Service Quality And Service Capacity Planning

Concept of service capacity

• Service capacity is the upper limit on load that a service delivery utility can bear without affecting the quality standards.
• Service capacity planning is the process for determining optimal ways to meet the service parameters with reference to present business quality parameters and forecasted parameters.

DETERMINE SERVICE LEVEL REQUIREMENTS

• The management should first decide on the service delivery standards to be met.
• It could be how much time you can deliver a service to the customer, can be set as a target.
• E.g.: Bill payment may take 7 minutes of waiting and 2 minutes of processing.

STUDY THE INBOUND DEMAND

• Inbound demand is the number of people coming in for a particular service.
• It may vary with time periods, days (weekdays or weekends), seasons etc..
• This traffic analysis will help precise capacity planning.
• The basic statistical figures of number of people visiting a service station at different time periods may form the input to mathematical tool calculating the capacity requirement.

EXAMINING THE SERVICE DELIVERY PROCESS

• The process should be analyzed form the angle of increasing the delivery rate by re-engineering the whole process.
• The mathematical tool is the figures such as how many customers served per hour may be enough for planning.
• Implementation of various ways to increase the rate of delivery.

E.g: Use of technology, standardization of process, training the workforce operating at the counter etc…

ANALYSE THE CURRENT SITUATION

• The inbound traffic and service delivery rates are used to calculate the achievable level of service standards and actual service levels that are being experienced by the customer.
• The fluctuations over time have to be analyzed and managed accordingly.
• E.g.: jewelry shops are crowded at the festive times, wedding seasons or akshya trithiya.

PLANNING AND IMPLEMENTING CHANGE

• After the process is analyzed the change in process should be analyzed and implemented.
• This is the stage where the actually changes are implemented.
• E.g.: Extra counters that are functional at the mall on the weekends

REVIEW

• After the above steps are put into action, necessary care should be taken to constantly to update the system to reduce the flaws and increase efficiency.
• Periodic revision of the process helps identify the areas that require improvement and can be improvise.