Prioritization in the Presence of Self-ordering Opportunities in Omni-channel Services

Anonymous

Keywords: Omni-channel services, Self-ordering technology, Strategic queueing, Prioritization

Abstract: Motivated by the popularity of mobile-order-and-pay applications, especially in fast-casual food restaurants and coffee shops, we study omni-channel service systems---where customers can employ mobile applications for self-ordering---with respect to sojourn times, throughput, and social welfare. Our models are two-stage queues with two customer classes: walk-ins and mobiles. We identify Pareto efficient prioritization policies, highlighting trade-offs between each class's mean sojourn times. We allow customers to make strategic joining decisions based on their anticipated delays under an information structure where walk-ins observe partial queue length information. We draw from a wide array of techniques, including steady-state, transient, busy period, hitting-time analyses, and matrix analytic methods. We showcase the significance of prioritization on the system throughput and social welfare. We demonstrate settings where the (typically beneficial) transformation of a traditional service system to an omni-channel reduces throughput. Our analysis highlights the importance of prioritization policy choice for an efficient transition to an omni-channel service system. The throughput-optimal policy choice is highly dependent on the operational parameters and on customer patience levels; implementing a wrong policy can yield a significant loss in throughput and, hence, profitability.