to place an order?

(c) Ashley's is considering adding a second clerk to take calls. The store would pay that person the same $10 per hour. Should it hire another clerk? Explain.

Reference no: EM1331101

Questions Cloud

Describe each criterion so that each member of your team : You are a member of a committee in your district. What criteria would you use to select a formal assessment to be used district wide?

Explaining product crises in nestle- infant formula : Address one of four product crises: Nestle- infant formula in the third world; Bridgestone/Firestone- tire shredding; Exxon- Valdez oil spill disaster in Alaska.

Explain how employers might reduce costs : Show how employers might reduce costs in some of the major benefit areas in order to better finance their strategic organizational initiatives

Use the master theorem to solve bound : Prove bound is right using the substitution (induction) method

Find the average number of callers : Find the average number of callers waiting to place an order?

Make use of method iteration to find a formula expressing : How several elementary operations are used in the following algorithm? The elementary operations are comparison operations (such as > and

Prepare an employee counseling web page : Employee Counseling Web Page - Prepare the written content for a Web page that could be posted by Human Resources to help employees with any one of the challenges they might face at work

Explain dysfunctional aspects of the new economy : What are the dysfunctional aspects of the "New Economy" promoted by eBusiness? Identify any legal, ethical, regulatory and social issues that might negatively impact people, organizations and/or society.

Risk management in dental practice : What do you think is the most critical aspect of Risk Management in dental practice? How do you think this will affect your dental hygiene practice?

User Account

All Pages