Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

139

Business Process ManagementJournal Vol 7 No 2 2001

pp 139-156 MCB UniversityPress 1463-7154

Rationalizing the customerservice process

Hee-Woong KimMassachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge

Massachusetts USA and

Young-Gul KimKorea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology Seoul Korea

Keywords Customer service Model Organizational change Performance SimulationProcess management

Abstract Satisfying customers is the best method for organizations to gain competitiveadvantage To deliver quality services to customers we need to understand their expectationsGiven accurate understanding of expectations customer service which can be regarded as aprocess that consists of several steps to satisfy customer requirements should be redesigned tomatch them This research intends to suggest a customer service rationalization method whichconsists of service process model performance simulation and contingent change guidelines Forthe validation test we compared the proposed method with other service models and applied it toseveral real cases From the applications we found that the proposed method could reduce the riskof service redesign projects by enabling the better understanding of the performance simulationdata from the proposed change alternatives Finally we discussed the applications of the methodand the implications of this research

IntroductionOrganization can be viewed as a set of processes (Galbraith 1993 Mackenzie1989) which are structured to satisfy customers internal or external To deliverquality services to customers however we need to understand theirexpectations (Shostack 1984) Given accurate understanding of expectationscustomer service should be designed to match them Here customer servicemeans those activities that occur at the interface between customers and serverorganization other than proactive selling aiming for customer satisfaction andoperational efficiency (LaLonde and Zinszer 1976 Lovelock 1996 Rakowski1981-82) We can regard customer service as a process that consists of actualsteps to satisfy customer requirements For analyzing customer expectationsand designing customer service we need a customer service process model Agood service description with the process model is the first step fororganizations to gain competitive advantage by satisfying customer needs(Innis and LaLonde 1994) Accordingly better service design provides the keyto market success and to growth (Shostack 1984)

Unlike manufacturing however service industries typically do not applyrigorous process design standards prior to introducing new services (Fisk et al1993) The service description does not guarantee that the service will be

The research register for this journal is available at

httpwwwm cbupcomresearch_registers

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at

httpwwwemerald-library comft

Currently Hee-Woong Kim (heewkimlgedslgcokr) works at the Consulting Division of LG-EDS in Seoul Korea

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successful Based on the description we need to identify bottlenecks andrationalize them for effective customer service In addition we need to test thevalidity and feasibility of the changed service process before its realapplication Without such a performance test service change projects are liableto incur high risk due to their high management complexity and organization-wide impacts across functional units

In this research we aim to suggest a service process rationalization methodto minimize the risk inherent in a service change project For this purpose firstwe will suggest a customer service process model which can be used inunderstanding customer expectations by incorporating customer viewpointsand their actions to the model Second based on the service process modelperformance test about the current and change alternatives can be done usingsimulation techniques Third based on the identified bottlenecks from theperformance simulation it is required to rationalize the customer serviceprocess For this purpose we suggest contingency-based service changeguidelines For the empirical validation test of the proposed method we appliedit to a patientrsquos consultation process at a real hospital

Customer service process modelsThere are several service process modeling methods In general thechronological flowchart has been adapted in the service blueprint (Shostack1984) Service blueprinting a process analysis methodology was developed asa flow chart to systematize the description documentation and analysis ofservice process Figure 1 shows an example of a blueprint for a shoeshineprocess A circle means a service element while a rectangle implies a productelement The blueprint structures the process activities on either side of the` line of visibilityrsquorsquo The activities above the line are visible to customers thosebelow the line are back-room activities that are necessary to complete theservice operation but not visible to them One of the most significant

Figure 1Blueprint for a cornershoeshine

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

141

differences in service blueprints compared to other process models or flowcharts is the inclusion of customers their actions and their viewpoint in itThus the entire design of the service operation can be seen as if through thecustomerrsquos eye By explicitly depicting the interaction between server andcustomer the blueprint makes it possible to easily identify the critical processpoints where customer service can be affected

Based on the blueprinting concept Ramaswamy (1996) suggested a flowchart for service design and management It adopted several other modelingconstructs such as decision branch and process owner The flow chart modelsthe sequence of functions to deliver service to customers It represents thecustomer service interaction activities based on the blueprint conventionFigure 2 shows the flow chart of the order-taking process at a restaurant Thebottom of each rectangle represents the person or organization function-ownerresponsible for each function on the flow chart As the design evolves throughdetail design into implementation the name of the specific system componentsuch as computer program or human operator that is responsible for eachfunction will be added to the chart

Congram and Epelman (1995) devised describing service process with thestructured analysis and design technique (SADT) Based on the techniqueservice can be described with four perspectives

(1) What activity is being performed

(2) What is being transformed into what (inputs and outputs)

(3) What guides or constrains the activity (controls)

(4) And who or what is performing the activity (mechanism)

Figure 2Flow chart for ` take and

deliver orderrsquorsquo in arestaurant

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Figure 3 shows an example of SADT model for the tax return processAlthough it is possible to model several perspectives with SADT it issomewhat complex because of too many arrows between activities In additionit is used for information flow modeling rather than process flow modelingAnalysis of these service process models reveals the problems inherent in usinga flow-diagram approach The meanings of modeling constructs are ambiguousand inconsistent (Congram and Epelman 1995) The problem ofcomprehensibility is compounded by the inconsistent levels of detail that occurthroughout a diagram The most critical problem is that there have been fewresearches on the practical applications of service process models

Based on these problems we identified several requirements for thecustomer service process model First since it aims to model customer serviceit should focus on customer-server interaction activity flows Second theinteraction activity flows should be modeled from the customerrsquos viewpointwhich can be used in identifying customer requirements more correctly andenhancing customer satisfaction Then the model can be seen as if through thecustomerrsquos eyes Third the model should be diagrammatic for easycommunication between customers service employees and managers Theunderstandability of the model can also foster collaboration between theoperations marketing and service employees Fourth the model should reflectthe four representation perspectives of Curtis et al (1992) in process modeling

Figure 3SADT for the tax returnprocess (Congram andEpelman 1995)

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

143

which will be discussed next functional (activity and data flow) behavioral(activity flow) organizational (place and server) and informational (data)Finally the model should be useful in bottleneck identification and itsrationalization Based on these requirements we developed a customer servicerationalization method

Customer service rationalization methodThe customer service rationalization method is composed of three componentsservice process modeling with Dynamic-Event Process Chain (Dynamic-EPC)performance measurement with simulation techniques and service processchange with performance-based change guidelines

Service process modelingDynamic-EPC originates from the Event-Process Chain (EPC) modelingmethod (Kim 1995) that supports the modeling and redesign of businessprocess by adopting a strong customer perspective Dynamic-EPC has fiveconstructs as in Figure 4 event process branching flow and wait Event is achange of status perceived by customers Here the customer means any personor organization both internal or external which has a need that the serverorganization attempts to satisfy If the change is implicit or not perceived bythe customer it does not need to be modeled explicitly But if the perceivedchange affects the customerrsquos next behaviors then it should be modeledexplicitly for enhanced understanding of the business situation from thecustomer perspective

Process is an activity or series of activities performed by the customer orbetween the customer and server organization Activities performed solely by aserver organization without customer involvement are not of interest and thusnot shown on the Dynamic-EPC diagram Time for such activities is treated as

Figure 4Dynamic-EPC

constructs

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a ` waitrsquorsquo in service For example if a customer orders food at a restaurant thetime between ordering and receiving the food is treated as a wait The customerdoes not need to know details of how the order was processed inside thekitchen

Wait is defined as the customerrsquos delay before start of an event or a processafter requesting service due to the internal process of the server organizationand represented by the letter W It means the duration between customerrsquosrequesting service and receiving it During that period internal processes of theserver organization will be performed without customerrsquos involvement to meetcustomerrsquos needs and are not shown to customers While a queue waiting at astation means the delay for getting service before interacting with the serverthe wait means the delay after initiating the service If customers feel that thewait is too time consuming then we can analyze and rationalize it If customersaccept the wait however then we do not have to change it Not only the Processbut also the wait can be exploded into lower level Dynamic-EPC model wherecustomer object derived from the external customer takes the role of theinternal customer By exploding the wait we can analyze and model theinternal process of the organization along the customer objectrsquos movementAgain using the restaurant example even though the internal process of thekitchen is hidden at the top level Dynamic-EPC diagram it can be explodedinto a lower level diagram

Branch is a conditional splitting of an event-process into sub-flows Flowmeans the customer or customer objectrsquos movement across time and stations

Each modeling construct is specified with the Backus-Naur Form (BNF) forperformance simulation and information management The creation interval ofevent construct is specified for simulation Process is specified with itsprocessing time for simulation its input and output rule such as constraintresource required for performing the process and actor who is performing itFlow can be optionally specified with either its customer or a customer objectdepending on the movement along the process The moving time is used forsimulation The waiting time of wait construct is optionally used for conceptualunderstanding about the situation Branching is specified with its branchingcondition and ratio for simulation Finally station is specified with its nameand the number of servers for simulation

Figure 5 is a simple Dynamic-EPC diagram illustrating the customerrsquosvisiting process at a restaurant with some specifications The modelingconstructs are drawn on two dimensions station dimension vertically and timedimension horizontally Customers receive service as they move through theseprocesses and events

Performance measurementBased on the process model we can simulate the customer service process forperformance measurement For the service measurement we selected customerservice-related criteria such as throughput time moving time and queuewaiting time from the service quality model (Cronin and Taylor 1992

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

145

Parasuraman et al 1988) For the organizational performance measurementwe selected three factors from the rational goal dimension of the effectivenessmodel (Quinn and Rohrbaugh 1983) utilization efficiency and productivityUtilization means the stationrsquos usage against its work capacity Efficiency canbe measured with customerrsquos throughput time and delay time Productivity canbe measured with throughput Table I summarizes the simulation functionstransformed from the above factors

Throughput time is the total amount of time customers spend over theentire service process cycle It consists of customerrsquos moving time queuewaiting time and processing time along the service process Customerrsquosdelay time at a station is the summation of hisher moving time to a stationand queue waiting time for getting service The delay time at each stationshould be minimized as much as possible for customer satisfaction Delaytime is the average summation of customerrsquos moving time to a station andqueue waiting time for service at a station Utilization of each stationindicates how much work it does against its work capacity Whenorganizational change takes place stations with many differences such as toolow or too high utilization compared to other stations are frequently targetedThroughput is the total number of customers or outputs passing through theservice process which directly affects organizational performance in terms ofproductivity

Figure 5Dynamic-EPC diagram

for a customerrsquos visit toa restaurant

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146

Service process changePerformance of a service process needs to be improved in two ways first tomaximize customerrsquos satisfaction and second to do it as efficiently as possibleFor customer satisfaction we focused on the process throughput time and itsmost critical component the customerrsquos delay time Second for theorganizationrsquos management performance we focused on improvedproductivity and each stationrsquos utilization Based on the customerrsquos delay timeand the stationrsquos utilization considering the common applicability to anydomain we can classify service processes at stations into four situations andsuggest change guidelines as in Figure 6 (Kim and Kim 1997)

Table ISimulation functions

Factor Function

Customerrsquos throughput timePt

pˆ1

Pt

kˆ1

Pn

jˆ1

hellipmoving timejpk Dagger waiting timejk Dagger processing timejkdaggern

Customerrsquos delay time at stationk

Pt

pˆ1

Pn

jˆ1

hellipmoving timejpk Dagger waiting timejkdaggern

Utilization of stationkworking amountk

hellipworking timek pound number of serverskdagger

Productivity n at stationk=t

Key wherek = station number where k = 1tj = the customer at stationk where j = 1np = a station participating in the service process where p = 1tt = total number of stations in the service processn = total number of customers that have passed through stationk

working_amountk = serverrsquos actual working time at stationk

working_timek = serverrsquos arranged working time at stationk

number_of_serversk = total number of servers at stationk

waiting_timejk = the jth customerrsquos queue waiting time at stationk

processing_timejk = serverrsquos processing time for the jth customer at stationk

moving_timejpk = the jth customerrsquos moving time in the process flow from stationp to stationk

Figure 6Performance-basedchange guidelines

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

147

In situation 1 customers pass through a highly utilized station with short delaytime Since the station is also highly utilized it is an ideal situation formanagement It requires no change action (G1)

Situation 2 occurs when the station is highly utilized but customer delaytime is long From the customer perspective we need to shorten the delay timeby minimizing customerrsquos frequent movingwaiting time (G2) For thispurpose we can relocate stations to minimize distance between them Also wecan rearrange the processes andor events to take place more in parallelbecause sequential processing is generally more time consuming than theparallel From the organization perspective we need to increase the stationrsquoswork capacity (G3) For this purpose we can standardize or integrate theredundant processes to reduce the number of processes And we can considershortening the processing time by automating some manual tasks when theycannot be eliminated If the work capacity cannot be increased by anyinformation technology or procedural change then we should consider addingmore human servers or installing additional hardware facilities

In situation 3 customers pass through a less busy station with short delaytime From the customerrsquos perspective they can receive service rapidlypossibly as soon as they arrive at the station But it is not a preferable situationfrom the management perspective because the station is under-utilizedTherefore we should allocate some work performed at other overloadedstations to this station or transfer surplus work capacity to other overloadedones (G4)

Situation 4 occurs when customers experience long delays while the stationsare under-utilized This may result from either a peak-load condition or a batch-oriented work policy If the peak-time rush is the cause we may try to changethe customersrsquo arrival pattern (G5) For instance providing time period-relatedincentives may be considered to balance the peak-time utilization On the otherhand the stationrsquos batch-oriented work policy may be the cause For instance ifaccount adjustment and expense handling tasks are performed once a week inthe accounting department we can consider changing the work processingmode from batch to interactive (G6) since the batch processing model mayboost internal efficiency at the expense of more critical customer satisfaction

Comparison with other service process modelsThe proposed Dynamic-EPC can be compared to other service process models plusmnBlueprint (Shostack 1984) SADT (Cronin and Taylor 1992) and Flow chart(Ramaswamy 1996) plusmn as in Table II from the four representation perspectives ofCurtis et al (1992) functional behavioral organizational and informational

While Blueprint (Shostack 1984) deals with the behavioral perspective usingtime dimension it does not reflect other perspectives such as place and serverelements in the model As modeling constructs process and service elements areused in this model And the ` line of visibilityrsquorsquo has been adopted to classify thecustomersrsquo actions and internal operations in the model For the service processchange simple profitability analyses are conducted based on the model

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148

Flow chart (Ramaswamy 1996) has adopted the conventions of the BlueprintThis model deals with the organizational perspective using server element inaddition to the behavioral perspective For the service process change Flowchart supports identification of service process Although it is not directly usedfor simulation it becomes a preliminary basis for it And this model is used forservice process design and management

SADT (Cronin and Taylor 1992) focuses on information management ratherthan service process flow Although it deals with functional perspective itcannot fully reflect behavioral and organizational perspectives because it doesnot consider place and time dimensions in the model However it models aservice process with input output control and mechanism The primaryobjective of this model is the representation of a business systems structurewith data flow not the behavior of the system over time For this reason it isdifficult to use this model for customer service process change because of itsstatic characteristics

Compared to other service process models Dynamic-EPC supports serviceprocess representation with the diagram and its information management withthe specification from the four perspectives Although Dynamic-EPC deals withthe informational entities related with the process of informational perspective itdoes not model the structure and relationships between information entities whichcan be used for database system development The modeling construct waittakes a similar role to the ` line of visibilityrsquorsquo in Blueprint For the service processchange we can measure the responsiveness dimension of customer servicequality and process performance using simulation techniques while it is difficultto test the performance using other models From the comparison we can knowthat the proposed service rationalization method with Dynamic-EPC seems mostappropriate for customer service process analysis management and change

ApplicationTo support service process modeling we developed a modeling tool calledIntegrated Process Modeling Tool (IPMT) with Visual Basic in a PC Windowsenvironment In this paper we will introduce the application case of the method

Table IIComparison ofdynamic-EPC withother service processmodels

Representation perspectivesBlue-print

Flowchart SADT

Dynamic-EPC

Functional What processes are performed o o o oWhat flows of informational entities x x o o

Behavioral When process is performed o o x oHow it is performed o o o o

Organizational Where the process is performed x x x oBy whom the process is performed x o o o

Informational Information entities related with the process x x o oStructure and relationships x x x x

Notes where o = yes x = no

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

149

at the Seoul Adventist Hospital Seoul Adventist Hospital operates 17departments and has 110 doctors and 406 beds The hospital keeps the annualmonthlydaily number of patients of each department from which we couldassume the customerrsquos arrival pattern and branching ratio On average about1100 outpatients come to the hospital for doctor consultations each day Wepicked the outpatientrsquos consultation process across the internal medicine (IM)department testing room and pharmacy because it is representative of themost critical and time-consuming processes

Analysis and performance measurement of the current situationThe top level of the outpatientrsquos visit process is shown in Figure 7 The processis initiated by a patientrsquos arrival at the hospital Patients arrive at the hospitalrandomly or by appointment with a rate of 1 patient045min It follows anexponential distribution Arrived patients register and pay in advance thedoctorrsquos fee after waiting for a while in a queue This process can be performedby one of the eight servers with an average processing time of two minutes(here processing time follows a normal distribution) Registered outpatientswalk to the internal medicine department and the moving time follows anormal distribution with a mean of one minute and standard deviation of 05minute Arriving at the internal medicine departmentrsquos waiting room thepatient waits for his turn During that time the patient chart will be deliveredfrom the chart room to the department (W1) which takes about 15 minutesThose data about processing time at each step came from the measurementtime analysis Those specification data about the number of servers at astation input and output were gathered from interview These several process-related data can be specified and managed using the tool

There are four doctors in the internal medicine department Each out-patientwill be consulted by one of them for about ten minutes After the consultationthose who need additional step(s) plusmn medicine or testing plusmn have to pay again forthe step(s) in advance Arriving at the testing room the patient submits the pre-paid slip and is tested Arriving at the pharmacy desk the patient submits hisher prescription slip to request medicine The amount of time the customer hasto wait for his medicine is represented as ` waitrsquorsquo It can be exploded into a lowerlevel Dynamic-EPC (Figure 8) where the prescription slip (customer object)takes the customerrsquos (patient) role and goes through the internal pharmacyprocess The ` Proportionrsquorsquo process is specified using the tool After receiving themedicine the patient leaves the hospital

The current situation about the outpatientrsquos visit process is simulated withSIMPROCESS II5 (CACI 1993) The visualization capability enables us toverify the simulation model easily After verifying the model we should setthree parameters (warm-up period run-length number of replications) for thesimulation In the hospital case the run-length is eight hours because thehospital operates from 8 am to 5 pm except for one hour lunch time with zerowarm-up period The number of replications can be set by choosing thedesired risk and the width of the (1 plusmn a) confidence interval for the output

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variables selected We set it at 19 times with the 95 per cent confidence intervalbased on 387 as half width of the confidence interval and 866 as standarddeviation

Figure 7Outpatientrsquos visitprocess current case

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

151

The simulation results are summarized in Table III The throughput time of theprocess is 755 minutes Patients have to wait too long at the internal medicinedepartment (312 min) and at the pharmacy (219 min) while these two stationsrsquoutilization is higher (internal medicine department 974 per cent pharmacy964 per cent) than that of others And the number of outpatients consulted bythe doctors at the internal medicine department is 182 according to thesimulation However a small portion of arrived patients cannot be consultedbecause of the IM departmentrsquos limited capacity

Organizational change and performance measurementWe should investigate which station incurs a long delay time based on thesuggested change guidelines From the performance measurement resultsabout the current case delay times at the internal medicine department (312minutes) and the pharmacy (219 minutes) are longer than those at otherstations And the utilization of those two stations is higher (IM dept 974 percent pharmacy 964 per cent) than others These two cases therefore belong to

Figure 8Dynamic-EPC exploded

from W2

Table IIIPerformance

measurement resultsabout the current case

Customer service perspective Organizational performance perspective

Delay time Recept desk 58 min Utilization Recept 819IM dept 312 min Desk 974Pharmacy 219 min IM dept 964Exam room 16 min Pharmacy 714

Test roomThroughput time 755 min Throughput 182 patients

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situation 2 plusmn long delay time and high utilization plusmn in Figure 3 We need tochange the service processes between these two stations

According to the change guideline (G2 Minimize customerrsquos delay time) insituation 2 we consider performing processevent parallel That is themedicine requesttesting is transmitted electronically to the pharmacy or thetesting room during the patientrsquos consultation with the doctor by using a newconsultation support system Also we consider automating most of theactivities inside the pharmacy to shorten the processing time By the time thepatient arrives at the pharmacy hisher medicine is already waiting for him orher Or the patient can be tested without any delay at the testing room

Also the internal medicine department is a change target as it falls intosituation 2 According to the change guideline (G3) we should increase thestationrsquos work capacity The internal medicine departmentrsquos work capacitydepends on the number of doctors because the consultation by nature is amanual process Since adding more servers (doctors) usually incurs highorganizational costs however we need to recommend such an alternative verycarefully and after all other alternatives are first applied

Next we consider patients at the reception desk Since the currentregistration is performed manually it is slow and time-consuming Also thereare redundant tasks plusmn Register and pay Pay for the next step plusmn in Figure 7According to the change guideline (G2 Minimize customerrsquos delay time) insituation 2 we integrated the registration and payment processes by issuingeach patient a smart card with all their personal health history and bankaccount information When the patient arrives at the doctorrsquos office afterchecking hisher card at the reception desk with the registration system server(not human server) the patient is registered and the consultation history data isalready prepared Using the smart card we can change the ` registration andpayrsquorsquo process into an event Also all the patientrsquos expenses that day will behandled through his or her bank account All of these changes are reflected inthe alternative case 1 (Figure 9)

Case 1 is simulated and its performance measurement results aresummarized and compared with the current situation in Table IV According tothe simulation the throughput time is shortened from 755 to 611 minutesPatientrsquos delay times at each station are shortened except at the internalmedicine department And the utilization of the reception desk is reduced from819 per cent to 347 per cent with the help of IT plusmn smart card Finally theshortened throughput time increased the throughput the number of consultedoutpatients from 182 to 194 More patients can be consulted in the changedcase than the current one

Case 1 reveals some improvements in throughput time patientrsquos delay timeand stationsrsquo utilization But we can expect more improvement because case 1still shows long delay time at the internal medicine department and too lowutilization of the reception desk Patients at the internal department still belongto situation 2 plusmn long delay time and high utilization The reception desk belongsto situation 3 plusmn short delay time and low utilization For this reason we decided

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

153

to increase the internal medicine departmentrsquos work capacity according to thesuggested action guideline (G3 Increase the stationrsquos work capacity) Since thedoctorrsquos consultation work cannot be automated we added two more doctors tothe internal medicine department in the redesigned case 2 Also according tothe guideline (G4 Transfer some of work capacity) in situation 3 we reducedthe number of servers at the reception desk from eight to three without anyprocedural change

Performance measurement results about case 2 and its comparison withcurrent situation are summarized in Table V The throughput time is shortenedfrom 755 minutes to 182 minutes Customerrsquos delay times at each station aresignificantly shorter than the current one Also workload balancing amongthose stations is more even than in case 1 except the reception desk consists ofregistration system servers not employees The throughput is also increasedfrom 182 to 213 From these results we can know that all of the stations belong

Figure 9Changed visit process

case 1

Table IVPerformance

measurement resultsabout current and

case 1

Factor Current case Case 1 Difference

Stationrsquos utilization Reception desk 819 347 plusmn 472IM department 974 988 +14Pharmacy 964 781 plusmn 183Testing room 714 770 plusmn 54

Delay time Reception desk (min) 58 02 plusmn 56IM department (min) 312 474 +162Pharmacy (min) 219 12 plusmn 207Testing room (min) 16 12 plusmn 04

Throughput time Mean time (min) 755 611 plusmn 143Standard deviation 87 56

Throughput Number of consulted patients 182 194 +12

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to situation 1 We tested that there is difference between the current case andcase 2 using the null hypothesis test at a = 005

We can compare the results from the organizational performance andcustomer service dimensions From the organizational performanceperspective productivity of throughput and efficiency of throughput time havebeen improved The use of resource with utilization is lower than the currentsituation except the reception desk while those stations in the current situationare overloaded Case 2 however achieved a more even use of resources thanthe current situation across the IM department pharmacy and testingdepartment From the customer service perspective shortened delay times atseveral stations and the dramatically shortened throughput time imply that theresponsiveness of customer service is enhanced in case 2

DiscussionIn addition to the hospital case the method and tool have been applied toseveral real cases such as order processing at a cable-TV home shoppingcompany and project order tracking process at an advertising agency (Kim1998) We can classify customer service processes by the frequency of contactsbetween customer and server-organization low-contact type and high-contacttype Based on the classification we can discuss the applications of theproposed method as in Table VI In the low-contact type customers initiate theserver-organizationrsquos service process and wait for the process output withoutparticipating in it such as customerrsquos order cycle process There is just one waitbetween the start and the end of a service process Since the waiting time takesthe entire throughput time of a service process performed inside the server-organization it is relatively longer than that of the high-contact type Sincecustomers do not participate in the server-organizationrsquos process they can dosomething else during the wait For this reason a time-related goal of this typeis minimizing the waiting time The focus of service process analysis and

Table VComparison betweencurrent and case 2

CriteriaCurrent with

sdCase 2 with

sd DifferenceConfidence

interval

Utilization Recept desk 819 (34) 924 (51) +135 (plusmn 154 plusmn 56)IM dept 974 (21) 659 (62) plusmn 315 (266 365)Pharmacy 964 (23) 795 (43) plusmn 169 (133 205)Test room 714 (68) 784 (67) plusmn 70 (plusmn 115 plusmn 25)

Delay time Recept desk 58 min (13) 09 min(02) plusmn 49 min (43 55)IM Dept 312 min (46) 24 min(07) plusmn 288 min (266 310)Pharmacy 219 min (32) 13 min(04) plusmn 206 min (190 222)Test room 16 min (05) 15 min(05) plusmn 01 min (plusmn 02 04)

Through-put time Mean time 755 min(87) 182 min(21) plusmn 573 min (519 627)Through-put Consulted

patients 182 (51) 213 (63) + 32 (plusmn 347 plusmn 272)

Notes Current gt Case 2 Current = Case 2 Current lt Case 2

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

155

design in this type is the service delivery Therefore a customerrsquos mainconcerns are service process output and waiting time

In the high-contact type there are numerous contact points in this type ofpatientrsquos visit process at a hospital because customers initiate a service processand also participate in it along the process flow While the customerrsquos role inthe low-contact type is the recipient of service process output the customerrsquosrole in the high-contact type is as the participant in performing the serviceprocess For this reason several waits can be created along the process flowwhich take a relatively shorter time when compared to the low-contact typeThe participation characteristic inhibits customers from doing something elseduring not only the wait but also during the entire service process For thisreason a time-related goal of this type is minimizing the throughput time Andthe focus of service process analysis and design is the customer-serverinteraction Therefore customer satisfaction in this type is mainly related to theserverrsquos attitude and the responsiveness-related factors such as throughputtime and delay time (moving and waiting time)

ConclusionIn this research we suggested a service process rationalization methodcomposed of a service process model performance measurement and changeguidelines This research sets forth a way to explicitly link the customer viewto a service process model and yet have the process model be able to supportsimulation Compared to other service process models Dynamic-EPCincorporates not only the customer viewpoint but also reflects fourrepresentation perspectives in it Second the performance simulation resultsprovide a more objective basis for service change decisions which reduce therisk inherent in service process change Third the proposed change guidelinescan be used by practitioners in devising a contingency approach to serviceprocess change projects While some general change principles have beensuggested previously the classified customer service process situations and the

Table VIDiscussion about the

service rationalizationmethod

Low-contact type High-contact type

Contact points At the start and at the endof a service process

Numerous along the processflow

Role of customer Recipient of service processoutput

Participant in the serviceprocess

Frequency of wait One Many waits along the processflow

Waiting time Relatively long Relatively shortNature of wait for customers Can do something else Be captiveTime-related goal Minimize waiting time Minimize throughput timeAnalysisdesign focus Service delivery Customer-server interactionCustomer satisfaction-relatedfactors

Waiting time serviceprocess output

Serverrsquos attitude throughputtime moving and waitingtime

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156

contingent guidelines have advantages in identifying the service situation anddevising situation-specific change alternatives However we need to expandthe performance measurement about customer service from quantitative toqualitative factors

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CACI Products Company (1993) SIMFACTORY II5 and SIMPROCESS Manual

Congram C and Epelman M (1995) ` How to describe your service an invitation to thestructured analysis and design techniquersquorsquo International Journal of Service IndustryManagement Vol 6 No 2 pp 6-23

Cronin JJ and Taylor SA (1992) `Measuring service quality a reexamination and extensionrsquorsquoJournal of Marketing Vol 56 July pp 55-63

Curtis B Keller MI and Over J (1992) ` Process modelingrsquorsquo Communications of the ACMVol 35 No 9 pp 75-90

Fisk RP Brown SW and Bitner MJ (1993) ` Tracking the evolution of the service marketingliteraturersquorsquo Journal of Retailing Vol 69 No 1 Spring pp 61-103

Galbraith JR (1993) Competing with Flexible Lateral Organizations 2nd ed Addison-WesleyReading MA

Innis DE and LaLonde BJ (1994) ` Customer service the key to customer satisfactioncustomer loyalty and market sharersquorsquo Journal of Business Logistics Vol 15 No 1 pp 1-27

Kim HW (1998) Enhancement of Organizational Performance Using Dynamic Process Modelingand Simulation PhD Dissertation Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology

Kim HW and Kim YG (1997) ` Dynamic process modeling for BPRrsquorsquo Information ampManagement Vol 32 No 1 pp 1-13

Kim YG (1995) `Process modeling for BPR event-process chain approachrsquorsquo Proceedings ofInternational Conference on Information Systems pp 109-21

LaLonde BJ and Zinszer PH (1976) Customer Service Meaning and Measurement NationalCouncil of Physical Distribution Management Chicago IL

Lovelock CH (1996) Service Marketing 3rd ed Prentice-Hall Englewood Cliffs NS

Mackenzie KD (1989) ` The process approach to organizational designrsquorsquo Human SystemsManagement Vol 8 pp 31-43

Parasuraman A Zeithaml VA and Berry LL (1988) ` SERVQUAL a multiple-item scale formeasuring consumer perceptions of service qualityrsquorsquo Journal of Retailing Vol 6 No 1pp 12-40

Quinn RE and Rohrbaugh J (1983) `A spatial model of effectiveness criteria towards acompeting values approaches to organizational analysisrsquorsquo Management Science Vol 29No 3 pp 363-77

Rakowski JP (1981-82) ` The customer service conceptrsquorsquo Review of Business amp EconomicResearch No 2 Winter pp 55-66

Ramaswamy R (1996) Design and Management of Service Process Addison-Wesley PublishingCompany Reading MA

Shostack GL (1984) ` Designing services that deliverrsquorsquo Harvard Business Review January-FebruaryVol 62 pp 133-9

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

141

differences in service blueprints compared to other process models or flowcharts is the inclusion of customers their actions and their viewpoint in itThus the entire design of the service operation can be seen as if through thecustomerrsquos eye By explicitly depicting the interaction between server andcustomer the blueprint makes it possible to easily identify the critical processpoints where customer service can be affected

Based on the blueprinting concept Ramaswamy (1996) suggested a flowchart for service design and management It adopted several other modelingconstructs such as decision branch and process owner The flow chart modelsthe sequence of functions to deliver service to customers It represents thecustomer service interaction activities based on the blueprint conventionFigure 2 shows the flow chart of the order-taking process at a restaurant Thebottom of each rectangle represents the person or organization function-ownerresponsible for each function on the flow chart As the design evolves throughdetail design into implementation the name of the specific system componentsuch as computer program or human operator that is responsible for eachfunction will be added to the chart

Congram and Epelman (1995) devised describing service process with thestructured analysis and design technique (SADT) Based on the techniqueservice can be described with four perspectives

(1) What activity is being performed

(2) What is being transformed into what (inputs and outputs)

(3) What guides or constrains the activity (controls)

(4) And who or what is performing the activity (mechanism)

Figure 2Flow chart for ` take and

deliver orderrsquorsquo in arestaurant

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Figure 3 shows an example of SADT model for the tax return processAlthough it is possible to model several perspectives with SADT it issomewhat complex because of too many arrows between activities In additionit is used for information flow modeling rather than process flow modelingAnalysis of these service process models reveals the problems inherent in usinga flow-diagram approach The meanings of modeling constructs are ambiguousand inconsistent (Congram and Epelman 1995) The problem ofcomprehensibility is compounded by the inconsistent levels of detail that occurthroughout a diagram The most critical problem is that there have been fewresearches on the practical applications of service process models

Based on these problems we identified several requirements for thecustomer service process model First since it aims to model customer serviceit should focus on customer-server interaction activity flows Second theinteraction activity flows should be modeled from the customerrsquos viewpointwhich can be used in identifying customer requirements more correctly andenhancing customer satisfaction Then the model can be seen as if through thecustomerrsquos eyes Third the model should be diagrammatic for easycommunication between customers service employees and managers Theunderstandability of the model can also foster collaboration between theoperations marketing and service employees Fourth the model should reflectthe four representation perspectives of Curtis et al (1992) in process modeling

Figure 3SADT for the tax returnprocess (Congram andEpelman 1995)

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

143

which will be discussed next functional (activity and data flow) behavioral(activity flow) organizational (place and server) and informational (data)Finally the model should be useful in bottleneck identification and itsrationalization Based on these requirements we developed a customer servicerationalization method

Customer service rationalization methodThe customer service rationalization method is composed of three componentsservice process modeling with Dynamic-Event Process Chain (Dynamic-EPC)performance measurement with simulation techniques and service processchange with performance-based change guidelines

Service process modelingDynamic-EPC originates from the Event-Process Chain (EPC) modelingmethod (Kim 1995) that supports the modeling and redesign of businessprocess by adopting a strong customer perspective Dynamic-EPC has fiveconstructs as in Figure 4 event process branching flow and wait Event is achange of status perceived by customers Here the customer means any personor organization both internal or external which has a need that the serverorganization attempts to satisfy If the change is implicit or not perceived bythe customer it does not need to be modeled explicitly But if the perceivedchange affects the customerrsquos next behaviors then it should be modeledexplicitly for enhanced understanding of the business situation from thecustomer perspective

Process is an activity or series of activities performed by the customer orbetween the customer and server organization Activities performed solely by aserver organization without customer involvement are not of interest and thusnot shown on the Dynamic-EPC diagram Time for such activities is treated as

Figure 4Dynamic-EPC

constructs

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a ` waitrsquorsquo in service For example if a customer orders food at a restaurant thetime between ordering and receiving the food is treated as a wait The customerdoes not need to know details of how the order was processed inside thekitchen

Wait is defined as the customerrsquos delay before start of an event or a processafter requesting service due to the internal process of the server organizationand represented by the letter W It means the duration between customerrsquosrequesting service and receiving it During that period internal processes of theserver organization will be performed without customerrsquos involvement to meetcustomerrsquos needs and are not shown to customers While a queue waiting at astation means the delay for getting service before interacting with the serverthe wait means the delay after initiating the service If customers feel that thewait is too time consuming then we can analyze and rationalize it If customersaccept the wait however then we do not have to change it Not only the Processbut also the wait can be exploded into lower level Dynamic-EPC model wherecustomer object derived from the external customer takes the role of theinternal customer By exploding the wait we can analyze and model theinternal process of the organization along the customer objectrsquos movementAgain using the restaurant example even though the internal process of thekitchen is hidden at the top level Dynamic-EPC diagram it can be explodedinto a lower level diagram

Branch is a conditional splitting of an event-process into sub-flows Flowmeans the customer or customer objectrsquos movement across time and stations

Each modeling construct is specified with the Backus-Naur Form (BNF) forperformance simulation and information management The creation interval ofevent construct is specified for simulation Process is specified with itsprocessing time for simulation its input and output rule such as constraintresource required for performing the process and actor who is performing itFlow can be optionally specified with either its customer or a customer objectdepending on the movement along the process The moving time is used forsimulation The waiting time of wait construct is optionally used for conceptualunderstanding about the situation Branching is specified with its branchingcondition and ratio for simulation Finally station is specified with its nameand the number of servers for simulation

Figure 5 is a simple Dynamic-EPC diagram illustrating the customerrsquosvisiting process at a restaurant with some specifications The modelingconstructs are drawn on two dimensions station dimension vertically and timedimension horizontally Customers receive service as they move through theseprocesses and events

Performance measurementBased on the process model we can simulate the customer service process forperformance measurement For the service measurement we selected customerservice-related criteria such as throughput time moving time and queuewaiting time from the service quality model (Cronin and Taylor 1992

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

145

Parasuraman et al 1988) For the organizational performance measurementwe selected three factors from the rational goal dimension of the effectivenessmodel (Quinn and Rohrbaugh 1983) utilization efficiency and productivityUtilization means the stationrsquos usage against its work capacity Efficiency canbe measured with customerrsquos throughput time and delay time Productivity canbe measured with throughput Table I summarizes the simulation functionstransformed from the above factors

Throughput time is the total amount of time customers spend over theentire service process cycle It consists of customerrsquos moving time queuewaiting time and processing time along the service process Customerrsquosdelay time at a station is the summation of hisher moving time to a stationand queue waiting time for getting service The delay time at each stationshould be minimized as much as possible for customer satisfaction Delaytime is the average summation of customerrsquos moving time to a station andqueue waiting time for service at a station Utilization of each stationindicates how much work it does against its work capacity Whenorganizational change takes place stations with many differences such as toolow or too high utilization compared to other stations are frequently targetedThroughput is the total number of customers or outputs passing through theservice process which directly affects organizational performance in terms ofproductivity

Figure 5Dynamic-EPC diagram

for a customerrsquos visit toa restaurant

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Service process changePerformance of a service process needs to be improved in two ways first tomaximize customerrsquos satisfaction and second to do it as efficiently as possibleFor customer satisfaction we focused on the process throughput time and itsmost critical component the customerrsquos delay time Second for theorganizationrsquos management performance we focused on improvedproductivity and each stationrsquos utilization Based on the customerrsquos delay timeand the stationrsquos utilization considering the common applicability to anydomain we can classify service processes at stations into four situations andsuggest change guidelines as in Figure 6 (Kim and Kim 1997)

Table ISimulation functions

Factor Function

Customerrsquos throughput timePt

pˆ1

Pt

kˆ1

Pn

jˆ1

hellipmoving timejpk Dagger waiting timejk Dagger processing timejkdaggern

Customerrsquos delay time at stationk

Pt

pˆ1

Pn

jˆ1

hellipmoving timejpk Dagger waiting timejkdaggern

Utilization of stationkworking amountk

hellipworking timek pound number of serverskdagger

Productivity n at stationk=t

Key wherek = station number where k = 1tj = the customer at stationk where j = 1np = a station participating in the service process where p = 1tt = total number of stations in the service processn = total number of customers that have passed through stationk

working_amountk = serverrsquos actual working time at stationk

working_timek = serverrsquos arranged working time at stationk

number_of_serversk = total number of servers at stationk

waiting_timejk = the jth customerrsquos queue waiting time at stationk

processing_timejk = serverrsquos processing time for the jth customer at stationk

moving_timejpk = the jth customerrsquos moving time in the process flow from stationp to stationk

Figure 6Performance-basedchange guidelines

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

147

In situation 1 customers pass through a highly utilized station with short delaytime Since the station is also highly utilized it is an ideal situation formanagement It requires no change action (G1)

Situation 2 occurs when the station is highly utilized but customer delaytime is long From the customer perspective we need to shorten the delay timeby minimizing customerrsquos frequent movingwaiting time (G2) For thispurpose we can relocate stations to minimize distance between them Also wecan rearrange the processes andor events to take place more in parallelbecause sequential processing is generally more time consuming than theparallel From the organization perspective we need to increase the stationrsquoswork capacity (G3) For this purpose we can standardize or integrate theredundant processes to reduce the number of processes And we can considershortening the processing time by automating some manual tasks when theycannot be eliminated If the work capacity cannot be increased by anyinformation technology or procedural change then we should consider addingmore human servers or installing additional hardware facilities

In situation 3 customers pass through a less busy station with short delaytime From the customerrsquos perspective they can receive service rapidlypossibly as soon as they arrive at the station But it is not a preferable situationfrom the management perspective because the station is under-utilizedTherefore we should allocate some work performed at other overloadedstations to this station or transfer surplus work capacity to other overloadedones (G4)

Situation 4 occurs when customers experience long delays while the stationsare under-utilized This may result from either a peak-load condition or a batch-oriented work policy If the peak-time rush is the cause we may try to changethe customersrsquo arrival pattern (G5) For instance providing time period-relatedincentives may be considered to balance the peak-time utilization On the otherhand the stationrsquos batch-oriented work policy may be the cause For instance ifaccount adjustment and expense handling tasks are performed once a week inthe accounting department we can consider changing the work processingmode from batch to interactive (G6) since the batch processing model mayboost internal efficiency at the expense of more critical customer satisfaction

Comparison with other service process modelsThe proposed Dynamic-EPC can be compared to other service process models plusmnBlueprint (Shostack 1984) SADT (Cronin and Taylor 1992) and Flow chart(Ramaswamy 1996) plusmn as in Table II from the four representation perspectives ofCurtis et al (1992) functional behavioral organizational and informational

While Blueprint (Shostack 1984) deals with the behavioral perspective usingtime dimension it does not reflect other perspectives such as place and serverelements in the model As modeling constructs process and service elements areused in this model And the ` line of visibilityrsquorsquo has been adopted to classify thecustomersrsquo actions and internal operations in the model For the service processchange simple profitability analyses are conducted based on the model

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Flow chart (Ramaswamy 1996) has adopted the conventions of the BlueprintThis model deals with the organizational perspective using server element inaddition to the behavioral perspective For the service process change Flowchart supports identification of service process Although it is not directly usedfor simulation it becomes a preliminary basis for it And this model is used forservice process design and management

SADT (Cronin and Taylor 1992) focuses on information management ratherthan service process flow Although it deals with functional perspective itcannot fully reflect behavioral and organizational perspectives because it doesnot consider place and time dimensions in the model However it models aservice process with input output control and mechanism The primaryobjective of this model is the representation of a business systems structurewith data flow not the behavior of the system over time For this reason it isdifficult to use this model for customer service process change because of itsstatic characteristics

Compared to other service process models Dynamic-EPC supports serviceprocess representation with the diagram and its information management withthe specification from the four perspectives Although Dynamic-EPC deals withthe informational entities related with the process of informational perspective itdoes not model the structure and relationships between information entities whichcan be used for database system development The modeling construct waittakes a similar role to the ` line of visibilityrsquorsquo in Blueprint For the service processchange we can measure the responsiveness dimension of customer servicequality and process performance using simulation techniques while it is difficultto test the performance using other models From the comparison we can knowthat the proposed service rationalization method with Dynamic-EPC seems mostappropriate for customer service process analysis management and change

ApplicationTo support service process modeling we developed a modeling tool calledIntegrated Process Modeling Tool (IPMT) with Visual Basic in a PC Windowsenvironment In this paper we will introduce the application case of the method

Table IIComparison ofdynamic-EPC withother service processmodels

Representation perspectivesBlue-print

Flowchart SADT

Dynamic-EPC

Functional What processes are performed o o o oWhat flows of informational entities x x o o

Behavioral When process is performed o o x oHow it is performed o o o o

Organizational Where the process is performed x x x oBy whom the process is performed x o o o

Informational Information entities related with the process x x o oStructure and relationships x x x x

Notes where o = yes x = no

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

149

at the Seoul Adventist Hospital Seoul Adventist Hospital operates 17departments and has 110 doctors and 406 beds The hospital keeps the annualmonthlydaily number of patients of each department from which we couldassume the customerrsquos arrival pattern and branching ratio On average about1100 outpatients come to the hospital for doctor consultations each day Wepicked the outpatientrsquos consultation process across the internal medicine (IM)department testing room and pharmacy because it is representative of themost critical and time-consuming processes

Analysis and performance measurement of the current situationThe top level of the outpatientrsquos visit process is shown in Figure 7 The processis initiated by a patientrsquos arrival at the hospital Patients arrive at the hospitalrandomly or by appointment with a rate of 1 patient045min It follows anexponential distribution Arrived patients register and pay in advance thedoctorrsquos fee after waiting for a while in a queue This process can be performedby one of the eight servers with an average processing time of two minutes(here processing time follows a normal distribution) Registered outpatientswalk to the internal medicine department and the moving time follows anormal distribution with a mean of one minute and standard deviation of 05minute Arriving at the internal medicine departmentrsquos waiting room thepatient waits for his turn During that time the patient chart will be deliveredfrom the chart room to the department (W1) which takes about 15 minutesThose data about processing time at each step came from the measurementtime analysis Those specification data about the number of servers at astation input and output were gathered from interview These several process-related data can be specified and managed using the tool

There are four doctors in the internal medicine department Each out-patientwill be consulted by one of them for about ten minutes After the consultationthose who need additional step(s) plusmn medicine or testing plusmn have to pay again forthe step(s) in advance Arriving at the testing room the patient submits the pre-paid slip and is tested Arriving at the pharmacy desk the patient submits hisher prescription slip to request medicine The amount of time the customer hasto wait for his medicine is represented as ` waitrsquorsquo It can be exploded into a lowerlevel Dynamic-EPC (Figure 8) where the prescription slip (customer object)takes the customerrsquos (patient) role and goes through the internal pharmacyprocess The ` Proportionrsquorsquo process is specified using the tool After receiving themedicine the patient leaves the hospital

The current situation about the outpatientrsquos visit process is simulated withSIMPROCESS II5 (CACI 1993) The visualization capability enables us toverify the simulation model easily After verifying the model we should setthree parameters (warm-up period run-length number of replications) for thesimulation In the hospital case the run-length is eight hours because thehospital operates from 8 am to 5 pm except for one hour lunch time with zerowarm-up period The number of replications can be set by choosing thedesired risk and the width of the (1 plusmn a) confidence interval for the output

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variables selected We set it at 19 times with the 95 per cent confidence intervalbased on 387 as half width of the confidence interval and 866 as standarddeviation

Figure 7Outpatientrsquos visitprocess current case

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

151

The simulation results are summarized in Table III The throughput time of theprocess is 755 minutes Patients have to wait too long at the internal medicinedepartment (312 min) and at the pharmacy (219 min) while these two stationsrsquoutilization is higher (internal medicine department 974 per cent pharmacy964 per cent) than that of others And the number of outpatients consulted bythe doctors at the internal medicine department is 182 according to thesimulation However a small portion of arrived patients cannot be consultedbecause of the IM departmentrsquos limited capacity

Organizational change and performance measurementWe should investigate which station incurs a long delay time based on thesuggested change guidelines From the performance measurement resultsabout the current case delay times at the internal medicine department (312minutes) and the pharmacy (219 minutes) are longer than those at otherstations And the utilization of those two stations is higher (IM dept 974 percent pharmacy 964 per cent) than others These two cases therefore belong to

Figure 8Dynamic-EPC exploded

from W2

Table IIIPerformance

measurement resultsabout the current case

Customer service perspective Organizational performance perspective

Delay time Recept desk 58 min Utilization Recept 819IM dept 312 min Desk 974Pharmacy 219 min IM dept 964Exam room 16 min Pharmacy 714

Test roomThroughput time 755 min Throughput 182 patients

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situation 2 plusmn long delay time and high utilization plusmn in Figure 3 We need tochange the service processes between these two stations

According to the change guideline (G2 Minimize customerrsquos delay time) insituation 2 we consider performing processevent parallel That is themedicine requesttesting is transmitted electronically to the pharmacy or thetesting room during the patientrsquos consultation with the doctor by using a newconsultation support system Also we consider automating most of theactivities inside the pharmacy to shorten the processing time By the time thepatient arrives at the pharmacy hisher medicine is already waiting for him orher Or the patient can be tested without any delay at the testing room

Also the internal medicine department is a change target as it falls intosituation 2 According to the change guideline (G3) we should increase thestationrsquos work capacity The internal medicine departmentrsquos work capacitydepends on the number of doctors because the consultation by nature is amanual process Since adding more servers (doctors) usually incurs highorganizational costs however we need to recommend such an alternative verycarefully and after all other alternatives are first applied

Next we consider patients at the reception desk Since the currentregistration is performed manually it is slow and time-consuming Also thereare redundant tasks plusmn Register and pay Pay for the next step plusmn in Figure 7According to the change guideline (G2 Minimize customerrsquos delay time) insituation 2 we integrated the registration and payment processes by issuingeach patient a smart card with all their personal health history and bankaccount information When the patient arrives at the doctorrsquos office afterchecking hisher card at the reception desk with the registration system server(not human server) the patient is registered and the consultation history data isalready prepared Using the smart card we can change the ` registration andpayrsquorsquo process into an event Also all the patientrsquos expenses that day will behandled through his or her bank account All of these changes are reflected inthe alternative case 1 (Figure 9)

Case 1 is simulated and its performance measurement results aresummarized and compared with the current situation in Table IV According tothe simulation the throughput time is shortened from 755 to 611 minutesPatientrsquos delay times at each station are shortened except at the internalmedicine department And the utilization of the reception desk is reduced from819 per cent to 347 per cent with the help of IT plusmn smart card Finally theshortened throughput time increased the throughput the number of consultedoutpatients from 182 to 194 More patients can be consulted in the changedcase than the current one

Case 1 reveals some improvements in throughput time patientrsquos delay timeand stationsrsquo utilization But we can expect more improvement because case 1still shows long delay time at the internal medicine department and too lowutilization of the reception desk Patients at the internal department still belongto situation 2 plusmn long delay time and high utilization The reception desk belongsto situation 3 plusmn short delay time and low utilization For this reason we decided

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

153

to increase the internal medicine departmentrsquos work capacity according to thesuggested action guideline (G3 Increase the stationrsquos work capacity) Since thedoctorrsquos consultation work cannot be automated we added two more doctors tothe internal medicine department in the redesigned case 2 Also according tothe guideline (G4 Transfer some of work capacity) in situation 3 we reducedthe number of servers at the reception desk from eight to three without anyprocedural change

Performance measurement results about case 2 and its comparison withcurrent situation are summarized in Table V The throughput time is shortenedfrom 755 minutes to 182 minutes Customerrsquos delay times at each station aresignificantly shorter than the current one Also workload balancing amongthose stations is more even than in case 1 except the reception desk consists ofregistration system servers not employees The throughput is also increasedfrom 182 to 213 From these results we can know that all of the stations belong

Figure 9Changed visit process

case 1

Table IVPerformance

measurement resultsabout current and

case 1

Factor Current case Case 1 Difference

Stationrsquos utilization Reception desk 819 347 plusmn 472IM department 974 988 +14Pharmacy 964 781 plusmn 183Testing room 714 770 plusmn 54

Delay time Reception desk (min) 58 02 plusmn 56IM department (min) 312 474 +162Pharmacy (min) 219 12 plusmn 207Testing room (min) 16 12 plusmn 04

Throughput time Mean time (min) 755 611 plusmn 143Standard deviation 87 56

Throughput Number of consulted patients 182 194 +12

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to situation 1 We tested that there is difference between the current case andcase 2 using the null hypothesis test at a = 005

We can compare the results from the organizational performance andcustomer service dimensions From the organizational performanceperspective productivity of throughput and efficiency of throughput time havebeen improved The use of resource with utilization is lower than the currentsituation except the reception desk while those stations in the current situationare overloaded Case 2 however achieved a more even use of resources thanthe current situation across the IM department pharmacy and testingdepartment From the customer service perspective shortened delay times atseveral stations and the dramatically shortened throughput time imply that theresponsiveness of customer service is enhanced in case 2

DiscussionIn addition to the hospital case the method and tool have been applied toseveral real cases such as order processing at a cable-TV home shoppingcompany and project order tracking process at an advertising agency (Kim1998) We can classify customer service processes by the frequency of contactsbetween customer and server-organization low-contact type and high-contacttype Based on the classification we can discuss the applications of theproposed method as in Table VI In the low-contact type customers initiate theserver-organizationrsquos service process and wait for the process output withoutparticipating in it such as customerrsquos order cycle process There is just one waitbetween the start and the end of a service process Since the waiting time takesthe entire throughput time of a service process performed inside the server-organization it is relatively longer than that of the high-contact type Sincecustomers do not participate in the server-organizationrsquos process they can dosomething else during the wait For this reason a time-related goal of this typeis minimizing the waiting time The focus of service process analysis and

Table VComparison betweencurrent and case 2

CriteriaCurrent with

sdCase 2 with

sd DifferenceConfidence

interval

Utilization Recept desk 819 (34) 924 (51) +135 (plusmn 154 plusmn 56)IM dept 974 (21) 659 (62) plusmn 315 (266 365)Pharmacy 964 (23) 795 (43) plusmn 169 (133 205)Test room 714 (68) 784 (67) plusmn 70 (plusmn 115 plusmn 25)

Delay time Recept desk 58 min (13) 09 min(02) plusmn 49 min (43 55)IM Dept 312 min (46) 24 min(07) plusmn 288 min (266 310)Pharmacy 219 min (32) 13 min(04) plusmn 206 min (190 222)Test room 16 min (05) 15 min(05) plusmn 01 min (plusmn 02 04)

Through-put time Mean time 755 min(87) 182 min(21) plusmn 573 min (519 627)Through-put Consulted

patients 182 (51) 213 (63) + 32 (plusmn 347 plusmn 272)

Notes Current gt Case 2 Current = Case 2 Current lt Case 2

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

155

design in this type is the service delivery Therefore a customerrsquos mainconcerns are service process output and waiting time

In the high-contact type there are numerous contact points in this type ofpatientrsquos visit process at a hospital because customers initiate a service processand also participate in it along the process flow While the customerrsquos role inthe low-contact type is the recipient of service process output the customerrsquosrole in the high-contact type is as the participant in performing the serviceprocess For this reason several waits can be created along the process flowwhich take a relatively shorter time when compared to the low-contact typeThe participation characteristic inhibits customers from doing something elseduring not only the wait but also during the entire service process For thisreason a time-related goal of this type is minimizing the throughput time Andthe focus of service process analysis and design is the customer-serverinteraction Therefore customer satisfaction in this type is mainly related to theserverrsquos attitude and the responsiveness-related factors such as throughputtime and delay time (moving and waiting time)

ConclusionIn this research we suggested a service process rationalization methodcomposed of a service process model performance measurement and changeguidelines This research sets forth a way to explicitly link the customer viewto a service process model and yet have the process model be able to supportsimulation Compared to other service process models Dynamic-EPCincorporates not only the customer viewpoint but also reflects fourrepresentation perspectives in it Second the performance simulation resultsprovide a more objective basis for service change decisions which reduce therisk inherent in service process change Third the proposed change guidelinescan be used by practitioners in devising a contingency approach to serviceprocess change projects While some general change principles have beensuggested previously the classified customer service process situations and the

Table VIDiscussion about the

service rationalizationmethod

Low-contact type High-contact type

Contact points At the start and at the endof a service process

Numerous along the processflow

Role of customer Recipient of service processoutput

Participant in the serviceprocess

Frequency of wait One Many waits along the processflow

Waiting time Relatively long Relatively shortNature of wait for customers Can do something else Be captiveTime-related goal Minimize waiting time Minimize throughput timeAnalysisdesign focus Service delivery Customer-server interactionCustomer satisfaction-relatedfactors

Waiting time serviceprocess output

Serverrsquos attitude throughputtime moving and waitingtime

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contingent guidelines have advantages in identifying the service situation anddevising situation-specific change alternatives However we need to expandthe performance measurement about customer service from quantitative toqualitative factors

References

CACI Products Company (1993) SIMFACTORY II5 and SIMPROCESS Manual

Congram C and Epelman M (1995) ` How to describe your service an invitation to thestructured analysis and design techniquersquorsquo International Journal of Service IndustryManagement Vol 6 No 2 pp 6-23

Cronin JJ and Taylor SA (1992) `Measuring service quality a reexamination and extensionrsquorsquoJournal of Marketing Vol 56 July pp 55-63

Curtis B Keller MI and Over J (1992) ` Process modelingrsquorsquo Communications of the ACMVol 35 No 9 pp 75-90

Fisk RP Brown SW and Bitner MJ (1993) ` Tracking the evolution of the service marketingliteraturersquorsquo Journal of Retailing Vol 69 No 1 Spring pp 61-103

Galbraith JR (1993) Competing with Flexible Lateral Organizations 2nd ed Addison-WesleyReading MA

Innis DE and LaLonde BJ (1994) ` Customer service the key to customer satisfactioncustomer loyalty and market sharersquorsquo Journal of Business Logistics Vol 15 No 1 pp 1-27

Kim HW (1998) Enhancement of Organizational Performance Using Dynamic Process Modelingand Simulation PhD Dissertation Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology

Kim HW and Kim YG (1997) ` Dynamic process modeling for BPRrsquorsquo Information ampManagement Vol 32 No 1 pp 1-13

Kim YG (1995) `Process modeling for BPR event-process chain approachrsquorsquo Proceedings ofInternational Conference on Information Systems pp 109-21

LaLonde BJ and Zinszer PH (1976) Customer Service Meaning and Measurement NationalCouncil of Physical Distribution Management Chicago IL

Lovelock CH (1996) Service Marketing 3rd ed Prentice-Hall Englewood Cliffs NS

Mackenzie KD (1989) ` The process approach to organizational designrsquorsquo Human SystemsManagement Vol 8 pp 31-43

Parasuraman A Zeithaml VA and Berry LL (1988) ` SERVQUAL a multiple-item scale formeasuring consumer perceptions of service qualityrsquorsquo Journal of Retailing Vol 6 No 1pp 12-40

Quinn RE and Rohrbaugh J (1983) `A spatial model of effectiveness criteria towards acompeting values approaches to organizational analysisrsquorsquo Management Science Vol 29No 3 pp 363-77

Rakowski JP (1981-82) ` The customer service conceptrsquorsquo Review of Business amp EconomicResearch No 2 Winter pp 55-66

Ramaswamy R (1996) Design and Management of Service Process Addison-Wesley PublishingCompany Reading MA

Shostack GL (1984) ` Designing services that deliverrsquorsquo Harvard Business Review January-FebruaryVol 62 pp 133-9

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Figure 3 shows an example of SADT model for the tax return processAlthough it is possible to model several perspectives with SADT it issomewhat complex because of too many arrows between activities In additionit is used for information flow modeling rather than process flow modelingAnalysis of these service process models reveals the problems inherent in usinga flow-diagram approach The meanings of modeling constructs are ambiguousand inconsistent (Congram and Epelman 1995) The problem ofcomprehensibility is compounded by the inconsistent levels of detail that occurthroughout a diagram The most critical problem is that there have been fewresearches on the practical applications of service process models

Based on these problems we identified several requirements for thecustomer service process model First since it aims to model customer serviceit should focus on customer-server interaction activity flows Second theinteraction activity flows should be modeled from the customerrsquos viewpointwhich can be used in identifying customer requirements more correctly andenhancing customer satisfaction Then the model can be seen as if through thecustomerrsquos eyes Third the model should be diagrammatic for easycommunication between customers service employees and managers Theunderstandability of the model can also foster collaboration between theoperations marketing and service employees Fourth the model should reflectthe four representation perspectives of Curtis et al (1992) in process modeling

Figure 3SADT for the tax returnprocess (Congram andEpelman 1995)

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

143

which will be discussed next functional (activity and data flow) behavioral(activity flow) organizational (place and server) and informational (data)Finally the model should be useful in bottleneck identification and itsrationalization Based on these requirements we developed a customer servicerationalization method

Customer service rationalization methodThe customer service rationalization method is composed of three componentsservice process modeling with Dynamic-Event Process Chain (Dynamic-EPC)performance measurement with simulation techniques and service processchange with performance-based change guidelines

Service process modelingDynamic-EPC originates from the Event-Process Chain (EPC) modelingmethod (Kim 1995) that supports the modeling and redesign of businessprocess by adopting a strong customer perspective Dynamic-EPC has fiveconstructs as in Figure 4 event process branching flow and wait Event is achange of status perceived by customers Here the customer means any personor organization both internal or external which has a need that the serverorganization attempts to satisfy If the change is implicit or not perceived bythe customer it does not need to be modeled explicitly But if the perceivedchange affects the customerrsquos next behaviors then it should be modeledexplicitly for enhanced understanding of the business situation from thecustomer perspective

Process is an activity or series of activities performed by the customer orbetween the customer and server organization Activities performed solely by aserver organization without customer involvement are not of interest and thusnot shown on the Dynamic-EPC diagram Time for such activities is treated as

Figure 4Dynamic-EPC

constructs

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144

a ` waitrsquorsquo in service For example if a customer orders food at a restaurant thetime between ordering and receiving the food is treated as a wait The customerdoes not need to know details of how the order was processed inside thekitchen

Wait is defined as the customerrsquos delay before start of an event or a processafter requesting service due to the internal process of the server organizationand represented by the letter W It means the duration between customerrsquosrequesting service and receiving it During that period internal processes of theserver organization will be performed without customerrsquos involvement to meetcustomerrsquos needs and are not shown to customers While a queue waiting at astation means the delay for getting service before interacting with the serverthe wait means the delay after initiating the service If customers feel that thewait is too time consuming then we can analyze and rationalize it If customersaccept the wait however then we do not have to change it Not only the Processbut also the wait can be exploded into lower level Dynamic-EPC model wherecustomer object derived from the external customer takes the role of theinternal customer By exploding the wait we can analyze and model theinternal process of the organization along the customer objectrsquos movementAgain using the restaurant example even though the internal process of thekitchen is hidden at the top level Dynamic-EPC diagram it can be explodedinto a lower level diagram

Branch is a conditional splitting of an event-process into sub-flows Flowmeans the customer or customer objectrsquos movement across time and stations

Each modeling construct is specified with the Backus-Naur Form (BNF) forperformance simulation and information management The creation interval ofevent construct is specified for simulation Process is specified with itsprocessing time for simulation its input and output rule such as constraintresource required for performing the process and actor who is performing itFlow can be optionally specified with either its customer or a customer objectdepending on the movement along the process The moving time is used forsimulation The waiting time of wait construct is optionally used for conceptualunderstanding about the situation Branching is specified with its branchingcondition and ratio for simulation Finally station is specified with its nameand the number of servers for simulation

Figure 5 is a simple Dynamic-EPC diagram illustrating the customerrsquosvisiting process at a restaurant with some specifications The modelingconstructs are drawn on two dimensions station dimension vertically and timedimension horizontally Customers receive service as they move through theseprocesses and events

Performance measurementBased on the process model we can simulate the customer service process forperformance measurement For the service measurement we selected customerservice-related criteria such as throughput time moving time and queuewaiting time from the service quality model (Cronin and Taylor 1992

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

145

Parasuraman et al 1988) For the organizational performance measurementwe selected three factors from the rational goal dimension of the effectivenessmodel (Quinn and Rohrbaugh 1983) utilization efficiency and productivityUtilization means the stationrsquos usage against its work capacity Efficiency canbe measured with customerrsquos throughput time and delay time Productivity canbe measured with throughput Table I summarizes the simulation functionstransformed from the above factors

Throughput time is the total amount of time customers spend over theentire service process cycle It consists of customerrsquos moving time queuewaiting time and processing time along the service process Customerrsquosdelay time at a station is the summation of hisher moving time to a stationand queue waiting time for getting service The delay time at each stationshould be minimized as much as possible for customer satisfaction Delaytime is the average summation of customerrsquos moving time to a station andqueue waiting time for service at a station Utilization of each stationindicates how much work it does against its work capacity Whenorganizational change takes place stations with many differences such as toolow or too high utilization compared to other stations are frequently targetedThroughput is the total number of customers or outputs passing through theservice process which directly affects organizational performance in terms ofproductivity

Figure 5Dynamic-EPC diagram

for a customerrsquos visit toa restaurant

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Service process changePerformance of a service process needs to be improved in two ways first tomaximize customerrsquos satisfaction and second to do it as efficiently as possibleFor customer satisfaction we focused on the process throughput time and itsmost critical component the customerrsquos delay time Second for theorganizationrsquos management performance we focused on improvedproductivity and each stationrsquos utilization Based on the customerrsquos delay timeand the stationrsquos utilization considering the common applicability to anydomain we can classify service processes at stations into four situations andsuggest change guidelines as in Figure 6 (Kim and Kim 1997)

Table ISimulation functions

Factor Function

Customerrsquos throughput timePt

pˆ1

Pt

kˆ1

Pn

jˆ1

hellipmoving timejpk Dagger waiting timejk Dagger processing timejkdaggern

Customerrsquos delay time at stationk

Pt

pˆ1

Pn

jˆ1

hellipmoving timejpk Dagger waiting timejkdaggern

Utilization of stationkworking amountk

hellipworking timek pound number of serverskdagger

Productivity n at stationk=t

Key wherek = station number where k = 1tj = the customer at stationk where j = 1np = a station participating in the service process where p = 1tt = total number of stations in the service processn = total number of customers that have passed through stationk

working_amountk = serverrsquos actual working time at stationk

working_timek = serverrsquos arranged working time at stationk

number_of_serversk = total number of servers at stationk

waiting_timejk = the jth customerrsquos queue waiting time at stationk

processing_timejk = serverrsquos processing time for the jth customer at stationk

moving_timejpk = the jth customerrsquos moving time in the process flow from stationp to stationk

Figure 6Performance-basedchange guidelines

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

147

In situation 1 customers pass through a highly utilized station with short delaytime Since the station is also highly utilized it is an ideal situation formanagement It requires no change action (G1)

Situation 2 occurs when the station is highly utilized but customer delaytime is long From the customer perspective we need to shorten the delay timeby minimizing customerrsquos frequent movingwaiting time (G2) For thispurpose we can relocate stations to minimize distance between them Also wecan rearrange the processes andor events to take place more in parallelbecause sequential processing is generally more time consuming than theparallel From the organization perspective we need to increase the stationrsquoswork capacity (G3) For this purpose we can standardize or integrate theredundant processes to reduce the number of processes And we can considershortening the processing time by automating some manual tasks when theycannot be eliminated If the work capacity cannot be increased by anyinformation technology or procedural change then we should consider addingmore human servers or installing additional hardware facilities

In situation 3 customers pass through a less busy station with short delaytime From the customerrsquos perspective they can receive service rapidlypossibly as soon as they arrive at the station But it is not a preferable situationfrom the management perspective because the station is under-utilizedTherefore we should allocate some work performed at other overloadedstations to this station or transfer surplus work capacity to other overloadedones (G4)

Situation 4 occurs when customers experience long delays while the stationsare under-utilized This may result from either a peak-load condition or a batch-oriented work policy If the peak-time rush is the cause we may try to changethe customersrsquo arrival pattern (G5) For instance providing time period-relatedincentives may be considered to balance the peak-time utilization On the otherhand the stationrsquos batch-oriented work policy may be the cause For instance ifaccount adjustment and expense handling tasks are performed once a week inthe accounting department we can consider changing the work processingmode from batch to interactive (G6) since the batch processing model mayboost internal efficiency at the expense of more critical customer satisfaction

Comparison with other service process modelsThe proposed Dynamic-EPC can be compared to other service process models plusmnBlueprint (Shostack 1984) SADT (Cronin and Taylor 1992) and Flow chart(Ramaswamy 1996) plusmn as in Table II from the four representation perspectives ofCurtis et al (1992) functional behavioral organizational and informational

While Blueprint (Shostack 1984) deals with the behavioral perspective usingtime dimension it does not reflect other perspectives such as place and serverelements in the model As modeling constructs process and service elements areused in this model And the ` line of visibilityrsquorsquo has been adopted to classify thecustomersrsquo actions and internal operations in the model For the service processchange simple profitability analyses are conducted based on the model

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Flow chart (Ramaswamy 1996) has adopted the conventions of the BlueprintThis model deals with the organizational perspective using server element inaddition to the behavioral perspective For the service process change Flowchart supports identification of service process Although it is not directly usedfor simulation it becomes a preliminary basis for it And this model is used forservice process design and management

SADT (Cronin and Taylor 1992) focuses on information management ratherthan service process flow Although it deals with functional perspective itcannot fully reflect behavioral and organizational perspectives because it doesnot consider place and time dimensions in the model However it models aservice process with input output control and mechanism The primaryobjective of this model is the representation of a business systems structurewith data flow not the behavior of the system over time For this reason it isdifficult to use this model for customer service process change because of itsstatic characteristics

Compared to other service process models Dynamic-EPC supports serviceprocess representation with the diagram and its information management withthe specification from the four perspectives Although Dynamic-EPC deals withthe informational entities related with the process of informational perspective itdoes not model the structure and relationships between information entities whichcan be used for database system development The modeling construct waittakes a similar role to the ` line of visibilityrsquorsquo in Blueprint For the service processchange we can measure the responsiveness dimension of customer servicequality and process performance using simulation techniques while it is difficultto test the performance using other models From the comparison we can knowthat the proposed service rationalization method with Dynamic-EPC seems mostappropriate for customer service process analysis management and change

ApplicationTo support service process modeling we developed a modeling tool calledIntegrated Process Modeling Tool (IPMT) with Visual Basic in a PC Windowsenvironment In this paper we will introduce the application case of the method

Table IIComparison ofdynamic-EPC withother service processmodels

Representation perspectivesBlue-print

Flowchart SADT

Dynamic-EPC

Functional What processes are performed o o o oWhat flows of informational entities x x o o

Behavioral When process is performed o o x oHow it is performed o o o o

Organizational Where the process is performed x x x oBy whom the process is performed x o o o

Informational Information entities related with the process x x o oStructure and relationships x x x x

Notes where o = yes x = no

Rationalizing thecustomer service

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149

at the Seoul Adventist Hospital Seoul Adventist Hospital operates 17departments and has 110 doctors and 406 beds The hospital keeps the annualmonthlydaily number of patients of each department from which we couldassume the customerrsquos arrival pattern and branching ratio On average about1100 outpatients come to the hospital for doctor consultations each day Wepicked the outpatientrsquos consultation process across the internal medicine (IM)department testing room and pharmacy because it is representative of themost critical and time-consuming processes

Analysis and performance measurement of the current situationThe top level of the outpatientrsquos visit process is shown in Figure 7 The processis initiated by a patientrsquos arrival at the hospital Patients arrive at the hospitalrandomly or by appointment with a rate of 1 patient045min It follows anexponential distribution Arrived patients register and pay in advance thedoctorrsquos fee after waiting for a while in a queue This process can be performedby one of the eight servers with an average processing time of two minutes(here processing time follows a normal distribution) Registered outpatientswalk to the internal medicine department and the moving time follows anormal distribution with a mean of one minute and standard deviation of 05minute Arriving at the internal medicine departmentrsquos waiting room thepatient waits for his turn During that time the patient chart will be deliveredfrom the chart room to the department (W1) which takes about 15 minutesThose data about processing time at each step came from the measurementtime analysis Those specification data about the number of servers at astation input and output were gathered from interview These several process-related data can be specified and managed using the tool

There are four doctors in the internal medicine department Each out-patientwill be consulted by one of them for about ten minutes After the consultationthose who need additional step(s) plusmn medicine or testing plusmn have to pay again forthe step(s) in advance Arriving at the testing room the patient submits the pre-paid slip and is tested Arriving at the pharmacy desk the patient submits hisher prescription slip to request medicine The amount of time the customer hasto wait for his medicine is represented as ` waitrsquorsquo It can be exploded into a lowerlevel Dynamic-EPC (Figure 8) where the prescription slip (customer object)takes the customerrsquos (patient) role and goes through the internal pharmacyprocess The ` Proportionrsquorsquo process is specified using the tool After receiving themedicine the patient leaves the hospital

The current situation about the outpatientrsquos visit process is simulated withSIMPROCESS II5 (CACI 1993) The visualization capability enables us toverify the simulation model easily After verifying the model we should setthree parameters (warm-up period run-length number of replications) for thesimulation In the hospital case the run-length is eight hours because thehospital operates from 8 am to 5 pm except for one hour lunch time with zerowarm-up period The number of replications can be set by choosing thedesired risk and the width of the (1 plusmn a) confidence interval for the output

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variables selected We set it at 19 times with the 95 per cent confidence intervalbased on 387 as half width of the confidence interval and 866 as standarddeviation

Figure 7Outpatientrsquos visitprocess current case

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

151

The simulation results are summarized in Table III The throughput time of theprocess is 755 minutes Patients have to wait too long at the internal medicinedepartment (312 min) and at the pharmacy (219 min) while these two stationsrsquoutilization is higher (internal medicine department 974 per cent pharmacy964 per cent) than that of others And the number of outpatients consulted bythe doctors at the internal medicine department is 182 according to thesimulation However a small portion of arrived patients cannot be consultedbecause of the IM departmentrsquos limited capacity

Organizational change and performance measurementWe should investigate which station incurs a long delay time based on thesuggested change guidelines From the performance measurement resultsabout the current case delay times at the internal medicine department (312minutes) and the pharmacy (219 minutes) are longer than those at otherstations And the utilization of those two stations is higher (IM dept 974 percent pharmacy 964 per cent) than others These two cases therefore belong to

Figure 8Dynamic-EPC exploded

from W2

Table IIIPerformance

measurement resultsabout the current case

Customer service perspective Organizational performance perspective

Delay time Recept desk 58 min Utilization Recept 819IM dept 312 min Desk 974Pharmacy 219 min IM dept 964Exam room 16 min Pharmacy 714

Test roomThroughput time 755 min Throughput 182 patients

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situation 2 plusmn long delay time and high utilization plusmn in Figure 3 We need tochange the service processes between these two stations

According to the change guideline (G2 Minimize customerrsquos delay time) insituation 2 we consider performing processevent parallel That is themedicine requesttesting is transmitted electronically to the pharmacy or thetesting room during the patientrsquos consultation with the doctor by using a newconsultation support system Also we consider automating most of theactivities inside the pharmacy to shorten the processing time By the time thepatient arrives at the pharmacy hisher medicine is already waiting for him orher Or the patient can be tested without any delay at the testing room

Also the internal medicine department is a change target as it falls intosituation 2 According to the change guideline (G3) we should increase thestationrsquos work capacity The internal medicine departmentrsquos work capacitydepends on the number of doctors because the consultation by nature is amanual process Since adding more servers (doctors) usually incurs highorganizational costs however we need to recommend such an alternative verycarefully and after all other alternatives are first applied

Next we consider patients at the reception desk Since the currentregistration is performed manually it is slow and time-consuming Also thereare redundant tasks plusmn Register and pay Pay for the next step plusmn in Figure 7According to the change guideline (G2 Minimize customerrsquos delay time) insituation 2 we integrated the registration and payment processes by issuingeach patient a smart card with all their personal health history and bankaccount information When the patient arrives at the doctorrsquos office afterchecking hisher card at the reception desk with the registration system server(not human server) the patient is registered and the consultation history data isalready prepared Using the smart card we can change the ` registration andpayrsquorsquo process into an event Also all the patientrsquos expenses that day will behandled through his or her bank account All of these changes are reflected inthe alternative case 1 (Figure 9)

Case 1 is simulated and its performance measurement results aresummarized and compared with the current situation in Table IV According tothe simulation the throughput time is shortened from 755 to 611 minutesPatientrsquos delay times at each station are shortened except at the internalmedicine department And the utilization of the reception desk is reduced from819 per cent to 347 per cent with the help of IT plusmn smart card Finally theshortened throughput time increased the throughput the number of consultedoutpatients from 182 to 194 More patients can be consulted in the changedcase than the current one

Case 1 reveals some improvements in throughput time patientrsquos delay timeand stationsrsquo utilization But we can expect more improvement because case 1still shows long delay time at the internal medicine department and too lowutilization of the reception desk Patients at the internal department still belongto situation 2 plusmn long delay time and high utilization The reception desk belongsto situation 3 plusmn short delay time and low utilization For this reason we decided

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

153

to increase the internal medicine departmentrsquos work capacity according to thesuggested action guideline (G3 Increase the stationrsquos work capacity) Since thedoctorrsquos consultation work cannot be automated we added two more doctors tothe internal medicine department in the redesigned case 2 Also according tothe guideline (G4 Transfer some of work capacity) in situation 3 we reducedthe number of servers at the reception desk from eight to three without anyprocedural change

Performance measurement results about case 2 and its comparison withcurrent situation are summarized in Table V The throughput time is shortenedfrom 755 minutes to 182 minutes Customerrsquos delay times at each station aresignificantly shorter than the current one Also workload balancing amongthose stations is more even than in case 1 except the reception desk consists ofregistration system servers not employees The throughput is also increasedfrom 182 to 213 From these results we can know that all of the stations belong

Figure 9Changed visit process

case 1

Table IVPerformance

measurement resultsabout current and

case 1

Factor Current case Case 1 Difference

Stationrsquos utilization Reception desk 819 347 plusmn 472IM department 974 988 +14Pharmacy 964 781 plusmn 183Testing room 714 770 plusmn 54

Delay time Reception desk (min) 58 02 plusmn 56IM department (min) 312 474 +162Pharmacy (min) 219 12 plusmn 207Testing room (min) 16 12 plusmn 04

Throughput time Mean time (min) 755 611 plusmn 143Standard deviation 87 56

Throughput Number of consulted patients 182 194 +12

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to situation 1 We tested that there is difference between the current case andcase 2 using the null hypothesis test at a = 005

We can compare the results from the organizational performance andcustomer service dimensions From the organizational performanceperspective productivity of throughput and efficiency of throughput time havebeen improved The use of resource with utilization is lower than the currentsituation except the reception desk while those stations in the current situationare overloaded Case 2 however achieved a more even use of resources thanthe current situation across the IM department pharmacy and testingdepartment From the customer service perspective shortened delay times atseveral stations and the dramatically shortened throughput time imply that theresponsiveness of customer service is enhanced in case 2

DiscussionIn addition to the hospital case the method and tool have been applied toseveral real cases such as order processing at a cable-TV home shoppingcompany and project order tracking process at an advertising agency (Kim1998) We can classify customer service processes by the frequency of contactsbetween customer and server-organization low-contact type and high-contacttype Based on the classification we can discuss the applications of theproposed method as in Table VI In the low-contact type customers initiate theserver-organizationrsquos service process and wait for the process output withoutparticipating in it such as customerrsquos order cycle process There is just one waitbetween the start and the end of a service process Since the waiting time takesthe entire throughput time of a service process performed inside the server-organization it is relatively longer than that of the high-contact type Sincecustomers do not participate in the server-organizationrsquos process they can dosomething else during the wait For this reason a time-related goal of this typeis minimizing the waiting time The focus of service process analysis and

Table VComparison betweencurrent and case 2

CriteriaCurrent with

sdCase 2 with

sd DifferenceConfidence

interval

Utilization Recept desk 819 (34) 924 (51) +135 (plusmn 154 plusmn 56)IM dept 974 (21) 659 (62) plusmn 315 (266 365)Pharmacy 964 (23) 795 (43) plusmn 169 (133 205)Test room 714 (68) 784 (67) plusmn 70 (plusmn 115 plusmn 25)

Delay time Recept desk 58 min (13) 09 min(02) plusmn 49 min (43 55)IM Dept 312 min (46) 24 min(07) plusmn 288 min (266 310)Pharmacy 219 min (32) 13 min(04) plusmn 206 min (190 222)Test room 16 min (05) 15 min(05) plusmn 01 min (plusmn 02 04)

Through-put time Mean time 755 min(87) 182 min(21) plusmn 573 min (519 627)Through-put Consulted

patients 182 (51) 213 (63) + 32 (plusmn 347 plusmn 272)

Notes Current gt Case 2 Current = Case 2 Current lt Case 2

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

155

design in this type is the service delivery Therefore a customerrsquos mainconcerns are service process output and waiting time

In the high-contact type there are numerous contact points in this type ofpatientrsquos visit process at a hospital because customers initiate a service processand also participate in it along the process flow While the customerrsquos role inthe low-contact type is the recipient of service process output the customerrsquosrole in the high-contact type is as the participant in performing the serviceprocess For this reason several waits can be created along the process flowwhich take a relatively shorter time when compared to the low-contact typeThe participation characteristic inhibits customers from doing something elseduring not only the wait but also during the entire service process For thisreason a time-related goal of this type is minimizing the throughput time Andthe focus of service process analysis and design is the customer-serverinteraction Therefore customer satisfaction in this type is mainly related to theserverrsquos attitude and the responsiveness-related factors such as throughputtime and delay time (moving and waiting time)

ConclusionIn this research we suggested a service process rationalization methodcomposed of a service process model performance measurement and changeguidelines This research sets forth a way to explicitly link the customer viewto a service process model and yet have the process model be able to supportsimulation Compared to other service process models Dynamic-EPCincorporates not only the customer viewpoint but also reflects fourrepresentation perspectives in it Second the performance simulation resultsprovide a more objective basis for service change decisions which reduce therisk inherent in service process change Third the proposed change guidelinescan be used by practitioners in devising a contingency approach to serviceprocess change projects While some general change principles have beensuggested previously the classified customer service process situations and the

Table VIDiscussion about the

service rationalizationmethod

Low-contact type High-contact type

Contact points At the start and at the endof a service process

Numerous along the processflow

Role of customer Recipient of service processoutput

Participant in the serviceprocess

Frequency of wait One Many waits along the processflow

Waiting time Relatively long Relatively shortNature of wait for customers Can do something else Be captiveTime-related goal Minimize waiting time Minimize throughput timeAnalysisdesign focus Service delivery Customer-server interactionCustomer satisfaction-relatedfactors

Waiting time serviceprocess output

Serverrsquos attitude throughputtime moving and waitingtime

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contingent guidelines have advantages in identifying the service situation anddevising situation-specific change alternatives However we need to expandthe performance measurement about customer service from quantitative toqualitative factors

References

CACI Products Company (1993) SIMFACTORY II5 and SIMPROCESS Manual

Congram C and Epelman M (1995) ` How to describe your service an invitation to thestructured analysis and design techniquersquorsquo International Journal of Service IndustryManagement Vol 6 No 2 pp 6-23

Cronin JJ and Taylor SA (1992) `Measuring service quality a reexamination and extensionrsquorsquoJournal of Marketing Vol 56 July pp 55-63

Curtis B Keller MI and Over J (1992) ` Process modelingrsquorsquo Communications of the ACMVol 35 No 9 pp 75-90

Fisk RP Brown SW and Bitner MJ (1993) ` Tracking the evolution of the service marketingliteraturersquorsquo Journal of Retailing Vol 69 No 1 Spring pp 61-103

Galbraith JR (1993) Competing with Flexible Lateral Organizations 2nd ed Addison-WesleyReading MA

Innis DE and LaLonde BJ (1994) ` Customer service the key to customer satisfactioncustomer loyalty and market sharersquorsquo Journal of Business Logistics Vol 15 No 1 pp 1-27

Kim HW (1998) Enhancement of Organizational Performance Using Dynamic Process Modelingand Simulation PhD Dissertation Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology

Kim HW and Kim YG (1997) ` Dynamic process modeling for BPRrsquorsquo Information ampManagement Vol 32 No 1 pp 1-13

Kim YG (1995) `Process modeling for BPR event-process chain approachrsquorsquo Proceedings ofInternational Conference on Information Systems pp 109-21

LaLonde BJ and Zinszer PH (1976) Customer Service Meaning and Measurement NationalCouncil of Physical Distribution Management Chicago IL

Lovelock CH (1996) Service Marketing 3rd ed Prentice-Hall Englewood Cliffs NS

Mackenzie KD (1989) ` The process approach to organizational designrsquorsquo Human SystemsManagement Vol 8 pp 31-43

Parasuraman A Zeithaml VA and Berry LL (1988) ` SERVQUAL a multiple-item scale formeasuring consumer perceptions of service qualityrsquorsquo Journal of Retailing Vol 6 No 1pp 12-40

Quinn RE and Rohrbaugh J (1983) `A spatial model of effectiveness criteria towards acompeting values approaches to organizational analysisrsquorsquo Management Science Vol 29No 3 pp 363-77

Rakowski JP (1981-82) ` The customer service conceptrsquorsquo Review of Business amp EconomicResearch No 2 Winter pp 55-66

Ramaswamy R (1996) Design and Management of Service Process Addison-Wesley PublishingCompany Reading MA

Shostack GL (1984) ` Designing services that deliverrsquorsquo Harvard Business Review January-FebruaryVol 62 pp 133-9

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

143

which will be discussed next functional (activity and data flow) behavioral(activity flow) organizational (place and server) and informational (data)Finally the model should be useful in bottleneck identification and itsrationalization Based on these requirements we developed a customer servicerationalization method

Customer service rationalization methodThe customer service rationalization method is composed of three componentsservice process modeling with Dynamic-Event Process Chain (Dynamic-EPC)performance measurement with simulation techniques and service processchange with performance-based change guidelines

Service process modelingDynamic-EPC originates from the Event-Process Chain (EPC) modelingmethod (Kim 1995) that supports the modeling and redesign of businessprocess by adopting a strong customer perspective Dynamic-EPC has fiveconstructs as in Figure 4 event process branching flow and wait Event is achange of status perceived by customers Here the customer means any personor organization both internal or external which has a need that the serverorganization attempts to satisfy If the change is implicit or not perceived bythe customer it does not need to be modeled explicitly But if the perceivedchange affects the customerrsquos next behaviors then it should be modeledexplicitly for enhanced understanding of the business situation from thecustomer perspective

Process is an activity or series of activities performed by the customer orbetween the customer and server organization Activities performed solely by aserver organization without customer involvement are not of interest and thusnot shown on the Dynamic-EPC diagram Time for such activities is treated as

Figure 4Dynamic-EPC

constructs

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144

a ` waitrsquorsquo in service For example if a customer orders food at a restaurant thetime between ordering and receiving the food is treated as a wait The customerdoes not need to know details of how the order was processed inside thekitchen

Wait is defined as the customerrsquos delay before start of an event or a processafter requesting service due to the internal process of the server organizationand represented by the letter W It means the duration between customerrsquosrequesting service and receiving it During that period internal processes of theserver organization will be performed without customerrsquos involvement to meetcustomerrsquos needs and are not shown to customers While a queue waiting at astation means the delay for getting service before interacting with the serverthe wait means the delay after initiating the service If customers feel that thewait is too time consuming then we can analyze and rationalize it If customersaccept the wait however then we do not have to change it Not only the Processbut also the wait can be exploded into lower level Dynamic-EPC model wherecustomer object derived from the external customer takes the role of theinternal customer By exploding the wait we can analyze and model theinternal process of the organization along the customer objectrsquos movementAgain using the restaurant example even though the internal process of thekitchen is hidden at the top level Dynamic-EPC diagram it can be explodedinto a lower level diagram

Branch is a conditional splitting of an event-process into sub-flows Flowmeans the customer or customer objectrsquos movement across time and stations

Each modeling construct is specified with the Backus-Naur Form (BNF) forperformance simulation and information management The creation interval ofevent construct is specified for simulation Process is specified with itsprocessing time for simulation its input and output rule such as constraintresource required for performing the process and actor who is performing itFlow can be optionally specified with either its customer or a customer objectdepending on the movement along the process The moving time is used forsimulation The waiting time of wait construct is optionally used for conceptualunderstanding about the situation Branching is specified with its branchingcondition and ratio for simulation Finally station is specified with its nameand the number of servers for simulation

Figure 5 is a simple Dynamic-EPC diagram illustrating the customerrsquosvisiting process at a restaurant with some specifications The modelingconstructs are drawn on two dimensions station dimension vertically and timedimension horizontally Customers receive service as they move through theseprocesses and events

Performance measurementBased on the process model we can simulate the customer service process forperformance measurement For the service measurement we selected customerservice-related criteria such as throughput time moving time and queuewaiting time from the service quality model (Cronin and Taylor 1992

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

145

Parasuraman et al 1988) For the organizational performance measurementwe selected three factors from the rational goal dimension of the effectivenessmodel (Quinn and Rohrbaugh 1983) utilization efficiency and productivityUtilization means the stationrsquos usage against its work capacity Efficiency canbe measured with customerrsquos throughput time and delay time Productivity canbe measured with throughput Table I summarizes the simulation functionstransformed from the above factors

Throughput time is the total amount of time customers spend over theentire service process cycle It consists of customerrsquos moving time queuewaiting time and processing time along the service process Customerrsquosdelay time at a station is the summation of hisher moving time to a stationand queue waiting time for getting service The delay time at each stationshould be minimized as much as possible for customer satisfaction Delaytime is the average summation of customerrsquos moving time to a station andqueue waiting time for service at a station Utilization of each stationindicates how much work it does against its work capacity Whenorganizational change takes place stations with many differences such as toolow or too high utilization compared to other stations are frequently targetedThroughput is the total number of customers or outputs passing through theservice process which directly affects organizational performance in terms ofproductivity

Figure 5Dynamic-EPC diagram

for a customerrsquos visit toa restaurant

BPMJ72

146

Service process changePerformance of a service process needs to be improved in two ways first tomaximize customerrsquos satisfaction and second to do it as efficiently as possibleFor customer satisfaction we focused on the process throughput time and itsmost critical component the customerrsquos delay time Second for theorganizationrsquos management performance we focused on improvedproductivity and each stationrsquos utilization Based on the customerrsquos delay timeand the stationrsquos utilization considering the common applicability to anydomain we can classify service processes at stations into four situations andsuggest change guidelines as in Figure 6 (Kim and Kim 1997)

Table ISimulation functions

Factor Function

Customerrsquos throughput timePt

pˆ1

Pt

kˆ1

Pn

jˆ1

hellipmoving timejpk Dagger waiting timejk Dagger processing timejkdaggern

Customerrsquos delay time at stationk

Pt

pˆ1

Pn

jˆ1

hellipmoving timejpk Dagger waiting timejkdaggern

Utilization of stationkworking amountk

hellipworking timek pound number of serverskdagger

Productivity n at stationk=t

Key wherek = station number where k = 1tj = the customer at stationk where j = 1np = a station participating in the service process where p = 1tt = total number of stations in the service processn = total number of customers that have passed through stationk

working_amountk = serverrsquos actual working time at stationk

working_timek = serverrsquos arranged working time at stationk

number_of_serversk = total number of servers at stationk

waiting_timejk = the jth customerrsquos queue waiting time at stationk

processing_timejk = serverrsquos processing time for the jth customer at stationk

moving_timejpk = the jth customerrsquos moving time in the process flow from stationp to stationk

Figure 6Performance-basedchange guidelines

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

147

In situation 1 customers pass through a highly utilized station with short delaytime Since the station is also highly utilized it is an ideal situation formanagement It requires no change action (G1)

Situation 2 occurs when the station is highly utilized but customer delaytime is long From the customer perspective we need to shorten the delay timeby minimizing customerrsquos frequent movingwaiting time (G2) For thispurpose we can relocate stations to minimize distance between them Also wecan rearrange the processes andor events to take place more in parallelbecause sequential processing is generally more time consuming than theparallel From the organization perspective we need to increase the stationrsquoswork capacity (G3) For this purpose we can standardize or integrate theredundant processes to reduce the number of processes And we can considershortening the processing time by automating some manual tasks when theycannot be eliminated If the work capacity cannot be increased by anyinformation technology or procedural change then we should consider addingmore human servers or installing additional hardware facilities

In situation 3 customers pass through a less busy station with short delaytime From the customerrsquos perspective they can receive service rapidlypossibly as soon as they arrive at the station But it is not a preferable situationfrom the management perspective because the station is under-utilizedTherefore we should allocate some work performed at other overloadedstations to this station or transfer surplus work capacity to other overloadedones (G4)

Situation 4 occurs when customers experience long delays while the stationsare under-utilized This may result from either a peak-load condition or a batch-oriented work policy If the peak-time rush is the cause we may try to changethe customersrsquo arrival pattern (G5) For instance providing time period-relatedincentives may be considered to balance the peak-time utilization On the otherhand the stationrsquos batch-oriented work policy may be the cause For instance ifaccount adjustment and expense handling tasks are performed once a week inthe accounting department we can consider changing the work processingmode from batch to interactive (G6) since the batch processing model mayboost internal efficiency at the expense of more critical customer satisfaction

Comparison with other service process modelsThe proposed Dynamic-EPC can be compared to other service process models plusmnBlueprint (Shostack 1984) SADT (Cronin and Taylor 1992) and Flow chart(Ramaswamy 1996) plusmn as in Table II from the four representation perspectives ofCurtis et al (1992) functional behavioral organizational and informational

While Blueprint (Shostack 1984) deals with the behavioral perspective usingtime dimension it does not reflect other perspectives such as place and serverelements in the model As modeling constructs process and service elements areused in this model And the ` line of visibilityrsquorsquo has been adopted to classify thecustomersrsquo actions and internal operations in the model For the service processchange simple profitability analyses are conducted based on the model

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Flow chart (Ramaswamy 1996) has adopted the conventions of the BlueprintThis model deals with the organizational perspective using server element inaddition to the behavioral perspective For the service process change Flowchart supports identification of service process Although it is not directly usedfor simulation it becomes a preliminary basis for it And this model is used forservice process design and management

SADT (Cronin and Taylor 1992) focuses on information management ratherthan service process flow Although it deals with functional perspective itcannot fully reflect behavioral and organizational perspectives because it doesnot consider place and time dimensions in the model However it models aservice process with input output control and mechanism The primaryobjective of this model is the representation of a business systems structurewith data flow not the behavior of the system over time For this reason it isdifficult to use this model for customer service process change because of itsstatic characteristics

Compared to other service process models Dynamic-EPC supports serviceprocess representation with the diagram and its information management withthe specification from the four perspectives Although Dynamic-EPC deals withthe informational entities related with the process of informational perspective itdoes not model the structure and relationships between information entities whichcan be used for database system development The modeling construct waittakes a similar role to the ` line of visibilityrsquorsquo in Blueprint For the service processchange we can measure the responsiveness dimension of customer servicequality and process performance using simulation techniques while it is difficultto test the performance using other models From the comparison we can knowthat the proposed service rationalization method with Dynamic-EPC seems mostappropriate for customer service process analysis management and change

ApplicationTo support service process modeling we developed a modeling tool calledIntegrated Process Modeling Tool (IPMT) with Visual Basic in a PC Windowsenvironment In this paper we will introduce the application case of the method

Table IIComparison ofdynamic-EPC withother service processmodels

Representation perspectivesBlue-print

Flowchart SADT

Dynamic-EPC

Functional What processes are performed o o o oWhat flows of informational entities x x o o

Behavioral When process is performed o o x oHow it is performed o o o o

Organizational Where the process is performed x x x oBy whom the process is performed x o o o

Informational Information entities related with the process x x o oStructure and relationships x x x x

Notes where o = yes x = no

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

149

at the Seoul Adventist Hospital Seoul Adventist Hospital operates 17departments and has 110 doctors and 406 beds The hospital keeps the annualmonthlydaily number of patients of each department from which we couldassume the customerrsquos arrival pattern and branching ratio On average about1100 outpatients come to the hospital for doctor consultations each day Wepicked the outpatientrsquos consultation process across the internal medicine (IM)department testing room and pharmacy because it is representative of themost critical and time-consuming processes

Analysis and performance measurement of the current situationThe top level of the outpatientrsquos visit process is shown in Figure 7 The processis initiated by a patientrsquos arrival at the hospital Patients arrive at the hospitalrandomly or by appointment with a rate of 1 patient045min It follows anexponential distribution Arrived patients register and pay in advance thedoctorrsquos fee after waiting for a while in a queue This process can be performedby one of the eight servers with an average processing time of two minutes(here processing time follows a normal distribution) Registered outpatientswalk to the internal medicine department and the moving time follows anormal distribution with a mean of one minute and standard deviation of 05minute Arriving at the internal medicine departmentrsquos waiting room thepatient waits for his turn During that time the patient chart will be deliveredfrom the chart room to the department (W1) which takes about 15 minutesThose data about processing time at each step came from the measurementtime analysis Those specification data about the number of servers at astation input and output were gathered from interview These several process-related data can be specified and managed using the tool

There are four doctors in the internal medicine department Each out-patientwill be consulted by one of them for about ten minutes After the consultationthose who need additional step(s) plusmn medicine or testing plusmn have to pay again forthe step(s) in advance Arriving at the testing room the patient submits the pre-paid slip and is tested Arriving at the pharmacy desk the patient submits hisher prescription slip to request medicine The amount of time the customer hasto wait for his medicine is represented as ` waitrsquorsquo It can be exploded into a lowerlevel Dynamic-EPC (Figure 8) where the prescription slip (customer object)takes the customerrsquos (patient) role and goes through the internal pharmacyprocess The ` Proportionrsquorsquo process is specified using the tool After receiving themedicine the patient leaves the hospital

The current situation about the outpatientrsquos visit process is simulated withSIMPROCESS II5 (CACI 1993) The visualization capability enables us toverify the simulation model easily After verifying the model we should setthree parameters (warm-up period run-length number of replications) for thesimulation In the hospital case the run-length is eight hours because thehospital operates from 8 am to 5 pm except for one hour lunch time with zerowarm-up period The number of replications can be set by choosing thedesired risk and the width of the (1 plusmn a) confidence interval for the output

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variables selected We set it at 19 times with the 95 per cent confidence intervalbased on 387 as half width of the confidence interval and 866 as standarddeviation

Figure 7Outpatientrsquos visitprocess current case

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

151

The simulation results are summarized in Table III The throughput time of theprocess is 755 minutes Patients have to wait too long at the internal medicinedepartment (312 min) and at the pharmacy (219 min) while these two stationsrsquoutilization is higher (internal medicine department 974 per cent pharmacy964 per cent) than that of others And the number of outpatients consulted bythe doctors at the internal medicine department is 182 according to thesimulation However a small portion of arrived patients cannot be consultedbecause of the IM departmentrsquos limited capacity

Organizational change and performance measurementWe should investigate which station incurs a long delay time based on thesuggested change guidelines From the performance measurement resultsabout the current case delay times at the internal medicine department (312minutes) and the pharmacy (219 minutes) are longer than those at otherstations And the utilization of those two stations is higher (IM dept 974 percent pharmacy 964 per cent) than others These two cases therefore belong to

Figure 8Dynamic-EPC exploded

from W2

Table IIIPerformance

measurement resultsabout the current case

Customer service perspective Organizational performance perspective

Delay time Recept desk 58 min Utilization Recept 819IM dept 312 min Desk 974Pharmacy 219 min IM dept 964Exam room 16 min Pharmacy 714

Test roomThroughput time 755 min Throughput 182 patients

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situation 2 plusmn long delay time and high utilization plusmn in Figure 3 We need tochange the service processes between these two stations

According to the change guideline (G2 Minimize customerrsquos delay time) insituation 2 we consider performing processevent parallel That is themedicine requesttesting is transmitted electronically to the pharmacy or thetesting room during the patientrsquos consultation with the doctor by using a newconsultation support system Also we consider automating most of theactivities inside the pharmacy to shorten the processing time By the time thepatient arrives at the pharmacy hisher medicine is already waiting for him orher Or the patient can be tested without any delay at the testing room

Also the internal medicine department is a change target as it falls intosituation 2 According to the change guideline (G3) we should increase thestationrsquos work capacity The internal medicine departmentrsquos work capacitydepends on the number of doctors because the consultation by nature is amanual process Since adding more servers (doctors) usually incurs highorganizational costs however we need to recommend such an alternative verycarefully and after all other alternatives are first applied

Next we consider patients at the reception desk Since the currentregistration is performed manually it is slow and time-consuming Also thereare redundant tasks plusmn Register and pay Pay for the next step plusmn in Figure 7According to the change guideline (G2 Minimize customerrsquos delay time) insituation 2 we integrated the registration and payment processes by issuingeach patient a smart card with all their personal health history and bankaccount information When the patient arrives at the doctorrsquos office afterchecking hisher card at the reception desk with the registration system server(not human server) the patient is registered and the consultation history data isalready prepared Using the smart card we can change the ` registration andpayrsquorsquo process into an event Also all the patientrsquos expenses that day will behandled through his or her bank account All of these changes are reflected inthe alternative case 1 (Figure 9)

Case 1 is simulated and its performance measurement results aresummarized and compared with the current situation in Table IV According tothe simulation the throughput time is shortened from 755 to 611 minutesPatientrsquos delay times at each station are shortened except at the internalmedicine department And the utilization of the reception desk is reduced from819 per cent to 347 per cent with the help of IT plusmn smart card Finally theshortened throughput time increased the throughput the number of consultedoutpatients from 182 to 194 More patients can be consulted in the changedcase than the current one

Case 1 reveals some improvements in throughput time patientrsquos delay timeand stationsrsquo utilization But we can expect more improvement because case 1still shows long delay time at the internal medicine department and too lowutilization of the reception desk Patients at the internal department still belongto situation 2 plusmn long delay time and high utilization The reception desk belongsto situation 3 plusmn short delay time and low utilization For this reason we decided

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

153

to increase the internal medicine departmentrsquos work capacity according to thesuggested action guideline (G3 Increase the stationrsquos work capacity) Since thedoctorrsquos consultation work cannot be automated we added two more doctors tothe internal medicine department in the redesigned case 2 Also according tothe guideline (G4 Transfer some of work capacity) in situation 3 we reducedthe number of servers at the reception desk from eight to three without anyprocedural change

Performance measurement results about case 2 and its comparison withcurrent situation are summarized in Table V The throughput time is shortenedfrom 755 minutes to 182 minutes Customerrsquos delay times at each station aresignificantly shorter than the current one Also workload balancing amongthose stations is more even than in case 1 except the reception desk consists ofregistration system servers not employees The throughput is also increasedfrom 182 to 213 From these results we can know that all of the stations belong

Figure 9Changed visit process

case 1

Table IVPerformance

measurement resultsabout current and

case 1

Factor Current case Case 1 Difference

Stationrsquos utilization Reception desk 819 347 plusmn 472IM department 974 988 +14Pharmacy 964 781 plusmn 183Testing room 714 770 plusmn 54

Delay time Reception desk (min) 58 02 plusmn 56IM department (min) 312 474 +162Pharmacy (min) 219 12 plusmn 207Testing room (min) 16 12 plusmn 04

Throughput time Mean time (min) 755 611 plusmn 143Standard deviation 87 56

Throughput Number of consulted patients 182 194 +12

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to situation 1 We tested that there is difference between the current case andcase 2 using the null hypothesis test at a = 005

We can compare the results from the organizational performance andcustomer service dimensions From the organizational performanceperspective productivity of throughput and efficiency of throughput time havebeen improved The use of resource with utilization is lower than the currentsituation except the reception desk while those stations in the current situationare overloaded Case 2 however achieved a more even use of resources thanthe current situation across the IM department pharmacy and testingdepartment From the customer service perspective shortened delay times atseveral stations and the dramatically shortened throughput time imply that theresponsiveness of customer service is enhanced in case 2

DiscussionIn addition to the hospital case the method and tool have been applied toseveral real cases such as order processing at a cable-TV home shoppingcompany and project order tracking process at an advertising agency (Kim1998) We can classify customer service processes by the frequency of contactsbetween customer and server-organization low-contact type and high-contacttype Based on the classification we can discuss the applications of theproposed method as in Table VI In the low-contact type customers initiate theserver-organizationrsquos service process and wait for the process output withoutparticipating in it such as customerrsquos order cycle process There is just one waitbetween the start and the end of a service process Since the waiting time takesthe entire throughput time of a service process performed inside the server-organization it is relatively longer than that of the high-contact type Sincecustomers do not participate in the server-organizationrsquos process they can dosomething else during the wait For this reason a time-related goal of this typeis minimizing the waiting time The focus of service process analysis and

Table VComparison betweencurrent and case 2

CriteriaCurrent with

sdCase 2 with

sd DifferenceConfidence

interval

Utilization Recept desk 819 (34) 924 (51) +135 (plusmn 154 plusmn 56)IM dept 974 (21) 659 (62) plusmn 315 (266 365)Pharmacy 964 (23) 795 (43) plusmn 169 (133 205)Test room 714 (68) 784 (67) plusmn 70 (plusmn 115 plusmn 25)

Delay time Recept desk 58 min (13) 09 min(02) plusmn 49 min (43 55)IM Dept 312 min (46) 24 min(07) plusmn 288 min (266 310)Pharmacy 219 min (32) 13 min(04) plusmn 206 min (190 222)Test room 16 min (05) 15 min(05) plusmn 01 min (plusmn 02 04)

Through-put time Mean time 755 min(87) 182 min(21) plusmn 573 min (519 627)Through-put Consulted

patients 182 (51) 213 (63) + 32 (plusmn 347 plusmn 272)

Notes Current gt Case 2 Current = Case 2 Current lt Case 2

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

155

design in this type is the service delivery Therefore a customerrsquos mainconcerns are service process output and waiting time

In the high-contact type there are numerous contact points in this type ofpatientrsquos visit process at a hospital because customers initiate a service processand also participate in it along the process flow While the customerrsquos role inthe low-contact type is the recipient of service process output the customerrsquosrole in the high-contact type is as the participant in performing the serviceprocess For this reason several waits can be created along the process flowwhich take a relatively shorter time when compared to the low-contact typeThe participation characteristic inhibits customers from doing something elseduring not only the wait but also during the entire service process For thisreason a time-related goal of this type is minimizing the throughput time Andthe focus of service process analysis and design is the customer-serverinteraction Therefore customer satisfaction in this type is mainly related to theserverrsquos attitude and the responsiveness-related factors such as throughputtime and delay time (moving and waiting time)

ConclusionIn this research we suggested a service process rationalization methodcomposed of a service process model performance measurement and changeguidelines This research sets forth a way to explicitly link the customer viewto a service process model and yet have the process model be able to supportsimulation Compared to other service process models Dynamic-EPCincorporates not only the customer viewpoint but also reflects fourrepresentation perspectives in it Second the performance simulation resultsprovide a more objective basis for service change decisions which reduce therisk inherent in service process change Third the proposed change guidelinescan be used by practitioners in devising a contingency approach to serviceprocess change projects While some general change principles have beensuggested previously the classified customer service process situations and the

Table VIDiscussion about the

service rationalizationmethod

Low-contact type High-contact type

Contact points At the start and at the endof a service process

Numerous along the processflow

Role of customer Recipient of service processoutput

Participant in the serviceprocess

Frequency of wait One Many waits along the processflow

Waiting time Relatively long Relatively shortNature of wait for customers Can do something else Be captiveTime-related goal Minimize waiting time Minimize throughput timeAnalysisdesign focus Service delivery Customer-server interactionCustomer satisfaction-relatedfactors

Waiting time serviceprocess output

Serverrsquos attitude throughputtime moving and waitingtime

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contingent guidelines have advantages in identifying the service situation anddevising situation-specific change alternatives However we need to expandthe performance measurement about customer service from quantitative toqualitative factors

References

CACI Products Company (1993) SIMFACTORY II5 and SIMPROCESS Manual

Congram C and Epelman M (1995) ` How to describe your service an invitation to thestructured analysis and design techniquersquorsquo International Journal of Service IndustryManagement Vol 6 No 2 pp 6-23

Cronin JJ and Taylor SA (1992) `Measuring service quality a reexamination and extensionrsquorsquoJournal of Marketing Vol 56 July pp 55-63

Curtis B Keller MI and Over J (1992) ` Process modelingrsquorsquo Communications of the ACMVol 35 No 9 pp 75-90

Fisk RP Brown SW and Bitner MJ (1993) ` Tracking the evolution of the service marketingliteraturersquorsquo Journal of Retailing Vol 69 No 1 Spring pp 61-103

Galbraith JR (1993) Competing with Flexible Lateral Organizations 2nd ed Addison-WesleyReading MA

Innis DE and LaLonde BJ (1994) ` Customer service the key to customer satisfactioncustomer loyalty and market sharersquorsquo Journal of Business Logistics Vol 15 No 1 pp 1-27

Kim HW (1998) Enhancement of Organizational Performance Using Dynamic Process Modelingand Simulation PhD Dissertation Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology

Kim HW and Kim YG (1997) ` Dynamic process modeling for BPRrsquorsquo Information ampManagement Vol 32 No 1 pp 1-13

Kim YG (1995) `Process modeling for BPR event-process chain approachrsquorsquo Proceedings ofInternational Conference on Information Systems pp 109-21

LaLonde BJ and Zinszer PH (1976) Customer Service Meaning and Measurement NationalCouncil of Physical Distribution Management Chicago IL

Lovelock CH (1996) Service Marketing 3rd ed Prentice-Hall Englewood Cliffs NS

Mackenzie KD (1989) ` The process approach to organizational designrsquorsquo Human SystemsManagement Vol 8 pp 31-43

Parasuraman A Zeithaml VA and Berry LL (1988) ` SERVQUAL a multiple-item scale formeasuring consumer perceptions of service qualityrsquorsquo Journal of Retailing Vol 6 No 1pp 12-40

Quinn RE and Rohrbaugh J (1983) `A spatial model of effectiveness criteria towards acompeting values approaches to organizational analysisrsquorsquo Management Science Vol 29No 3 pp 363-77

Rakowski JP (1981-82) ` The customer service conceptrsquorsquo Review of Business amp EconomicResearch No 2 Winter pp 55-66

Ramaswamy R (1996) Design and Management of Service Process Addison-Wesley PublishingCompany Reading MA

Shostack GL (1984) ` Designing services that deliverrsquorsquo Harvard Business Review January-FebruaryVol 62 pp 133-9

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144

a ` waitrsquorsquo in service For example if a customer orders food at a restaurant thetime between ordering and receiving the food is treated as a wait The customerdoes not need to know details of how the order was processed inside thekitchen

Wait is defined as the customerrsquos delay before start of an event or a processafter requesting service due to the internal process of the server organizationand represented by the letter W It means the duration between customerrsquosrequesting service and receiving it During that period internal processes of theserver organization will be performed without customerrsquos involvement to meetcustomerrsquos needs and are not shown to customers While a queue waiting at astation means the delay for getting service before interacting with the serverthe wait means the delay after initiating the service If customers feel that thewait is too time consuming then we can analyze and rationalize it If customersaccept the wait however then we do not have to change it Not only the Processbut also the wait can be exploded into lower level Dynamic-EPC model wherecustomer object derived from the external customer takes the role of theinternal customer By exploding the wait we can analyze and model theinternal process of the organization along the customer objectrsquos movementAgain using the restaurant example even though the internal process of thekitchen is hidden at the top level Dynamic-EPC diagram it can be explodedinto a lower level diagram

Branch is a conditional splitting of an event-process into sub-flows Flowmeans the customer or customer objectrsquos movement across time and stations

Each modeling construct is specified with the Backus-Naur Form (BNF) forperformance simulation and information management The creation interval ofevent construct is specified for simulation Process is specified with itsprocessing time for simulation its input and output rule such as constraintresource required for performing the process and actor who is performing itFlow can be optionally specified with either its customer or a customer objectdepending on the movement along the process The moving time is used forsimulation The waiting time of wait construct is optionally used for conceptualunderstanding about the situation Branching is specified with its branchingcondition and ratio for simulation Finally station is specified with its nameand the number of servers for simulation

Figure 5 is a simple Dynamic-EPC diagram illustrating the customerrsquosvisiting process at a restaurant with some specifications The modelingconstructs are drawn on two dimensions station dimension vertically and timedimension horizontally Customers receive service as they move through theseprocesses and events

Performance measurementBased on the process model we can simulate the customer service process forperformance measurement For the service measurement we selected customerservice-related criteria such as throughput time moving time and queuewaiting time from the service quality model (Cronin and Taylor 1992

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

145

Parasuraman et al 1988) For the organizational performance measurementwe selected three factors from the rational goal dimension of the effectivenessmodel (Quinn and Rohrbaugh 1983) utilization efficiency and productivityUtilization means the stationrsquos usage against its work capacity Efficiency canbe measured with customerrsquos throughput time and delay time Productivity canbe measured with throughput Table I summarizes the simulation functionstransformed from the above factors

Throughput time is the total amount of time customers spend over theentire service process cycle It consists of customerrsquos moving time queuewaiting time and processing time along the service process Customerrsquosdelay time at a station is the summation of hisher moving time to a stationand queue waiting time for getting service The delay time at each stationshould be minimized as much as possible for customer satisfaction Delaytime is the average summation of customerrsquos moving time to a station andqueue waiting time for service at a station Utilization of each stationindicates how much work it does against its work capacity Whenorganizational change takes place stations with many differences such as toolow or too high utilization compared to other stations are frequently targetedThroughput is the total number of customers or outputs passing through theservice process which directly affects organizational performance in terms ofproductivity

Figure 5Dynamic-EPC diagram

for a customerrsquos visit toa restaurant

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Service process changePerformance of a service process needs to be improved in two ways first tomaximize customerrsquos satisfaction and second to do it as efficiently as possibleFor customer satisfaction we focused on the process throughput time and itsmost critical component the customerrsquos delay time Second for theorganizationrsquos management performance we focused on improvedproductivity and each stationrsquos utilization Based on the customerrsquos delay timeand the stationrsquos utilization considering the common applicability to anydomain we can classify service processes at stations into four situations andsuggest change guidelines as in Figure 6 (Kim and Kim 1997)

Table ISimulation functions

Factor Function

Customerrsquos throughput timePt

pˆ1

Pt

kˆ1

Pn

jˆ1

hellipmoving timejpk Dagger waiting timejk Dagger processing timejkdaggern

Customerrsquos delay time at stationk

Pt

pˆ1

Pn

jˆ1

hellipmoving timejpk Dagger waiting timejkdaggern

Utilization of stationkworking amountk

hellipworking timek pound number of serverskdagger

Productivity n at stationk=t

Key wherek = station number where k = 1tj = the customer at stationk where j = 1np = a station participating in the service process where p = 1tt = total number of stations in the service processn = total number of customers that have passed through stationk

working_amountk = serverrsquos actual working time at stationk

working_timek = serverrsquos arranged working time at stationk

number_of_serversk = total number of servers at stationk

waiting_timejk = the jth customerrsquos queue waiting time at stationk

processing_timejk = serverrsquos processing time for the jth customer at stationk

moving_timejpk = the jth customerrsquos moving time in the process flow from stationp to stationk

Figure 6Performance-basedchange guidelines

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

147

In situation 1 customers pass through a highly utilized station with short delaytime Since the station is also highly utilized it is an ideal situation formanagement It requires no change action (G1)

Situation 2 occurs when the station is highly utilized but customer delaytime is long From the customer perspective we need to shorten the delay timeby minimizing customerrsquos frequent movingwaiting time (G2) For thispurpose we can relocate stations to minimize distance between them Also wecan rearrange the processes andor events to take place more in parallelbecause sequential processing is generally more time consuming than theparallel From the organization perspective we need to increase the stationrsquoswork capacity (G3) For this purpose we can standardize or integrate theredundant processes to reduce the number of processes And we can considershortening the processing time by automating some manual tasks when theycannot be eliminated If the work capacity cannot be increased by anyinformation technology or procedural change then we should consider addingmore human servers or installing additional hardware facilities

In situation 3 customers pass through a less busy station with short delaytime From the customerrsquos perspective they can receive service rapidlypossibly as soon as they arrive at the station But it is not a preferable situationfrom the management perspective because the station is under-utilizedTherefore we should allocate some work performed at other overloadedstations to this station or transfer surplus work capacity to other overloadedones (G4)

Situation 4 occurs when customers experience long delays while the stationsare under-utilized This may result from either a peak-load condition or a batch-oriented work policy If the peak-time rush is the cause we may try to changethe customersrsquo arrival pattern (G5) For instance providing time period-relatedincentives may be considered to balance the peak-time utilization On the otherhand the stationrsquos batch-oriented work policy may be the cause For instance ifaccount adjustment and expense handling tasks are performed once a week inthe accounting department we can consider changing the work processingmode from batch to interactive (G6) since the batch processing model mayboost internal efficiency at the expense of more critical customer satisfaction

Comparison with other service process modelsThe proposed Dynamic-EPC can be compared to other service process models plusmnBlueprint (Shostack 1984) SADT (Cronin and Taylor 1992) and Flow chart(Ramaswamy 1996) plusmn as in Table II from the four representation perspectives ofCurtis et al (1992) functional behavioral organizational and informational

While Blueprint (Shostack 1984) deals with the behavioral perspective usingtime dimension it does not reflect other perspectives such as place and serverelements in the model As modeling constructs process and service elements areused in this model And the ` line of visibilityrsquorsquo has been adopted to classify thecustomersrsquo actions and internal operations in the model For the service processchange simple profitability analyses are conducted based on the model

BPMJ72

148

Flow chart (Ramaswamy 1996) has adopted the conventions of the BlueprintThis model deals with the organizational perspective using server element inaddition to the behavioral perspective For the service process change Flowchart supports identification of service process Although it is not directly usedfor simulation it becomes a preliminary basis for it And this model is used forservice process design and management

SADT (Cronin and Taylor 1992) focuses on information management ratherthan service process flow Although it deals with functional perspective itcannot fully reflect behavioral and organizational perspectives because it doesnot consider place and time dimensions in the model However it models aservice process with input output control and mechanism The primaryobjective of this model is the representation of a business systems structurewith data flow not the behavior of the system over time For this reason it isdifficult to use this model for customer service process change because of itsstatic characteristics

Compared to other service process models Dynamic-EPC supports serviceprocess representation with the diagram and its information management withthe specification from the four perspectives Although Dynamic-EPC deals withthe informational entities related with the process of informational perspective itdoes not model the structure and relationships between information entities whichcan be used for database system development The modeling construct waittakes a similar role to the ` line of visibilityrsquorsquo in Blueprint For the service processchange we can measure the responsiveness dimension of customer servicequality and process performance using simulation techniques while it is difficultto test the performance using other models From the comparison we can knowthat the proposed service rationalization method with Dynamic-EPC seems mostappropriate for customer service process analysis management and change

ApplicationTo support service process modeling we developed a modeling tool calledIntegrated Process Modeling Tool (IPMT) with Visual Basic in a PC Windowsenvironment In this paper we will introduce the application case of the method

Table IIComparison ofdynamic-EPC withother service processmodels

Representation perspectivesBlue-print

Flowchart SADT

Dynamic-EPC

Functional What processes are performed o o o oWhat flows of informational entities x x o o

Behavioral When process is performed o o x oHow it is performed o o o o

Organizational Where the process is performed x x x oBy whom the process is performed x o o o

Informational Information entities related with the process x x o oStructure and relationships x x x x

Notes where o = yes x = no

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

149

at the Seoul Adventist Hospital Seoul Adventist Hospital operates 17departments and has 110 doctors and 406 beds The hospital keeps the annualmonthlydaily number of patients of each department from which we couldassume the customerrsquos arrival pattern and branching ratio On average about1100 outpatients come to the hospital for doctor consultations each day Wepicked the outpatientrsquos consultation process across the internal medicine (IM)department testing room and pharmacy because it is representative of themost critical and time-consuming processes

Analysis and performance measurement of the current situationThe top level of the outpatientrsquos visit process is shown in Figure 7 The processis initiated by a patientrsquos arrival at the hospital Patients arrive at the hospitalrandomly or by appointment with a rate of 1 patient045min It follows anexponential distribution Arrived patients register and pay in advance thedoctorrsquos fee after waiting for a while in a queue This process can be performedby one of the eight servers with an average processing time of two minutes(here processing time follows a normal distribution) Registered outpatientswalk to the internal medicine department and the moving time follows anormal distribution with a mean of one minute and standard deviation of 05minute Arriving at the internal medicine departmentrsquos waiting room thepatient waits for his turn During that time the patient chart will be deliveredfrom the chart room to the department (W1) which takes about 15 minutesThose data about processing time at each step came from the measurementtime analysis Those specification data about the number of servers at astation input and output were gathered from interview These several process-related data can be specified and managed using the tool

There are four doctors in the internal medicine department Each out-patientwill be consulted by one of them for about ten minutes After the consultationthose who need additional step(s) plusmn medicine or testing plusmn have to pay again forthe step(s) in advance Arriving at the testing room the patient submits the pre-paid slip and is tested Arriving at the pharmacy desk the patient submits hisher prescription slip to request medicine The amount of time the customer hasto wait for his medicine is represented as ` waitrsquorsquo It can be exploded into a lowerlevel Dynamic-EPC (Figure 8) where the prescription slip (customer object)takes the customerrsquos (patient) role and goes through the internal pharmacyprocess The ` Proportionrsquorsquo process is specified using the tool After receiving themedicine the patient leaves the hospital

The current situation about the outpatientrsquos visit process is simulated withSIMPROCESS II5 (CACI 1993) The visualization capability enables us toverify the simulation model easily After verifying the model we should setthree parameters (warm-up period run-length number of replications) for thesimulation In the hospital case the run-length is eight hours because thehospital operates from 8 am to 5 pm except for one hour lunch time with zerowarm-up period The number of replications can be set by choosing thedesired risk and the width of the (1 plusmn a) confidence interval for the output

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150

variables selected We set it at 19 times with the 95 per cent confidence intervalbased on 387 as half width of the confidence interval and 866 as standarddeviation

Figure 7Outpatientrsquos visitprocess current case

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

151

The simulation results are summarized in Table III The throughput time of theprocess is 755 minutes Patients have to wait too long at the internal medicinedepartment (312 min) and at the pharmacy (219 min) while these two stationsrsquoutilization is higher (internal medicine department 974 per cent pharmacy964 per cent) than that of others And the number of outpatients consulted bythe doctors at the internal medicine department is 182 according to thesimulation However a small portion of arrived patients cannot be consultedbecause of the IM departmentrsquos limited capacity

Organizational change and performance measurementWe should investigate which station incurs a long delay time based on thesuggested change guidelines From the performance measurement resultsabout the current case delay times at the internal medicine department (312minutes) and the pharmacy (219 minutes) are longer than those at otherstations And the utilization of those two stations is higher (IM dept 974 percent pharmacy 964 per cent) than others These two cases therefore belong to

Figure 8Dynamic-EPC exploded

from W2

Table IIIPerformance

measurement resultsabout the current case

Customer service perspective Organizational performance perspective

Delay time Recept desk 58 min Utilization Recept 819IM dept 312 min Desk 974Pharmacy 219 min IM dept 964Exam room 16 min Pharmacy 714

Test roomThroughput time 755 min Throughput 182 patients

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situation 2 plusmn long delay time and high utilization plusmn in Figure 3 We need tochange the service processes between these two stations

According to the change guideline (G2 Minimize customerrsquos delay time) insituation 2 we consider performing processevent parallel That is themedicine requesttesting is transmitted electronically to the pharmacy or thetesting room during the patientrsquos consultation with the doctor by using a newconsultation support system Also we consider automating most of theactivities inside the pharmacy to shorten the processing time By the time thepatient arrives at the pharmacy hisher medicine is already waiting for him orher Or the patient can be tested without any delay at the testing room

Also the internal medicine department is a change target as it falls intosituation 2 According to the change guideline (G3) we should increase thestationrsquos work capacity The internal medicine departmentrsquos work capacitydepends on the number of doctors because the consultation by nature is amanual process Since adding more servers (doctors) usually incurs highorganizational costs however we need to recommend such an alternative verycarefully and after all other alternatives are first applied

Next we consider patients at the reception desk Since the currentregistration is performed manually it is slow and time-consuming Also thereare redundant tasks plusmn Register and pay Pay for the next step plusmn in Figure 7According to the change guideline (G2 Minimize customerrsquos delay time) insituation 2 we integrated the registration and payment processes by issuingeach patient a smart card with all their personal health history and bankaccount information When the patient arrives at the doctorrsquos office afterchecking hisher card at the reception desk with the registration system server(not human server) the patient is registered and the consultation history data isalready prepared Using the smart card we can change the ` registration andpayrsquorsquo process into an event Also all the patientrsquos expenses that day will behandled through his or her bank account All of these changes are reflected inthe alternative case 1 (Figure 9)

Case 1 is simulated and its performance measurement results aresummarized and compared with the current situation in Table IV According tothe simulation the throughput time is shortened from 755 to 611 minutesPatientrsquos delay times at each station are shortened except at the internalmedicine department And the utilization of the reception desk is reduced from819 per cent to 347 per cent with the help of IT plusmn smart card Finally theshortened throughput time increased the throughput the number of consultedoutpatients from 182 to 194 More patients can be consulted in the changedcase than the current one

Case 1 reveals some improvements in throughput time patientrsquos delay timeand stationsrsquo utilization But we can expect more improvement because case 1still shows long delay time at the internal medicine department and too lowutilization of the reception desk Patients at the internal department still belongto situation 2 plusmn long delay time and high utilization The reception desk belongsto situation 3 plusmn short delay time and low utilization For this reason we decided

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

153

to increase the internal medicine departmentrsquos work capacity according to thesuggested action guideline (G3 Increase the stationrsquos work capacity) Since thedoctorrsquos consultation work cannot be automated we added two more doctors tothe internal medicine department in the redesigned case 2 Also according tothe guideline (G4 Transfer some of work capacity) in situation 3 we reducedthe number of servers at the reception desk from eight to three without anyprocedural change

Performance measurement results about case 2 and its comparison withcurrent situation are summarized in Table V The throughput time is shortenedfrom 755 minutes to 182 minutes Customerrsquos delay times at each station aresignificantly shorter than the current one Also workload balancing amongthose stations is more even than in case 1 except the reception desk consists ofregistration system servers not employees The throughput is also increasedfrom 182 to 213 From these results we can know that all of the stations belong

Figure 9Changed visit process

case 1

Table IVPerformance

measurement resultsabout current and

case 1

Factor Current case Case 1 Difference

Stationrsquos utilization Reception desk 819 347 plusmn 472IM department 974 988 +14Pharmacy 964 781 plusmn 183Testing room 714 770 plusmn 54

Delay time Reception desk (min) 58 02 plusmn 56IM department (min) 312 474 +162Pharmacy (min) 219 12 plusmn 207Testing room (min) 16 12 plusmn 04

Throughput time Mean time (min) 755 611 plusmn 143Standard deviation 87 56

Throughput Number of consulted patients 182 194 +12

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to situation 1 We tested that there is difference between the current case andcase 2 using the null hypothesis test at a = 005

We can compare the results from the organizational performance andcustomer service dimensions From the organizational performanceperspective productivity of throughput and efficiency of throughput time havebeen improved The use of resource with utilization is lower than the currentsituation except the reception desk while those stations in the current situationare overloaded Case 2 however achieved a more even use of resources thanthe current situation across the IM department pharmacy and testingdepartment From the customer service perspective shortened delay times atseveral stations and the dramatically shortened throughput time imply that theresponsiveness of customer service is enhanced in case 2

DiscussionIn addition to the hospital case the method and tool have been applied toseveral real cases such as order processing at a cable-TV home shoppingcompany and project order tracking process at an advertising agency (Kim1998) We can classify customer service processes by the frequency of contactsbetween customer and server-organization low-contact type and high-contacttype Based on the classification we can discuss the applications of theproposed method as in Table VI In the low-contact type customers initiate theserver-organizationrsquos service process and wait for the process output withoutparticipating in it such as customerrsquos order cycle process There is just one waitbetween the start and the end of a service process Since the waiting time takesthe entire throughput time of a service process performed inside the server-organization it is relatively longer than that of the high-contact type Sincecustomers do not participate in the server-organizationrsquos process they can dosomething else during the wait For this reason a time-related goal of this typeis minimizing the waiting time The focus of service process analysis and

Table VComparison betweencurrent and case 2

CriteriaCurrent with

sdCase 2 with

sd DifferenceConfidence

interval

Utilization Recept desk 819 (34) 924 (51) +135 (plusmn 154 plusmn 56)IM dept 974 (21) 659 (62) plusmn 315 (266 365)Pharmacy 964 (23) 795 (43) plusmn 169 (133 205)Test room 714 (68) 784 (67) plusmn 70 (plusmn 115 plusmn 25)

Delay time Recept desk 58 min (13) 09 min(02) plusmn 49 min (43 55)IM Dept 312 min (46) 24 min(07) plusmn 288 min (266 310)Pharmacy 219 min (32) 13 min(04) plusmn 206 min (190 222)Test room 16 min (05) 15 min(05) plusmn 01 min (plusmn 02 04)

Through-put time Mean time 755 min(87) 182 min(21) plusmn 573 min (519 627)Through-put Consulted

patients 182 (51) 213 (63) + 32 (plusmn 347 plusmn 272)

Notes Current gt Case 2 Current = Case 2 Current lt Case 2

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

155

design in this type is the service delivery Therefore a customerrsquos mainconcerns are service process output and waiting time

In the high-contact type there are numerous contact points in this type ofpatientrsquos visit process at a hospital because customers initiate a service processand also participate in it along the process flow While the customerrsquos role inthe low-contact type is the recipient of service process output the customerrsquosrole in the high-contact type is as the participant in performing the serviceprocess For this reason several waits can be created along the process flowwhich take a relatively shorter time when compared to the low-contact typeThe participation characteristic inhibits customers from doing something elseduring not only the wait but also during the entire service process For thisreason a time-related goal of this type is minimizing the throughput time Andthe focus of service process analysis and design is the customer-serverinteraction Therefore customer satisfaction in this type is mainly related to theserverrsquos attitude and the responsiveness-related factors such as throughputtime and delay time (moving and waiting time)

ConclusionIn this research we suggested a service process rationalization methodcomposed of a service process model performance measurement and changeguidelines This research sets forth a way to explicitly link the customer viewto a service process model and yet have the process model be able to supportsimulation Compared to other service process models Dynamic-EPCincorporates not only the customer viewpoint but also reflects fourrepresentation perspectives in it Second the performance simulation resultsprovide a more objective basis for service change decisions which reduce therisk inherent in service process change Third the proposed change guidelinescan be used by practitioners in devising a contingency approach to serviceprocess change projects While some general change principles have beensuggested previously the classified customer service process situations and the

Table VIDiscussion about the

service rationalizationmethod

Low-contact type High-contact type

Contact points At the start and at the endof a service process

Numerous along the processflow

Role of customer Recipient of service processoutput

Participant in the serviceprocess

Frequency of wait One Many waits along the processflow

Waiting time Relatively long Relatively shortNature of wait for customers Can do something else Be captiveTime-related goal Minimize waiting time Minimize throughput timeAnalysisdesign focus Service delivery Customer-server interactionCustomer satisfaction-relatedfactors

Waiting time serviceprocess output

Serverrsquos attitude throughputtime moving and waitingtime

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contingent guidelines have advantages in identifying the service situation anddevising situation-specific change alternatives However we need to expandthe performance measurement about customer service from quantitative toqualitative factors

References

CACI Products Company (1993) SIMFACTORY II5 and SIMPROCESS Manual

Congram C and Epelman M (1995) ` How to describe your service an invitation to thestructured analysis and design techniquersquorsquo International Journal of Service IndustryManagement Vol 6 No 2 pp 6-23

Cronin JJ and Taylor SA (1992) `Measuring service quality a reexamination and extensionrsquorsquoJournal of Marketing Vol 56 July pp 55-63

Curtis B Keller MI and Over J (1992) ` Process modelingrsquorsquo Communications of the ACMVol 35 No 9 pp 75-90

Fisk RP Brown SW and Bitner MJ (1993) ` Tracking the evolution of the service marketingliteraturersquorsquo Journal of Retailing Vol 69 No 1 Spring pp 61-103

Galbraith JR (1993) Competing with Flexible Lateral Organizations 2nd ed Addison-WesleyReading MA

Innis DE and LaLonde BJ (1994) ` Customer service the key to customer satisfactioncustomer loyalty and market sharersquorsquo Journal of Business Logistics Vol 15 No 1 pp 1-27

Kim HW (1998) Enhancement of Organizational Performance Using Dynamic Process Modelingand Simulation PhD Dissertation Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology

Kim HW and Kim YG (1997) ` Dynamic process modeling for BPRrsquorsquo Information ampManagement Vol 32 No 1 pp 1-13

Kim YG (1995) `Process modeling for BPR event-process chain approachrsquorsquo Proceedings ofInternational Conference on Information Systems pp 109-21

LaLonde BJ and Zinszer PH (1976) Customer Service Meaning and Measurement NationalCouncil of Physical Distribution Management Chicago IL

Lovelock CH (1996) Service Marketing 3rd ed Prentice-Hall Englewood Cliffs NS

Mackenzie KD (1989) ` The process approach to organizational designrsquorsquo Human SystemsManagement Vol 8 pp 31-43

Parasuraman A Zeithaml VA and Berry LL (1988) ` SERVQUAL a multiple-item scale formeasuring consumer perceptions of service qualityrsquorsquo Journal of Retailing Vol 6 No 1pp 12-40

Quinn RE and Rohrbaugh J (1983) `A spatial model of effectiveness criteria towards acompeting values approaches to organizational analysisrsquorsquo Management Science Vol 29No 3 pp 363-77

Rakowski JP (1981-82) ` The customer service conceptrsquorsquo Review of Business amp EconomicResearch No 2 Winter pp 55-66

Ramaswamy R (1996) Design and Management of Service Process Addison-Wesley PublishingCompany Reading MA

Shostack GL (1984) ` Designing services that deliverrsquorsquo Harvard Business Review January-FebruaryVol 62 pp 133-9

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

145

Parasuraman et al 1988) For the organizational performance measurementwe selected three factors from the rational goal dimension of the effectivenessmodel (Quinn and Rohrbaugh 1983) utilization efficiency and productivityUtilization means the stationrsquos usage against its work capacity Efficiency canbe measured with customerrsquos throughput time and delay time Productivity canbe measured with throughput Table I summarizes the simulation functionstransformed from the above factors

Throughput time is the total amount of time customers spend over theentire service process cycle It consists of customerrsquos moving time queuewaiting time and processing time along the service process Customerrsquosdelay time at a station is the summation of hisher moving time to a stationand queue waiting time for getting service The delay time at each stationshould be minimized as much as possible for customer satisfaction Delaytime is the average summation of customerrsquos moving time to a station andqueue waiting time for service at a station Utilization of each stationindicates how much work it does against its work capacity Whenorganizational change takes place stations with many differences such as toolow or too high utilization compared to other stations are frequently targetedThroughput is the total number of customers or outputs passing through theservice process which directly affects organizational performance in terms ofproductivity

Figure 5Dynamic-EPC diagram

for a customerrsquos visit toa restaurant

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Service process changePerformance of a service process needs to be improved in two ways first tomaximize customerrsquos satisfaction and second to do it as efficiently as possibleFor customer satisfaction we focused on the process throughput time and itsmost critical component the customerrsquos delay time Second for theorganizationrsquos management performance we focused on improvedproductivity and each stationrsquos utilization Based on the customerrsquos delay timeand the stationrsquos utilization considering the common applicability to anydomain we can classify service processes at stations into four situations andsuggest change guidelines as in Figure 6 (Kim and Kim 1997)

Table ISimulation functions

Factor Function

Customerrsquos throughput timePt

pˆ1

Pt

kˆ1

Pn

jˆ1

hellipmoving timejpk Dagger waiting timejk Dagger processing timejkdaggern

Customerrsquos delay time at stationk

Pt

pˆ1

Pn

jˆ1

hellipmoving timejpk Dagger waiting timejkdaggern

Utilization of stationkworking amountk

hellipworking timek pound number of serverskdagger

Productivity n at stationk=t

Key wherek = station number where k = 1tj = the customer at stationk where j = 1np = a station participating in the service process where p = 1tt = total number of stations in the service processn = total number of customers that have passed through stationk

working_amountk = serverrsquos actual working time at stationk

working_timek = serverrsquos arranged working time at stationk

number_of_serversk = total number of servers at stationk

waiting_timejk = the jth customerrsquos queue waiting time at stationk

processing_timejk = serverrsquos processing time for the jth customer at stationk

moving_timejpk = the jth customerrsquos moving time in the process flow from stationp to stationk

Figure 6Performance-basedchange guidelines

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

147

In situation 1 customers pass through a highly utilized station with short delaytime Since the station is also highly utilized it is an ideal situation formanagement It requires no change action (G1)

Situation 2 occurs when the station is highly utilized but customer delaytime is long From the customer perspective we need to shorten the delay timeby minimizing customerrsquos frequent movingwaiting time (G2) For thispurpose we can relocate stations to minimize distance between them Also wecan rearrange the processes andor events to take place more in parallelbecause sequential processing is generally more time consuming than theparallel From the organization perspective we need to increase the stationrsquoswork capacity (G3) For this purpose we can standardize or integrate theredundant processes to reduce the number of processes And we can considershortening the processing time by automating some manual tasks when theycannot be eliminated If the work capacity cannot be increased by anyinformation technology or procedural change then we should consider addingmore human servers or installing additional hardware facilities

In situation 3 customers pass through a less busy station with short delaytime From the customerrsquos perspective they can receive service rapidlypossibly as soon as they arrive at the station But it is not a preferable situationfrom the management perspective because the station is under-utilizedTherefore we should allocate some work performed at other overloadedstations to this station or transfer surplus work capacity to other overloadedones (G4)

Situation 4 occurs when customers experience long delays while the stationsare under-utilized This may result from either a peak-load condition or a batch-oriented work policy If the peak-time rush is the cause we may try to changethe customersrsquo arrival pattern (G5) For instance providing time period-relatedincentives may be considered to balance the peak-time utilization On the otherhand the stationrsquos batch-oriented work policy may be the cause For instance ifaccount adjustment and expense handling tasks are performed once a week inthe accounting department we can consider changing the work processingmode from batch to interactive (G6) since the batch processing model mayboost internal efficiency at the expense of more critical customer satisfaction

Comparison with other service process modelsThe proposed Dynamic-EPC can be compared to other service process models plusmnBlueprint (Shostack 1984) SADT (Cronin and Taylor 1992) and Flow chart(Ramaswamy 1996) plusmn as in Table II from the four representation perspectives ofCurtis et al (1992) functional behavioral organizational and informational

While Blueprint (Shostack 1984) deals with the behavioral perspective usingtime dimension it does not reflect other perspectives such as place and serverelements in the model As modeling constructs process and service elements areused in this model And the ` line of visibilityrsquorsquo has been adopted to classify thecustomersrsquo actions and internal operations in the model For the service processchange simple profitability analyses are conducted based on the model

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Flow chart (Ramaswamy 1996) has adopted the conventions of the BlueprintThis model deals with the organizational perspective using server element inaddition to the behavioral perspective For the service process change Flowchart supports identification of service process Although it is not directly usedfor simulation it becomes a preliminary basis for it And this model is used forservice process design and management

SADT (Cronin and Taylor 1992) focuses on information management ratherthan service process flow Although it deals with functional perspective itcannot fully reflect behavioral and organizational perspectives because it doesnot consider place and time dimensions in the model However it models aservice process with input output control and mechanism The primaryobjective of this model is the representation of a business systems structurewith data flow not the behavior of the system over time For this reason it isdifficult to use this model for customer service process change because of itsstatic characteristics

Compared to other service process models Dynamic-EPC supports serviceprocess representation with the diagram and its information management withthe specification from the four perspectives Although Dynamic-EPC deals withthe informational entities related with the process of informational perspective itdoes not model the structure and relationships between information entities whichcan be used for database system development The modeling construct waittakes a similar role to the ` line of visibilityrsquorsquo in Blueprint For the service processchange we can measure the responsiveness dimension of customer servicequality and process performance using simulation techniques while it is difficultto test the performance using other models From the comparison we can knowthat the proposed service rationalization method with Dynamic-EPC seems mostappropriate for customer service process analysis management and change

ApplicationTo support service process modeling we developed a modeling tool calledIntegrated Process Modeling Tool (IPMT) with Visual Basic in a PC Windowsenvironment In this paper we will introduce the application case of the method

Table IIComparison ofdynamic-EPC withother service processmodels

Representation perspectivesBlue-print

Flowchart SADT

Dynamic-EPC

Functional What processes are performed o o o oWhat flows of informational entities x x o o

Behavioral When process is performed o o x oHow it is performed o o o o

Organizational Where the process is performed x x x oBy whom the process is performed x o o o

Informational Information entities related with the process x x o oStructure and relationships x x x x

Notes where o = yes x = no

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

149

at the Seoul Adventist Hospital Seoul Adventist Hospital operates 17departments and has 110 doctors and 406 beds The hospital keeps the annualmonthlydaily number of patients of each department from which we couldassume the customerrsquos arrival pattern and branching ratio On average about1100 outpatients come to the hospital for doctor consultations each day Wepicked the outpatientrsquos consultation process across the internal medicine (IM)department testing room and pharmacy because it is representative of themost critical and time-consuming processes

Analysis and performance measurement of the current situationThe top level of the outpatientrsquos visit process is shown in Figure 7 The processis initiated by a patientrsquos arrival at the hospital Patients arrive at the hospitalrandomly or by appointment with a rate of 1 patient045min It follows anexponential distribution Arrived patients register and pay in advance thedoctorrsquos fee after waiting for a while in a queue This process can be performedby one of the eight servers with an average processing time of two minutes(here processing time follows a normal distribution) Registered outpatientswalk to the internal medicine department and the moving time follows anormal distribution with a mean of one minute and standard deviation of 05minute Arriving at the internal medicine departmentrsquos waiting room thepatient waits for his turn During that time the patient chart will be deliveredfrom the chart room to the department (W1) which takes about 15 minutesThose data about processing time at each step came from the measurementtime analysis Those specification data about the number of servers at astation input and output were gathered from interview These several process-related data can be specified and managed using the tool

There are four doctors in the internal medicine department Each out-patientwill be consulted by one of them for about ten minutes After the consultationthose who need additional step(s) plusmn medicine or testing plusmn have to pay again forthe step(s) in advance Arriving at the testing room the patient submits the pre-paid slip and is tested Arriving at the pharmacy desk the patient submits hisher prescription slip to request medicine The amount of time the customer hasto wait for his medicine is represented as ` waitrsquorsquo It can be exploded into a lowerlevel Dynamic-EPC (Figure 8) where the prescription slip (customer object)takes the customerrsquos (patient) role and goes through the internal pharmacyprocess The ` Proportionrsquorsquo process is specified using the tool After receiving themedicine the patient leaves the hospital

The current situation about the outpatientrsquos visit process is simulated withSIMPROCESS II5 (CACI 1993) The visualization capability enables us toverify the simulation model easily After verifying the model we should setthree parameters (warm-up period run-length number of replications) for thesimulation In the hospital case the run-length is eight hours because thehospital operates from 8 am to 5 pm except for one hour lunch time with zerowarm-up period The number of replications can be set by choosing thedesired risk and the width of the (1 plusmn a) confidence interval for the output

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variables selected We set it at 19 times with the 95 per cent confidence intervalbased on 387 as half width of the confidence interval and 866 as standarddeviation

Figure 7Outpatientrsquos visitprocess current case

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

151

The simulation results are summarized in Table III The throughput time of theprocess is 755 minutes Patients have to wait too long at the internal medicinedepartment (312 min) and at the pharmacy (219 min) while these two stationsrsquoutilization is higher (internal medicine department 974 per cent pharmacy964 per cent) than that of others And the number of outpatients consulted bythe doctors at the internal medicine department is 182 according to thesimulation However a small portion of arrived patients cannot be consultedbecause of the IM departmentrsquos limited capacity

Organizational change and performance measurementWe should investigate which station incurs a long delay time based on thesuggested change guidelines From the performance measurement resultsabout the current case delay times at the internal medicine department (312minutes) and the pharmacy (219 minutes) are longer than those at otherstations And the utilization of those two stations is higher (IM dept 974 percent pharmacy 964 per cent) than others These two cases therefore belong to

Figure 8Dynamic-EPC exploded

from W2

Table IIIPerformance

measurement resultsabout the current case

Customer service perspective Organizational performance perspective

Delay time Recept desk 58 min Utilization Recept 819IM dept 312 min Desk 974Pharmacy 219 min IM dept 964Exam room 16 min Pharmacy 714

Test roomThroughput time 755 min Throughput 182 patients

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situation 2 plusmn long delay time and high utilization plusmn in Figure 3 We need tochange the service processes between these two stations

According to the change guideline (G2 Minimize customerrsquos delay time) insituation 2 we consider performing processevent parallel That is themedicine requesttesting is transmitted electronically to the pharmacy or thetesting room during the patientrsquos consultation with the doctor by using a newconsultation support system Also we consider automating most of theactivities inside the pharmacy to shorten the processing time By the time thepatient arrives at the pharmacy hisher medicine is already waiting for him orher Or the patient can be tested without any delay at the testing room

Also the internal medicine department is a change target as it falls intosituation 2 According to the change guideline (G3) we should increase thestationrsquos work capacity The internal medicine departmentrsquos work capacitydepends on the number of doctors because the consultation by nature is amanual process Since adding more servers (doctors) usually incurs highorganizational costs however we need to recommend such an alternative verycarefully and after all other alternatives are first applied

Next we consider patients at the reception desk Since the currentregistration is performed manually it is slow and time-consuming Also thereare redundant tasks plusmn Register and pay Pay for the next step plusmn in Figure 7According to the change guideline (G2 Minimize customerrsquos delay time) insituation 2 we integrated the registration and payment processes by issuingeach patient a smart card with all their personal health history and bankaccount information When the patient arrives at the doctorrsquos office afterchecking hisher card at the reception desk with the registration system server(not human server) the patient is registered and the consultation history data isalready prepared Using the smart card we can change the ` registration andpayrsquorsquo process into an event Also all the patientrsquos expenses that day will behandled through his or her bank account All of these changes are reflected inthe alternative case 1 (Figure 9)

Case 1 is simulated and its performance measurement results aresummarized and compared with the current situation in Table IV According tothe simulation the throughput time is shortened from 755 to 611 minutesPatientrsquos delay times at each station are shortened except at the internalmedicine department And the utilization of the reception desk is reduced from819 per cent to 347 per cent with the help of IT plusmn smart card Finally theshortened throughput time increased the throughput the number of consultedoutpatients from 182 to 194 More patients can be consulted in the changedcase than the current one

Case 1 reveals some improvements in throughput time patientrsquos delay timeand stationsrsquo utilization But we can expect more improvement because case 1still shows long delay time at the internal medicine department and too lowutilization of the reception desk Patients at the internal department still belongto situation 2 plusmn long delay time and high utilization The reception desk belongsto situation 3 plusmn short delay time and low utilization For this reason we decided

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

153

to increase the internal medicine departmentrsquos work capacity according to thesuggested action guideline (G3 Increase the stationrsquos work capacity) Since thedoctorrsquos consultation work cannot be automated we added two more doctors tothe internal medicine department in the redesigned case 2 Also according tothe guideline (G4 Transfer some of work capacity) in situation 3 we reducedthe number of servers at the reception desk from eight to three without anyprocedural change

Performance measurement results about case 2 and its comparison withcurrent situation are summarized in Table V The throughput time is shortenedfrom 755 minutes to 182 minutes Customerrsquos delay times at each station aresignificantly shorter than the current one Also workload balancing amongthose stations is more even than in case 1 except the reception desk consists ofregistration system servers not employees The throughput is also increasedfrom 182 to 213 From these results we can know that all of the stations belong

Figure 9Changed visit process

case 1

Table IVPerformance

measurement resultsabout current and

case 1

Factor Current case Case 1 Difference

Stationrsquos utilization Reception desk 819 347 plusmn 472IM department 974 988 +14Pharmacy 964 781 plusmn 183Testing room 714 770 plusmn 54

Delay time Reception desk (min) 58 02 plusmn 56IM department (min) 312 474 +162Pharmacy (min) 219 12 plusmn 207Testing room (min) 16 12 plusmn 04

Throughput time Mean time (min) 755 611 plusmn 143Standard deviation 87 56

Throughput Number of consulted patients 182 194 +12

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to situation 1 We tested that there is difference between the current case andcase 2 using the null hypothesis test at a = 005

We can compare the results from the organizational performance andcustomer service dimensions From the organizational performanceperspective productivity of throughput and efficiency of throughput time havebeen improved The use of resource with utilization is lower than the currentsituation except the reception desk while those stations in the current situationare overloaded Case 2 however achieved a more even use of resources thanthe current situation across the IM department pharmacy and testingdepartment From the customer service perspective shortened delay times atseveral stations and the dramatically shortened throughput time imply that theresponsiveness of customer service is enhanced in case 2

DiscussionIn addition to the hospital case the method and tool have been applied toseveral real cases such as order processing at a cable-TV home shoppingcompany and project order tracking process at an advertising agency (Kim1998) We can classify customer service processes by the frequency of contactsbetween customer and server-organization low-contact type and high-contacttype Based on the classification we can discuss the applications of theproposed method as in Table VI In the low-contact type customers initiate theserver-organizationrsquos service process and wait for the process output withoutparticipating in it such as customerrsquos order cycle process There is just one waitbetween the start and the end of a service process Since the waiting time takesthe entire throughput time of a service process performed inside the server-organization it is relatively longer than that of the high-contact type Sincecustomers do not participate in the server-organizationrsquos process they can dosomething else during the wait For this reason a time-related goal of this typeis minimizing the waiting time The focus of service process analysis and

Table VComparison betweencurrent and case 2

CriteriaCurrent with

sdCase 2 with

sd DifferenceConfidence

interval

Utilization Recept desk 819 (34) 924 (51) +135 (plusmn 154 plusmn 56)IM dept 974 (21) 659 (62) plusmn 315 (266 365)Pharmacy 964 (23) 795 (43) plusmn 169 (133 205)Test room 714 (68) 784 (67) plusmn 70 (plusmn 115 plusmn 25)

Delay time Recept desk 58 min (13) 09 min(02) plusmn 49 min (43 55)IM Dept 312 min (46) 24 min(07) plusmn 288 min (266 310)Pharmacy 219 min (32) 13 min(04) plusmn 206 min (190 222)Test room 16 min (05) 15 min(05) plusmn 01 min (plusmn 02 04)

Through-put time Mean time 755 min(87) 182 min(21) plusmn 573 min (519 627)Through-put Consulted

patients 182 (51) 213 (63) + 32 (plusmn 347 plusmn 272)

Notes Current gt Case 2 Current = Case 2 Current lt Case 2

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

155

design in this type is the service delivery Therefore a customerrsquos mainconcerns are service process output and waiting time

In the high-contact type there are numerous contact points in this type ofpatientrsquos visit process at a hospital because customers initiate a service processand also participate in it along the process flow While the customerrsquos role inthe low-contact type is the recipient of service process output the customerrsquosrole in the high-contact type is as the participant in performing the serviceprocess For this reason several waits can be created along the process flowwhich take a relatively shorter time when compared to the low-contact typeThe participation characteristic inhibits customers from doing something elseduring not only the wait but also during the entire service process For thisreason a time-related goal of this type is minimizing the throughput time Andthe focus of service process analysis and design is the customer-serverinteraction Therefore customer satisfaction in this type is mainly related to theserverrsquos attitude and the responsiveness-related factors such as throughputtime and delay time (moving and waiting time)

ConclusionIn this research we suggested a service process rationalization methodcomposed of a service process model performance measurement and changeguidelines This research sets forth a way to explicitly link the customer viewto a service process model and yet have the process model be able to supportsimulation Compared to other service process models Dynamic-EPCincorporates not only the customer viewpoint but also reflects fourrepresentation perspectives in it Second the performance simulation resultsprovide a more objective basis for service change decisions which reduce therisk inherent in service process change Third the proposed change guidelinescan be used by practitioners in devising a contingency approach to serviceprocess change projects While some general change principles have beensuggested previously the classified customer service process situations and the

Table VIDiscussion about the

service rationalizationmethod

Low-contact type High-contact type

Contact points At the start and at the endof a service process

Numerous along the processflow

Role of customer Recipient of service processoutput

Participant in the serviceprocess

Frequency of wait One Many waits along the processflow

Waiting time Relatively long Relatively shortNature of wait for customers Can do something else Be captiveTime-related goal Minimize waiting time Minimize throughput timeAnalysisdesign focus Service delivery Customer-server interactionCustomer satisfaction-relatedfactors

Waiting time serviceprocess output

Serverrsquos attitude throughputtime moving and waitingtime

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contingent guidelines have advantages in identifying the service situation anddevising situation-specific change alternatives However we need to expandthe performance measurement about customer service from quantitative toqualitative factors

References

CACI Products Company (1993) SIMFACTORY II5 and SIMPROCESS Manual

Congram C and Epelman M (1995) ` How to describe your service an invitation to thestructured analysis and design techniquersquorsquo International Journal of Service IndustryManagement Vol 6 No 2 pp 6-23

Cronin JJ and Taylor SA (1992) `Measuring service quality a reexamination and extensionrsquorsquoJournal of Marketing Vol 56 July pp 55-63

Curtis B Keller MI and Over J (1992) ` Process modelingrsquorsquo Communications of the ACMVol 35 No 9 pp 75-90

Fisk RP Brown SW and Bitner MJ (1993) ` Tracking the evolution of the service marketingliteraturersquorsquo Journal of Retailing Vol 69 No 1 Spring pp 61-103

Galbraith JR (1993) Competing with Flexible Lateral Organizations 2nd ed Addison-WesleyReading MA

Innis DE and LaLonde BJ (1994) ` Customer service the key to customer satisfactioncustomer loyalty and market sharersquorsquo Journal of Business Logistics Vol 15 No 1 pp 1-27

Kim HW (1998) Enhancement of Organizational Performance Using Dynamic Process Modelingand Simulation PhD Dissertation Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology

Kim HW and Kim YG (1997) ` Dynamic process modeling for BPRrsquorsquo Information ampManagement Vol 32 No 1 pp 1-13

Kim YG (1995) `Process modeling for BPR event-process chain approachrsquorsquo Proceedings ofInternational Conference on Information Systems pp 109-21

LaLonde BJ and Zinszer PH (1976) Customer Service Meaning and Measurement NationalCouncil of Physical Distribution Management Chicago IL

Lovelock CH (1996) Service Marketing 3rd ed Prentice-Hall Englewood Cliffs NS

Mackenzie KD (1989) ` The process approach to organizational designrsquorsquo Human SystemsManagement Vol 8 pp 31-43

Parasuraman A Zeithaml VA and Berry LL (1988) ` SERVQUAL a multiple-item scale formeasuring consumer perceptions of service qualityrsquorsquo Journal of Retailing Vol 6 No 1pp 12-40

Quinn RE and Rohrbaugh J (1983) `A spatial model of effectiveness criteria towards acompeting values approaches to organizational analysisrsquorsquo Management Science Vol 29No 3 pp 363-77

Rakowski JP (1981-82) ` The customer service conceptrsquorsquo Review of Business amp EconomicResearch No 2 Winter pp 55-66

Ramaswamy R (1996) Design and Management of Service Process Addison-Wesley PublishingCompany Reading MA

Shostack GL (1984) ` Designing services that deliverrsquorsquo Harvard Business Review January-FebruaryVol 62 pp 133-9

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146

Service process changePerformance of a service process needs to be improved in two ways first tomaximize customerrsquos satisfaction and second to do it as efficiently as possibleFor customer satisfaction we focused on the process throughput time and itsmost critical component the customerrsquos delay time Second for theorganizationrsquos management performance we focused on improvedproductivity and each stationrsquos utilization Based on the customerrsquos delay timeand the stationrsquos utilization considering the common applicability to anydomain we can classify service processes at stations into four situations andsuggest change guidelines as in Figure 6 (Kim and Kim 1997)

Table ISimulation functions

Factor Function

Customerrsquos throughput timePt

pˆ1

Pt

kˆ1

Pn

jˆ1

hellipmoving timejpk Dagger waiting timejk Dagger processing timejkdaggern

Customerrsquos delay time at stationk

Pt

pˆ1

Pn

jˆ1

hellipmoving timejpk Dagger waiting timejkdaggern

Utilization of stationkworking amountk

hellipworking timek pound number of serverskdagger

Productivity n at stationk=t

Key wherek = station number where k = 1tj = the customer at stationk where j = 1np = a station participating in the service process where p = 1tt = total number of stations in the service processn = total number of customers that have passed through stationk

working_amountk = serverrsquos actual working time at stationk

working_timek = serverrsquos arranged working time at stationk

number_of_serversk = total number of servers at stationk

waiting_timejk = the jth customerrsquos queue waiting time at stationk

processing_timejk = serverrsquos processing time for the jth customer at stationk

moving_timejpk = the jth customerrsquos moving time in the process flow from stationp to stationk

Figure 6Performance-basedchange guidelines

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

147

In situation 1 customers pass through a highly utilized station with short delaytime Since the station is also highly utilized it is an ideal situation formanagement It requires no change action (G1)

Situation 2 occurs when the station is highly utilized but customer delaytime is long From the customer perspective we need to shorten the delay timeby minimizing customerrsquos frequent movingwaiting time (G2) For thispurpose we can relocate stations to minimize distance between them Also wecan rearrange the processes andor events to take place more in parallelbecause sequential processing is generally more time consuming than theparallel From the organization perspective we need to increase the stationrsquoswork capacity (G3) For this purpose we can standardize or integrate theredundant processes to reduce the number of processes And we can considershortening the processing time by automating some manual tasks when theycannot be eliminated If the work capacity cannot be increased by anyinformation technology or procedural change then we should consider addingmore human servers or installing additional hardware facilities

In situation 3 customers pass through a less busy station with short delaytime From the customerrsquos perspective they can receive service rapidlypossibly as soon as they arrive at the station But it is not a preferable situationfrom the management perspective because the station is under-utilizedTherefore we should allocate some work performed at other overloadedstations to this station or transfer surplus work capacity to other overloadedones (G4)

Situation 4 occurs when customers experience long delays while the stationsare under-utilized This may result from either a peak-load condition or a batch-oriented work policy If the peak-time rush is the cause we may try to changethe customersrsquo arrival pattern (G5) For instance providing time period-relatedincentives may be considered to balance the peak-time utilization On the otherhand the stationrsquos batch-oriented work policy may be the cause For instance ifaccount adjustment and expense handling tasks are performed once a week inthe accounting department we can consider changing the work processingmode from batch to interactive (G6) since the batch processing model mayboost internal efficiency at the expense of more critical customer satisfaction

Comparison with other service process modelsThe proposed Dynamic-EPC can be compared to other service process models plusmnBlueprint (Shostack 1984) SADT (Cronin and Taylor 1992) and Flow chart(Ramaswamy 1996) plusmn as in Table II from the four representation perspectives ofCurtis et al (1992) functional behavioral organizational and informational

While Blueprint (Shostack 1984) deals with the behavioral perspective usingtime dimension it does not reflect other perspectives such as place and serverelements in the model As modeling constructs process and service elements areused in this model And the ` line of visibilityrsquorsquo has been adopted to classify thecustomersrsquo actions and internal operations in the model For the service processchange simple profitability analyses are conducted based on the model

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148

Flow chart (Ramaswamy 1996) has adopted the conventions of the BlueprintThis model deals with the organizational perspective using server element inaddition to the behavioral perspective For the service process change Flowchart supports identification of service process Although it is not directly usedfor simulation it becomes a preliminary basis for it And this model is used forservice process design and management

SADT (Cronin and Taylor 1992) focuses on information management ratherthan service process flow Although it deals with functional perspective itcannot fully reflect behavioral and organizational perspectives because it doesnot consider place and time dimensions in the model However it models aservice process with input output control and mechanism The primaryobjective of this model is the representation of a business systems structurewith data flow not the behavior of the system over time For this reason it isdifficult to use this model for customer service process change because of itsstatic characteristics

Compared to other service process models Dynamic-EPC supports serviceprocess representation with the diagram and its information management withthe specification from the four perspectives Although Dynamic-EPC deals withthe informational entities related with the process of informational perspective itdoes not model the structure and relationships between information entities whichcan be used for database system development The modeling construct waittakes a similar role to the ` line of visibilityrsquorsquo in Blueprint For the service processchange we can measure the responsiveness dimension of customer servicequality and process performance using simulation techniques while it is difficultto test the performance using other models From the comparison we can knowthat the proposed service rationalization method with Dynamic-EPC seems mostappropriate for customer service process analysis management and change

ApplicationTo support service process modeling we developed a modeling tool calledIntegrated Process Modeling Tool (IPMT) with Visual Basic in a PC Windowsenvironment In this paper we will introduce the application case of the method

Table IIComparison ofdynamic-EPC withother service processmodels

Representation perspectivesBlue-print

Flowchart SADT

Dynamic-EPC

Functional What processes are performed o o o oWhat flows of informational entities x x o o

Behavioral When process is performed o o x oHow it is performed o o o o

Organizational Where the process is performed x x x oBy whom the process is performed x o o o

Informational Information entities related with the process x x o oStructure and relationships x x x x

Notes where o = yes x = no

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

149

at the Seoul Adventist Hospital Seoul Adventist Hospital operates 17departments and has 110 doctors and 406 beds The hospital keeps the annualmonthlydaily number of patients of each department from which we couldassume the customerrsquos arrival pattern and branching ratio On average about1100 outpatients come to the hospital for doctor consultations each day Wepicked the outpatientrsquos consultation process across the internal medicine (IM)department testing room and pharmacy because it is representative of themost critical and time-consuming processes

Analysis and performance measurement of the current situationThe top level of the outpatientrsquos visit process is shown in Figure 7 The processis initiated by a patientrsquos arrival at the hospital Patients arrive at the hospitalrandomly or by appointment with a rate of 1 patient045min It follows anexponential distribution Arrived patients register and pay in advance thedoctorrsquos fee after waiting for a while in a queue This process can be performedby one of the eight servers with an average processing time of two minutes(here processing time follows a normal distribution) Registered outpatientswalk to the internal medicine department and the moving time follows anormal distribution with a mean of one minute and standard deviation of 05minute Arriving at the internal medicine departmentrsquos waiting room thepatient waits for his turn During that time the patient chart will be deliveredfrom the chart room to the department (W1) which takes about 15 minutesThose data about processing time at each step came from the measurementtime analysis Those specification data about the number of servers at astation input and output were gathered from interview These several process-related data can be specified and managed using the tool

There are four doctors in the internal medicine department Each out-patientwill be consulted by one of them for about ten minutes After the consultationthose who need additional step(s) plusmn medicine or testing plusmn have to pay again forthe step(s) in advance Arriving at the testing room the patient submits the pre-paid slip and is tested Arriving at the pharmacy desk the patient submits hisher prescription slip to request medicine The amount of time the customer hasto wait for his medicine is represented as ` waitrsquorsquo It can be exploded into a lowerlevel Dynamic-EPC (Figure 8) where the prescription slip (customer object)takes the customerrsquos (patient) role and goes through the internal pharmacyprocess The ` Proportionrsquorsquo process is specified using the tool After receiving themedicine the patient leaves the hospital

The current situation about the outpatientrsquos visit process is simulated withSIMPROCESS II5 (CACI 1993) The visualization capability enables us toverify the simulation model easily After verifying the model we should setthree parameters (warm-up period run-length number of replications) for thesimulation In the hospital case the run-length is eight hours because thehospital operates from 8 am to 5 pm except for one hour lunch time with zerowarm-up period The number of replications can be set by choosing thedesired risk and the width of the (1 plusmn a) confidence interval for the output

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150

variables selected We set it at 19 times with the 95 per cent confidence intervalbased on 387 as half width of the confidence interval and 866 as standarddeviation

Figure 7Outpatientrsquos visitprocess current case

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

151

The simulation results are summarized in Table III The throughput time of theprocess is 755 minutes Patients have to wait too long at the internal medicinedepartment (312 min) and at the pharmacy (219 min) while these two stationsrsquoutilization is higher (internal medicine department 974 per cent pharmacy964 per cent) than that of others And the number of outpatients consulted bythe doctors at the internal medicine department is 182 according to thesimulation However a small portion of arrived patients cannot be consultedbecause of the IM departmentrsquos limited capacity

Organizational change and performance measurementWe should investigate which station incurs a long delay time based on thesuggested change guidelines From the performance measurement resultsabout the current case delay times at the internal medicine department (312minutes) and the pharmacy (219 minutes) are longer than those at otherstations And the utilization of those two stations is higher (IM dept 974 percent pharmacy 964 per cent) than others These two cases therefore belong to

Figure 8Dynamic-EPC exploded

from W2

Table IIIPerformance

measurement resultsabout the current case

Customer service perspective Organizational performance perspective

Delay time Recept desk 58 min Utilization Recept 819IM dept 312 min Desk 974Pharmacy 219 min IM dept 964Exam room 16 min Pharmacy 714

Test roomThroughput time 755 min Throughput 182 patients

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152

situation 2 plusmn long delay time and high utilization plusmn in Figure 3 We need tochange the service processes between these two stations

According to the change guideline (G2 Minimize customerrsquos delay time) insituation 2 we consider performing processevent parallel That is themedicine requesttesting is transmitted electronically to the pharmacy or thetesting room during the patientrsquos consultation with the doctor by using a newconsultation support system Also we consider automating most of theactivities inside the pharmacy to shorten the processing time By the time thepatient arrives at the pharmacy hisher medicine is already waiting for him orher Or the patient can be tested without any delay at the testing room

Also the internal medicine department is a change target as it falls intosituation 2 According to the change guideline (G3) we should increase thestationrsquos work capacity The internal medicine departmentrsquos work capacitydepends on the number of doctors because the consultation by nature is amanual process Since adding more servers (doctors) usually incurs highorganizational costs however we need to recommend such an alternative verycarefully and after all other alternatives are first applied

Next we consider patients at the reception desk Since the currentregistration is performed manually it is slow and time-consuming Also thereare redundant tasks plusmn Register and pay Pay for the next step plusmn in Figure 7According to the change guideline (G2 Minimize customerrsquos delay time) insituation 2 we integrated the registration and payment processes by issuingeach patient a smart card with all their personal health history and bankaccount information When the patient arrives at the doctorrsquos office afterchecking hisher card at the reception desk with the registration system server(not human server) the patient is registered and the consultation history data isalready prepared Using the smart card we can change the ` registration andpayrsquorsquo process into an event Also all the patientrsquos expenses that day will behandled through his or her bank account All of these changes are reflected inthe alternative case 1 (Figure 9)

Case 1 is simulated and its performance measurement results aresummarized and compared with the current situation in Table IV According tothe simulation the throughput time is shortened from 755 to 611 minutesPatientrsquos delay times at each station are shortened except at the internalmedicine department And the utilization of the reception desk is reduced from819 per cent to 347 per cent with the help of IT plusmn smart card Finally theshortened throughput time increased the throughput the number of consultedoutpatients from 182 to 194 More patients can be consulted in the changedcase than the current one

Case 1 reveals some improvements in throughput time patientrsquos delay timeand stationsrsquo utilization But we can expect more improvement because case 1still shows long delay time at the internal medicine department and too lowutilization of the reception desk Patients at the internal department still belongto situation 2 plusmn long delay time and high utilization The reception desk belongsto situation 3 plusmn short delay time and low utilization For this reason we decided

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

153

to increase the internal medicine departmentrsquos work capacity according to thesuggested action guideline (G3 Increase the stationrsquos work capacity) Since thedoctorrsquos consultation work cannot be automated we added two more doctors tothe internal medicine department in the redesigned case 2 Also according tothe guideline (G4 Transfer some of work capacity) in situation 3 we reducedthe number of servers at the reception desk from eight to three without anyprocedural change

Performance measurement results about case 2 and its comparison withcurrent situation are summarized in Table V The throughput time is shortenedfrom 755 minutes to 182 minutes Customerrsquos delay times at each station aresignificantly shorter than the current one Also workload balancing amongthose stations is more even than in case 1 except the reception desk consists ofregistration system servers not employees The throughput is also increasedfrom 182 to 213 From these results we can know that all of the stations belong

Figure 9Changed visit process

case 1

Table IVPerformance

measurement resultsabout current and

case 1

Factor Current case Case 1 Difference

Stationrsquos utilization Reception desk 819 347 plusmn 472IM department 974 988 +14Pharmacy 964 781 plusmn 183Testing room 714 770 plusmn 54

Delay time Reception desk (min) 58 02 plusmn 56IM department (min) 312 474 +162Pharmacy (min) 219 12 plusmn 207Testing room (min) 16 12 plusmn 04

Throughput time Mean time (min) 755 611 plusmn 143Standard deviation 87 56

Throughput Number of consulted patients 182 194 +12

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154

to situation 1 We tested that there is difference between the current case andcase 2 using the null hypothesis test at a = 005

We can compare the results from the organizational performance andcustomer service dimensions From the organizational performanceperspective productivity of throughput and efficiency of throughput time havebeen improved The use of resource with utilization is lower than the currentsituation except the reception desk while those stations in the current situationare overloaded Case 2 however achieved a more even use of resources thanthe current situation across the IM department pharmacy and testingdepartment From the customer service perspective shortened delay times atseveral stations and the dramatically shortened throughput time imply that theresponsiveness of customer service is enhanced in case 2

DiscussionIn addition to the hospital case the method and tool have been applied toseveral real cases such as order processing at a cable-TV home shoppingcompany and project order tracking process at an advertising agency (Kim1998) We can classify customer service processes by the frequency of contactsbetween customer and server-organization low-contact type and high-contacttype Based on the classification we can discuss the applications of theproposed method as in Table VI In the low-contact type customers initiate theserver-organizationrsquos service process and wait for the process output withoutparticipating in it such as customerrsquos order cycle process There is just one waitbetween the start and the end of a service process Since the waiting time takesthe entire throughput time of a service process performed inside the server-organization it is relatively longer than that of the high-contact type Sincecustomers do not participate in the server-organizationrsquos process they can dosomething else during the wait For this reason a time-related goal of this typeis minimizing the waiting time The focus of service process analysis and

Table VComparison betweencurrent and case 2

CriteriaCurrent with

sdCase 2 with

sd DifferenceConfidence

interval

Utilization Recept desk 819 (34) 924 (51) +135 (plusmn 154 plusmn 56)IM dept 974 (21) 659 (62) plusmn 315 (266 365)Pharmacy 964 (23) 795 (43) plusmn 169 (133 205)Test room 714 (68) 784 (67) plusmn 70 (plusmn 115 plusmn 25)

Delay time Recept desk 58 min (13) 09 min(02) plusmn 49 min (43 55)IM Dept 312 min (46) 24 min(07) plusmn 288 min (266 310)Pharmacy 219 min (32) 13 min(04) plusmn 206 min (190 222)Test room 16 min (05) 15 min(05) plusmn 01 min (plusmn 02 04)

Through-put time Mean time 755 min(87) 182 min(21) plusmn 573 min (519 627)Through-put Consulted

patients 182 (51) 213 (63) + 32 (plusmn 347 plusmn 272)

Notes Current gt Case 2 Current = Case 2 Current lt Case 2

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

155

design in this type is the service delivery Therefore a customerrsquos mainconcerns are service process output and waiting time

In the high-contact type there are numerous contact points in this type ofpatientrsquos visit process at a hospital because customers initiate a service processand also participate in it along the process flow While the customerrsquos role inthe low-contact type is the recipient of service process output the customerrsquosrole in the high-contact type is as the participant in performing the serviceprocess For this reason several waits can be created along the process flowwhich take a relatively shorter time when compared to the low-contact typeThe participation characteristic inhibits customers from doing something elseduring not only the wait but also during the entire service process For thisreason a time-related goal of this type is minimizing the throughput time Andthe focus of service process analysis and design is the customer-serverinteraction Therefore customer satisfaction in this type is mainly related to theserverrsquos attitude and the responsiveness-related factors such as throughputtime and delay time (moving and waiting time)

ConclusionIn this research we suggested a service process rationalization methodcomposed of a service process model performance measurement and changeguidelines This research sets forth a way to explicitly link the customer viewto a service process model and yet have the process model be able to supportsimulation Compared to other service process models Dynamic-EPCincorporates not only the customer viewpoint but also reflects fourrepresentation perspectives in it Second the performance simulation resultsprovide a more objective basis for service change decisions which reduce therisk inherent in service process change Third the proposed change guidelinescan be used by practitioners in devising a contingency approach to serviceprocess change projects While some general change principles have beensuggested previously the classified customer service process situations and the

Table VIDiscussion about the

service rationalizationmethod

Low-contact type High-contact type

Contact points At the start and at the endof a service process

Numerous along the processflow

Role of customer Recipient of service processoutput

Participant in the serviceprocess

Frequency of wait One Many waits along the processflow

Waiting time Relatively long Relatively shortNature of wait for customers Can do something else Be captiveTime-related goal Minimize waiting time Minimize throughput timeAnalysisdesign focus Service delivery Customer-server interactionCustomer satisfaction-relatedfactors

Waiting time serviceprocess output

Serverrsquos attitude throughputtime moving and waitingtime

BPMJ72

156

contingent guidelines have advantages in identifying the service situation anddevising situation-specific change alternatives However we need to expandthe performance measurement about customer service from quantitative toqualitative factors

References

CACI Products Company (1993) SIMFACTORY II5 and SIMPROCESS Manual

Congram C and Epelman M (1995) ` How to describe your service an invitation to thestructured analysis and design techniquersquorsquo International Journal of Service IndustryManagement Vol 6 No 2 pp 6-23

Cronin JJ and Taylor SA (1992) `Measuring service quality a reexamination and extensionrsquorsquoJournal of Marketing Vol 56 July pp 55-63

Curtis B Keller MI and Over J (1992) ` Process modelingrsquorsquo Communications of the ACMVol 35 No 9 pp 75-90

Fisk RP Brown SW and Bitner MJ (1993) ` Tracking the evolution of the service marketingliteraturersquorsquo Journal of Retailing Vol 69 No 1 Spring pp 61-103

Galbraith JR (1993) Competing with Flexible Lateral Organizations 2nd ed Addison-WesleyReading MA

Innis DE and LaLonde BJ (1994) ` Customer service the key to customer satisfactioncustomer loyalty and market sharersquorsquo Journal of Business Logistics Vol 15 No 1 pp 1-27

Kim HW (1998) Enhancement of Organizational Performance Using Dynamic Process Modelingand Simulation PhD Dissertation Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology

Kim HW and Kim YG (1997) ` Dynamic process modeling for BPRrsquorsquo Information ampManagement Vol 32 No 1 pp 1-13

Kim YG (1995) `Process modeling for BPR event-process chain approachrsquorsquo Proceedings ofInternational Conference on Information Systems pp 109-21

LaLonde BJ and Zinszer PH (1976) Customer Service Meaning and Measurement NationalCouncil of Physical Distribution Management Chicago IL

Lovelock CH (1996) Service Marketing 3rd ed Prentice-Hall Englewood Cliffs NS

Mackenzie KD (1989) ` The process approach to organizational designrsquorsquo Human SystemsManagement Vol 8 pp 31-43

Parasuraman A Zeithaml VA and Berry LL (1988) ` SERVQUAL a multiple-item scale formeasuring consumer perceptions of service qualityrsquorsquo Journal of Retailing Vol 6 No 1pp 12-40

Quinn RE and Rohrbaugh J (1983) `A spatial model of effectiveness criteria towards acompeting values approaches to organizational analysisrsquorsquo Management Science Vol 29No 3 pp 363-77

Rakowski JP (1981-82) ` The customer service conceptrsquorsquo Review of Business amp EconomicResearch No 2 Winter pp 55-66

Ramaswamy R (1996) Design and Management of Service Process Addison-Wesley PublishingCompany Reading MA

Shostack GL (1984) ` Designing services that deliverrsquorsquo Harvard Business Review January-FebruaryVol 62 pp 133-9

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

147

In situation 1 customers pass through a highly utilized station with short delaytime Since the station is also highly utilized it is an ideal situation formanagement It requires no change action (G1)

Situation 2 occurs when the station is highly utilized but customer delaytime is long From the customer perspective we need to shorten the delay timeby minimizing customerrsquos frequent movingwaiting time (G2) For thispurpose we can relocate stations to minimize distance between them Also wecan rearrange the processes andor events to take place more in parallelbecause sequential processing is generally more time consuming than theparallel From the organization perspective we need to increase the stationrsquoswork capacity (G3) For this purpose we can standardize or integrate theredundant processes to reduce the number of processes And we can considershortening the processing time by automating some manual tasks when theycannot be eliminated If the work capacity cannot be increased by anyinformation technology or procedural change then we should consider addingmore human servers or installing additional hardware facilities

In situation 3 customers pass through a less busy station with short delaytime From the customerrsquos perspective they can receive service rapidlypossibly as soon as they arrive at the station But it is not a preferable situationfrom the management perspective because the station is under-utilizedTherefore we should allocate some work performed at other overloadedstations to this station or transfer surplus work capacity to other overloadedones (G4)

Situation 4 occurs when customers experience long delays while the stationsare under-utilized This may result from either a peak-load condition or a batch-oriented work policy If the peak-time rush is the cause we may try to changethe customersrsquo arrival pattern (G5) For instance providing time period-relatedincentives may be considered to balance the peak-time utilization On the otherhand the stationrsquos batch-oriented work policy may be the cause For instance ifaccount adjustment and expense handling tasks are performed once a week inthe accounting department we can consider changing the work processingmode from batch to interactive (G6) since the batch processing model mayboost internal efficiency at the expense of more critical customer satisfaction

Comparison with other service process modelsThe proposed Dynamic-EPC can be compared to other service process models plusmnBlueprint (Shostack 1984) SADT (Cronin and Taylor 1992) and Flow chart(Ramaswamy 1996) plusmn as in Table II from the four representation perspectives ofCurtis et al (1992) functional behavioral organizational and informational

While Blueprint (Shostack 1984) deals with the behavioral perspective usingtime dimension it does not reflect other perspectives such as place and serverelements in the model As modeling constructs process and service elements areused in this model And the ` line of visibilityrsquorsquo has been adopted to classify thecustomersrsquo actions and internal operations in the model For the service processchange simple profitability analyses are conducted based on the model

BPMJ72

148

Flow chart (Ramaswamy 1996) has adopted the conventions of the BlueprintThis model deals with the organizational perspective using server element inaddition to the behavioral perspective For the service process change Flowchart supports identification of service process Although it is not directly usedfor simulation it becomes a preliminary basis for it And this model is used forservice process design and management

SADT (Cronin and Taylor 1992) focuses on information management ratherthan service process flow Although it deals with functional perspective itcannot fully reflect behavioral and organizational perspectives because it doesnot consider place and time dimensions in the model However it models aservice process with input output control and mechanism The primaryobjective of this model is the representation of a business systems structurewith data flow not the behavior of the system over time For this reason it isdifficult to use this model for customer service process change because of itsstatic characteristics

Compared to other service process models Dynamic-EPC supports serviceprocess representation with the diagram and its information management withthe specification from the four perspectives Although Dynamic-EPC deals withthe informational entities related with the process of informational perspective itdoes not model the structure and relationships between information entities whichcan be used for database system development The modeling construct waittakes a similar role to the ` line of visibilityrsquorsquo in Blueprint For the service processchange we can measure the responsiveness dimension of customer servicequality and process performance using simulation techniques while it is difficultto test the performance using other models From the comparison we can knowthat the proposed service rationalization method with Dynamic-EPC seems mostappropriate for customer service process analysis management and change

ApplicationTo support service process modeling we developed a modeling tool calledIntegrated Process Modeling Tool (IPMT) with Visual Basic in a PC Windowsenvironment In this paper we will introduce the application case of the method

Table IIComparison ofdynamic-EPC withother service processmodels

Representation perspectivesBlue-print

Flowchart SADT

Dynamic-EPC

Functional What processes are performed o o o oWhat flows of informational entities x x o o

Behavioral When process is performed o o x oHow it is performed o o o o

Organizational Where the process is performed x x x oBy whom the process is performed x o o o

Informational Information entities related with the process x x o oStructure and relationships x x x x

Notes where o = yes x = no

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

149

at the Seoul Adventist Hospital Seoul Adventist Hospital operates 17departments and has 110 doctors and 406 beds The hospital keeps the annualmonthlydaily number of patients of each department from which we couldassume the customerrsquos arrival pattern and branching ratio On average about1100 outpatients come to the hospital for doctor consultations each day Wepicked the outpatientrsquos consultation process across the internal medicine (IM)department testing room and pharmacy because it is representative of themost critical and time-consuming processes

Analysis and performance measurement of the current situationThe top level of the outpatientrsquos visit process is shown in Figure 7 The processis initiated by a patientrsquos arrival at the hospital Patients arrive at the hospitalrandomly or by appointment with a rate of 1 patient045min It follows anexponential distribution Arrived patients register and pay in advance thedoctorrsquos fee after waiting for a while in a queue This process can be performedby one of the eight servers with an average processing time of two minutes(here processing time follows a normal distribution) Registered outpatientswalk to the internal medicine department and the moving time follows anormal distribution with a mean of one minute and standard deviation of 05minute Arriving at the internal medicine departmentrsquos waiting room thepatient waits for his turn During that time the patient chart will be deliveredfrom the chart room to the department (W1) which takes about 15 minutesThose data about processing time at each step came from the measurementtime analysis Those specification data about the number of servers at astation input and output were gathered from interview These several process-related data can be specified and managed using the tool

There are four doctors in the internal medicine department Each out-patientwill be consulted by one of them for about ten minutes After the consultationthose who need additional step(s) plusmn medicine or testing plusmn have to pay again forthe step(s) in advance Arriving at the testing room the patient submits the pre-paid slip and is tested Arriving at the pharmacy desk the patient submits hisher prescription slip to request medicine The amount of time the customer hasto wait for his medicine is represented as ` waitrsquorsquo It can be exploded into a lowerlevel Dynamic-EPC (Figure 8) where the prescription slip (customer object)takes the customerrsquos (patient) role and goes through the internal pharmacyprocess The ` Proportionrsquorsquo process is specified using the tool After receiving themedicine the patient leaves the hospital

The current situation about the outpatientrsquos visit process is simulated withSIMPROCESS II5 (CACI 1993) The visualization capability enables us toverify the simulation model easily After verifying the model we should setthree parameters (warm-up period run-length number of replications) for thesimulation In the hospital case the run-length is eight hours because thehospital operates from 8 am to 5 pm except for one hour lunch time with zerowarm-up period The number of replications can be set by choosing thedesired risk and the width of the (1 plusmn a) confidence interval for the output

BPMJ72

150

variables selected We set it at 19 times with the 95 per cent confidence intervalbased on 387 as half width of the confidence interval and 866 as standarddeviation

Figure 7Outpatientrsquos visitprocess current case

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

151

The simulation results are summarized in Table III The throughput time of theprocess is 755 minutes Patients have to wait too long at the internal medicinedepartment (312 min) and at the pharmacy (219 min) while these two stationsrsquoutilization is higher (internal medicine department 974 per cent pharmacy964 per cent) than that of others And the number of outpatients consulted bythe doctors at the internal medicine department is 182 according to thesimulation However a small portion of arrived patients cannot be consultedbecause of the IM departmentrsquos limited capacity

Organizational change and performance measurementWe should investigate which station incurs a long delay time based on thesuggested change guidelines From the performance measurement resultsabout the current case delay times at the internal medicine department (312minutes) and the pharmacy (219 minutes) are longer than those at otherstations And the utilization of those two stations is higher (IM dept 974 percent pharmacy 964 per cent) than others These two cases therefore belong to

Figure 8Dynamic-EPC exploded

from W2

Table IIIPerformance

measurement resultsabout the current case

Customer service perspective Organizational performance perspective

Delay time Recept desk 58 min Utilization Recept 819IM dept 312 min Desk 974Pharmacy 219 min IM dept 964Exam room 16 min Pharmacy 714

Test roomThroughput time 755 min Throughput 182 patients

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situation 2 plusmn long delay time and high utilization plusmn in Figure 3 We need tochange the service processes between these two stations

According to the change guideline (G2 Minimize customerrsquos delay time) insituation 2 we consider performing processevent parallel That is themedicine requesttesting is transmitted electronically to the pharmacy or thetesting room during the patientrsquos consultation with the doctor by using a newconsultation support system Also we consider automating most of theactivities inside the pharmacy to shorten the processing time By the time thepatient arrives at the pharmacy hisher medicine is already waiting for him orher Or the patient can be tested without any delay at the testing room

Also the internal medicine department is a change target as it falls intosituation 2 According to the change guideline (G3) we should increase thestationrsquos work capacity The internal medicine departmentrsquos work capacitydepends on the number of doctors because the consultation by nature is amanual process Since adding more servers (doctors) usually incurs highorganizational costs however we need to recommend such an alternative verycarefully and after all other alternatives are first applied

Next we consider patients at the reception desk Since the currentregistration is performed manually it is slow and time-consuming Also thereare redundant tasks plusmn Register and pay Pay for the next step plusmn in Figure 7According to the change guideline (G2 Minimize customerrsquos delay time) insituation 2 we integrated the registration and payment processes by issuingeach patient a smart card with all their personal health history and bankaccount information When the patient arrives at the doctorrsquos office afterchecking hisher card at the reception desk with the registration system server(not human server) the patient is registered and the consultation history data isalready prepared Using the smart card we can change the ` registration andpayrsquorsquo process into an event Also all the patientrsquos expenses that day will behandled through his or her bank account All of these changes are reflected inthe alternative case 1 (Figure 9)

Case 1 is simulated and its performance measurement results aresummarized and compared with the current situation in Table IV According tothe simulation the throughput time is shortened from 755 to 611 minutesPatientrsquos delay times at each station are shortened except at the internalmedicine department And the utilization of the reception desk is reduced from819 per cent to 347 per cent with the help of IT plusmn smart card Finally theshortened throughput time increased the throughput the number of consultedoutpatients from 182 to 194 More patients can be consulted in the changedcase than the current one

Case 1 reveals some improvements in throughput time patientrsquos delay timeand stationsrsquo utilization But we can expect more improvement because case 1still shows long delay time at the internal medicine department and too lowutilization of the reception desk Patients at the internal department still belongto situation 2 plusmn long delay time and high utilization The reception desk belongsto situation 3 plusmn short delay time and low utilization For this reason we decided

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

153

to increase the internal medicine departmentrsquos work capacity according to thesuggested action guideline (G3 Increase the stationrsquos work capacity) Since thedoctorrsquos consultation work cannot be automated we added two more doctors tothe internal medicine department in the redesigned case 2 Also according tothe guideline (G4 Transfer some of work capacity) in situation 3 we reducedthe number of servers at the reception desk from eight to three without anyprocedural change

Performance measurement results about case 2 and its comparison withcurrent situation are summarized in Table V The throughput time is shortenedfrom 755 minutes to 182 minutes Customerrsquos delay times at each station aresignificantly shorter than the current one Also workload balancing amongthose stations is more even than in case 1 except the reception desk consists ofregistration system servers not employees The throughput is also increasedfrom 182 to 213 From these results we can know that all of the stations belong

Figure 9Changed visit process

case 1

Table IVPerformance

measurement resultsabout current and

case 1

Factor Current case Case 1 Difference

Stationrsquos utilization Reception desk 819 347 plusmn 472IM department 974 988 +14Pharmacy 964 781 plusmn 183Testing room 714 770 plusmn 54

Delay time Reception desk (min) 58 02 plusmn 56IM department (min) 312 474 +162Pharmacy (min) 219 12 plusmn 207Testing room (min) 16 12 plusmn 04

Throughput time Mean time (min) 755 611 plusmn 143Standard deviation 87 56

Throughput Number of consulted patients 182 194 +12

BPMJ72

154

to situation 1 We tested that there is difference between the current case andcase 2 using the null hypothesis test at a = 005

We can compare the results from the organizational performance andcustomer service dimensions From the organizational performanceperspective productivity of throughput and efficiency of throughput time havebeen improved The use of resource with utilization is lower than the currentsituation except the reception desk while those stations in the current situationare overloaded Case 2 however achieved a more even use of resources thanthe current situation across the IM department pharmacy and testingdepartment From the customer service perspective shortened delay times atseveral stations and the dramatically shortened throughput time imply that theresponsiveness of customer service is enhanced in case 2

DiscussionIn addition to the hospital case the method and tool have been applied toseveral real cases such as order processing at a cable-TV home shoppingcompany and project order tracking process at an advertising agency (Kim1998) We can classify customer service processes by the frequency of contactsbetween customer and server-organization low-contact type and high-contacttype Based on the classification we can discuss the applications of theproposed method as in Table VI In the low-contact type customers initiate theserver-organizationrsquos service process and wait for the process output withoutparticipating in it such as customerrsquos order cycle process There is just one waitbetween the start and the end of a service process Since the waiting time takesthe entire throughput time of a service process performed inside the server-organization it is relatively longer than that of the high-contact type Sincecustomers do not participate in the server-organizationrsquos process they can dosomething else during the wait For this reason a time-related goal of this typeis minimizing the waiting time The focus of service process analysis and

Table VComparison betweencurrent and case 2

CriteriaCurrent with

sdCase 2 with

sd DifferenceConfidence

interval

Utilization Recept desk 819 (34) 924 (51) +135 (plusmn 154 plusmn 56)IM dept 974 (21) 659 (62) plusmn 315 (266 365)Pharmacy 964 (23) 795 (43) plusmn 169 (133 205)Test room 714 (68) 784 (67) plusmn 70 (plusmn 115 plusmn 25)

Delay time Recept desk 58 min (13) 09 min(02) plusmn 49 min (43 55)IM Dept 312 min (46) 24 min(07) plusmn 288 min (266 310)Pharmacy 219 min (32) 13 min(04) plusmn 206 min (190 222)Test room 16 min (05) 15 min(05) plusmn 01 min (plusmn 02 04)

Through-put time Mean time 755 min(87) 182 min(21) plusmn 573 min (519 627)Through-put Consulted

patients 182 (51) 213 (63) + 32 (plusmn 347 plusmn 272)

Notes Current gt Case 2 Current = Case 2 Current lt Case 2

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

155

design in this type is the service delivery Therefore a customerrsquos mainconcerns are service process output and waiting time

In the high-contact type there are numerous contact points in this type ofpatientrsquos visit process at a hospital because customers initiate a service processand also participate in it along the process flow While the customerrsquos role inthe low-contact type is the recipient of service process output the customerrsquosrole in the high-contact type is as the participant in performing the serviceprocess For this reason several waits can be created along the process flowwhich take a relatively shorter time when compared to the low-contact typeThe participation characteristic inhibits customers from doing something elseduring not only the wait but also during the entire service process For thisreason a time-related goal of this type is minimizing the throughput time Andthe focus of service process analysis and design is the customer-serverinteraction Therefore customer satisfaction in this type is mainly related to theserverrsquos attitude and the responsiveness-related factors such as throughputtime and delay time (moving and waiting time)

ConclusionIn this research we suggested a service process rationalization methodcomposed of a service process model performance measurement and changeguidelines This research sets forth a way to explicitly link the customer viewto a service process model and yet have the process model be able to supportsimulation Compared to other service process models Dynamic-EPCincorporates not only the customer viewpoint but also reflects fourrepresentation perspectives in it Second the performance simulation resultsprovide a more objective basis for service change decisions which reduce therisk inherent in service process change Third the proposed change guidelinescan be used by practitioners in devising a contingency approach to serviceprocess change projects While some general change principles have beensuggested previously the classified customer service process situations and the

Table VIDiscussion about the

service rationalizationmethod

Low-contact type High-contact type

Contact points At the start and at the endof a service process

Numerous along the processflow

Role of customer Recipient of service processoutput

Participant in the serviceprocess

Frequency of wait One Many waits along the processflow

Waiting time Relatively long Relatively shortNature of wait for customers Can do something else Be captiveTime-related goal Minimize waiting time Minimize throughput timeAnalysisdesign focus Service delivery Customer-server interactionCustomer satisfaction-relatedfactors

Waiting time serviceprocess output

Serverrsquos attitude throughputtime moving and waitingtime

BPMJ72

156

contingent guidelines have advantages in identifying the service situation anddevising situation-specific change alternatives However we need to expandthe performance measurement about customer service from quantitative toqualitative factors

References

CACI Products Company (1993) SIMFACTORY II5 and SIMPROCESS Manual

Congram C and Epelman M (1995) ` How to describe your service an invitation to thestructured analysis and design techniquersquorsquo International Journal of Service IndustryManagement Vol 6 No 2 pp 6-23

Cronin JJ and Taylor SA (1992) `Measuring service quality a reexamination and extensionrsquorsquoJournal of Marketing Vol 56 July pp 55-63

Curtis B Keller MI and Over J (1992) ` Process modelingrsquorsquo Communications of the ACMVol 35 No 9 pp 75-90

Fisk RP Brown SW and Bitner MJ (1993) ` Tracking the evolution of the service marketingliteraturersquorsquo Journal of Retailing Vol 69 No 1 Spring pp 61-103

Galbraith JR (1993) Competing with Flexible Lateral Organizations 2nd ed Addison-WesleyReading MA

Innis DE and LaLonde BJ (1994) ` Customer service the key to customer satisfactioncustomer loyalty and market sharersquorsquo Journal of Business Logistics Vol 15 No 1 pp 1-27

Kim HW (1998) Enhancement of Organizational Performance Using Dynamic Process Modelingand Simulation PhD Dissertation Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology

Kim HW and Kim YG (1997) ` Dynamic process modeling for BPRrsquorsquo Information ampManagement Vol 32 No 1 pp 1-13

Kim YG (1995) `Process modeling for BPR event-process chain approachrsquorsquo Proceedings ofInternational Conference on Information Systems pp 109-21

LaLonde BJ and Zinszer PH (1976) Customer Service Meaning and Measurement NationalCouncil of Physical Distribution Management Chicago IL

Lovelock CH (1996) Service Marketing 3rd ed Prentice-Hall Englewood Cliffs NS

Mackenzie KD (1989) ` The process approach to organizational designrsquorsquo Human SystemsManagement Vol 8 pp 31-43

Parasuraman A Zeithaml VA and Berry LL (1988) ` SERVQUAL a multiple-item scale formeasuring consumer perceptions of service qualityrsquorsquo Journal of Retailing Vol 6 No 1pp 12-40

Quinn RE and Rohrbaugh J (1983) `A spatial model of effectiveness criteria towards acompeting values approaches to organizational analysisrsquorsquo Management Science Vol 29No 3 pp 363-77

Rakowski JP (1981-82) ` The customer service conceptrsquorsquo Review of Business amp EconomicResearch No 2 Winter pp 55-66

Ramaswamy R (1996) Design and Management of Service Process Addison-Wesley PublishingCompany Reading MA

Shostack GL (1984) ` Designing services that deliverrsquorsquo Harvard Business Review January-FebruaryVol 62 pp 133-9

BPMJ72

148

Flow chart (Ramaswamy 1996) has adopted the conventions of the BlueprintThis model deals with the organizational perspective using server element inaddition to the behavioral perspective For the service process change Flowchart supports identification of service process Although it is not directly usedfor simulation it becomes a preliminary basis for it And this model is used forservice process design and management

SADT (Cronin and Taylor 1992) focuses on information management ratherthan service process flow Although it deals with functional perspective itcannot fully reflect behavioral and organizational perspectives because it doesnot consider place and time dimensions in the model However it models aservice process with input output control and mechanism The primaryobjective of this model is the representation of a business systems structurewith data flow not the behavior of the system over time For this reason it isdifficult to use this model for customer service process change because of itsstatic characteristics

Compared to other service process models Dynamic-EPC supports serviceprocess representation with the diagram and its information management withthe specification from the four perspectives Although Dynamic-EPC deals withthe informational entities related with the process of informational perspective itdoes not model the structure and relationships between information entities whichcan be used for database system development The modeling construct waittakes a similar role to the ` line of visibilityrsquorsquo in Blueprint For the service processchange we can measure the responsiveness dimension of customer servicequality and process performance using simulation techniques while it is difficultto test the performance using other models From the comparison we can knowthat the proposed service rationalization method with Dynamic-EPC seems mostappropriate for customer service process analysis management and change

ApplicationTo support service process modeling we developed a modeling tool calledIntegrated Process Modeling Tool (IPMT) with Visual Basic in a PC Windowsenvironment In this paper we will introduce the application case of the method

Table IIComparison ofdynamic-EPC withother service processmodels

Representation perspectivesBlue-print

Flowchart SADT

Dynamic-EPC

Functional What processes are performed o o o oWhat flows of informational entities x x o o

Behavioral When process is performed o o x oHow it is performed o o o o

Organizational Where the process is performed x x x oBy whom the process is performed x o o o

Informational Information entities related with the process x x o oStructure and relationships x x x x

Notes where o = yes x = no

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

149

at the Seoul Adventist Hospital Seoul Adventist Hospital operates 17departments and has 110 doctors and 406 beds The hospital keeps the annualmonthlydaily number of patients of each department from which we couldassume the customerrsquos arrival pattern and branching ratio On average about1100 outpatients come to the hospital for doctor consultations each day Wepicked the outpatientrsquos consultation process across the internal medicine (IM)department testing room and pharmacy because it is representative of themost critical and time-consuming processes

Analysis and performance measurement of the current situationThe top level of the outpatientrsquos visit process is shown in Figure 7 The processis initiated by a patientrsquos arrival at the hospital Patients arrive at the hospitalrandomly or by appointment with a rate of 1 patient045min It follows anexponential distribution Arrived patients register and pay in advance thedoctorrsquos fee after waiting for a while in a queue This process can be performedby one of the eight servers with an average processing time of two minutes(here processing time follows a normal distribution) Registered outpatientswalk to the internal medicine department and the moving time follows anormal distribution with a mean of one minute and standard deviation of 05minute Arriving at the internal medicine departmentrsquos waiting room thepatient waits for his turn During that time the patient chart will be deliveredfrom the chart room to the department (W1) which takes about 15 minutesThose data about processing time at each step came from the measurementtime analysis Those specification data about the number of servers at astation input and output were gathered from interview These several process-related data can be specified and managed using the tool

There are four doctors in the internal medicine department Each out-patientwill be consulted by one of them for about ten minutes After the consultationthose who need additional step(s) plusmn medicine or testing plusmn have to pay again forthe step(s) in advance Arriving at the testing room the patient submits the pre-paid slip and is tested Arriving at the pharmacy desk the patient submits hisher prescription slip to request medicine The amount of time the customer hasto wait for his medicine is represented as ` waitrsquorsquo It can be exploded into a lowerlevel Dynamic-EPC (Figure 8) where the prescription slip (customer object)takes the customerrsquos (patient) role and goes through the internal pharmacyprocess The ` Proportionrsquorsquo process is specified using the tool After receiving themedicine the patient leaves the hospital

The current situation about the outpatientrsquos visit process is simulated withSIMPROCESS II5 (CACI 1993) The visualization capability enables us toverify the simulation model easily After verifying the model we should setthree parameters (warm-up period run-length number of replications) for thesimulation In the hospital case the run-length is eight hours because thehospital operates from 8 am to 5 pm except for one hour lunch time with zerowarm-up period The number of replications can be set by choosing thedesired risk and the width of the (1 plusmn a) confidence interval for the output

BPMJ72

150

variables selected We set it at 19 times with the 95 per cent confidence intervalbased on 387 as half width of the confidence interval and 866 as standarddeviation

Figure 7Outpatientrsquos visitprocess current case

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

151

The simulation results are summarized in Table III The throughput time of theprocess is 755 minutes Patients have to wait too long at the internal medicinedepartment (312 min) and at the pharmacy (219 min) while these two stationsrsquoutilization is higher (internal medicine department 974 per cent pharmacy964 per cent) than that of others And the number of outpatients consulted bythe doctors at the internal medicine department is 182 according to thesimulation However a small portion of arrived patients cannot be consultedbecause of the IM departmentrsquos limited capacity

Organizational change and performance measurementWe should investigate which station incurs a long delay time based on thesuggested change guidelines From the performance measurement resultsabout the current case delay times at the internal medicine department (312minutes) and the pharmacy (219 minutes) are longer than those at otherstations And the utilization of those two stations is higher (IM dept 974 percent pharmacy 964 per cent) than others These two cases therefore belong to

Figure 8Dynamic-EPC exploded

from W2

Table IIIPerformance

measurement resultsabout the current case

Customer service perspective Organizational performance perspective

Delay time Recept desk 58 min Utilization Recept 819IM dept 312 min Desk 974Pharmacy 219 min IM dept 964Exam room 16 min Pharmacy 714

Test roomThroughput time 755 min Throughput 182 patients

BPMJ72

152

situation 2 plusmn long delay time and high utilization plusmn in Figure 3 We need tochange the service processes between these two stations

According to the change guideline (G2 Minimize customerrsquos delay time) insituation 2 we consider performing processevent parallel That is themedicine requesttesting is transmitted electronically to the pharmacy or thetesting room during the patientrsquos consultation with the doctor by using a newconsultation support system Also we consider automating most of theactivities inside the pharmacy to shorten the processing time By the time thepatient arrives at the pharmacy hisher medicine is already waiting for him orher Or the patient can be tested without any delay at the testing room

Also the internal medicine department is a change target as it falls intosituation 2 According to the change guideline (G3) we should increase thestationrsquos work capacity The internal medicine departmentrsquos work capacitydepends on the number of doctors because the consultation by nature is amanual process Since adding more servers (doctors) usually incurs highorganizational costs however we need to recommend such an alternative verycarefully and after all other alternatives are first applied

Next we consider patients at the reception desk Since the currentregistration is performed manually it is slow and time-consuming Also thereare redundant tasks plusmn Register and pay Pay for the next step plusmn in Figure 7According to the change guideline (G2 Minimize customerrsquos delay time) insituation 2 we integrated the registration and payment processes by issuingeach patient a smart card with all their personal health history and bankaccount information When the patient arrives at the doctorrsquos office afterchecking hisher card at the reception desk with the registration system server(not human server) the patient is registered and the consultation history data isalready prepared Using the smart card we can change the ` registration andpayrsquorsquo process into an event Also all the patientrsquos expenses that day will behandled through his or her bank account All of these changes are reflected inthe alternative case 1 (Figure 9)

Case 1 is simulated and its performance measurement results aresummarized and compared with the current situation in Table IV According tothe simulation the throughput time is shortened from 755 to 611 minutesPatientrsquos delay times at each station are shortened except at the internalmedicine department And the utilization of the reception desk is reduced from819 per cent to 347 per cent with the help of IT plusmn smart card Finally theshortened throughput time increased the throughput the number of consultedoutpatients from 182 to 194 More patients can be consulted in the changedcase than the current one

Case 1 reveals some improvements in throughput time patientrsquos delay timeand stationsrsquo utilization But we can expect more improvement because case 1still shows long delay time at the internal medicine department and too lowutilization of the reception desk Patients at the internal department still belongto situation 2 plusmn long delay time and high utilization The reception desk belongsto situation 3 plusmn short delay time and low utilization For this reason we decided

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

153

to increase the internal medicine departmentrsquos work capacity according to thesuggested action guideline (G3 Increase the stationrsquos work capacity) Since thedoctorrsquos consultation work cannot be automated we added two more doctors tothe internal medicine department in the redesigned case 2 Also according tothe guideline (G4 Transfer some of work capacity) in situation 3 we reducedthe number of servers at the reception desk from eight to three without anyprocedural change

Performance measurement results about case 2 and its comparison withcurrent situation are summarized in Table V The throughput time is shortenedfrom 755 minutes to 182 minutes Customerrsquos delay times at each station aresignificantly shorter than the current one Also workload balancing amongthose stations is more even than in case 1 except the reception desk consists ofregistration system servers not employees The throughput is also increasedfrom 182 to 213 From these results we can know that all of the stations belong

Figure 9Changed visit process

case 1

Table IVPerformance

measurement resultsabout current and

case 1

Factor Current case Case 1 Difference

Stationrsquos utilization Reception desk 819 347 plusmn 472IM department 974 988 +14Pharmacy 964 781 plusmn 183Testing room 714 770 plusmn 54

Delay time Reception desk (min) 58 02 plusmn 56IM department (min) 312 474 +162Pharmacy (min) 219 12 plusmn 207Testing room (min) 16 12 plusmn 04

Throughput time Mean time (min) 755 611 plusmn 143Standard deviation 87 56

Throughput Number of consulted patients 182 194 +12

BPMJ72

154

to situation 1 We tested that there is difference between the current case andcase 2 using the null hypothesis test at a = 005

We can compare the results from the organizational performance andcustomer service dimensions From the organizational performanceperspective productivity of throughput and efficiency of throughput time havebeen improved The use of resource with utilization is lower than the currentsituation except the reception desk while those stations in the current situationare overloaded Case 2 however achieved a more even use of resources thanthe current situation across the IM department pharmacy and testingdepartment From the customer service perspective shortened delay times atseveral stations and the dramatically shortened throughput time imply that theresponsiveness of customer service is enhanced in case 2

DiscussionIn addition to the hospital case the method and tool have been applied toseveral real cases such as order processing at a cable-TV home shoppingcompany and project order tracking process at an advertising agency (Kim1998) We can classify customer service processes by the frequency of contactsbetween customer and server-organization low-contact type and high-contacttype Based on the classification we can discuss the applications of theproposed method as in Table VI In the low-contact type customers initiate theserver-organizationrsquos service process and wait for the process output withoutparticipating in it such as customerrsquos order cycle process There is just one waitbetween the start and the end of a service process Since the waiting time takesthe entire throughput time of a service process performed inside the server-organization it is relatively longer than that of the high-contact type Sincecustomers do not participate in the server-organizationrsquos process they can dosomething else during the wait For this reason a time-related goal of this typeis minimizing the waiting time The focus of service process analysis and

Table VComparison betweencurrent and case 2

CriteriaCurrent with

sdCase 2 with

sd DifferenceConfidence

interval

Utilization Recept desk 819 (34) 924 (51) +135 (plusmn 154 plusmn 56)IM dept 974 (21) 659 (62) plusmn 315 (266 365)Pharmacy 964 (23) 795 (43) plusmn 169 (133 205)Test room 714 (68) 784 (67) plusmn 70 (plusmn 115 plusmn 25)

Delay time Recept desk 58 min (13) 09 min(02) plusmn 49 min (43 55)IM Dept 312 min (46) 24 min(07) plusmn 288 min (266 310)Pharmacy 219 min (32) 13 min(04) plusmn 206 min (190 222)Test room 16 min (05) 15 min(05) plusmn 01 min (plusmn 02 04)

Through-put time Mean time 755 min(87) 182 min(21) plusmn 573 min (519 627)Through-put Consulted

patients 182 (51) 213 (63) + 32 (plusmn 347 plusmn 272)

Notes Current gt Case 2 Current = Case 2 Current lt Case 2

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

155

design in this type is the service delivery Therefore a customerrsquos mainconcerns are service process output and waiting time

In the high-contact type there are numerous contact points in this type ofpatientrsquos visit process at a hospital because customers initiate a service processand also participate in it along the process flow While the customerrsquos role inthe low-contact type is the recipient of service process output the customerrsquosrole in the high-contact type is as the participant in performing the serviceprocess For this reason several waits can be created along the process flowwhich take a relatively shorter time when compared to the low-contact typeThe participation characteristic inhibits customers from doing something elseduring not only the wait but also during the entire service process For thisreason a time-related goal of this type is minimizing the throughput time Andthe focus of service process analysis and design is the customer-serverinteraction Therefore customer satisfaction in this type is mainly related to theserverrsquos attitude and the responsiveness-related factors such as throughputtime and delay time (moving and waiting time)

ConclusionIn this research we suggested a service process rationalization methodcomposed of a service process model performance measurement and changeguidelines This research sets forth a way to explicitly link the customer viewto a service process model and yet have the process model be able to supportsimulation Compared to other service process models Dynamic-EPCincorporates not only the customer viewpoint but also reflects fourrepresentation perspectives in it Second the performance simulation resultsprovide a more objective basis for service change decisions which reduce therisk inherent in service process change Third the proposed change guidelinescan be used by practitioners in devising a contingency approach to serviceprocess change projects While some general change principles have beensuggested previously the classified customer service process situations and the

Table VIDiscussion about the

service rationalizationmethod

Low-contact type High-contact type

Contact points At the start and at the endof a service process

Numerous along the processflow

Role of customer Recipient of service processoutput

Participant in the serviceprocess

Frequency of wait One Many waits along the processflow

Waiting time Relatively long Relatively shortNature of wait for customers Can do something else Be captiveTime-related goal Minimize waiting time Minimize throughput timeAnalysisdesign focus Service delivery Customer-server interactionCustomer satisfaction-relatedfactors

Waiting time serviceprocess output

Serverrsquos attitude throughputtime moving and waitingtime

BPMJ72

156

contingent guidelines have advantages in identifying the service situation anddevising situation-specific change alternatives However we need to expandthe performance measurement about customer service from quantitative toqualitative factors

References

CACI Products Company (1993) SIMFACTORY II5 and SIMPROCESS Manual

Congram C and Epelman M (1995) ` How to describe your service an invitation to thestructured analysis and design techniquersquorsquo International Journal of Service IndustryManagement Vol 6 No 2 pp 6-23

Cronin JJ and Taylor SA (1992) `Measuring service quality a reexamination and extensionrsquorsquoJournal of Marketing Vol 56 July pp 55-63

Curtis B Keller MI and Over J (1992) ` Process modelingrsquorsquo Communications of the ACMVol 35 No 9 pp 75-90

Fisk RP Brown SW and Bitner MJ (1993) ` Tracking the evolution of the service marketingliteraturersquorsquo Journal of Retailing Vol 69 No 1 Spring pp 61-103

Galbraith JR (1993) Competing with Flexible Lateral Organizations 2nd ed Addison-WesleyReading MA

Innis DE and LaLonde BJ (1994) ` Customer service the key to customer satisfactioncustomer loyalty and market sharersquorsquo Journal of Business Logistics Vol 15 No 1 pp 1-27

Kim HW (1998) Enhancement of Organizational Performance Using Dynamic Process Modelingand Simulation PhD Dissertation Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology

Kim HW and Kim YG (1997) ` Dynamic process modeling for BPRrsquorsquo Information ampManagement Vol 32 No 1 pp 1-13

Kim YG (1995) `Process modeling for BPR event-process chain approachrsquorsquo Proceedings ofInternational Conference on Information Systems pp 109-21

LaLonde BJ and Zinszer PH (1976) Customer Service Meaning and Measurement NationalCouncil of Physical Distribution Management Chicago IL

Lovelock CH (1996) Service Marketing 3rd ed Prentice-Hall Englewood Cliffs NS

Mackenzie KD (1989) ` The process approach to organizational designrsquorsquo Human SystemsManagement Vol 8 pp 31-43

Parasuraman A Zeithaml VA and Berry LL (1988) ` SERVQUAL a multiple-item scale formeasuring consumer perceptions of service qualityrsquorsquo Journal of Retailing Vol 6 No 1pp 12-40

Quinn RE and Rohrbaugh J (1983) `A spatial model of effectiveness criteria towards acompeting values approaches to organizational analysisrsquorsquo Management Science Vol 29No 3 pp 363-77

Rakowski JP (1981-82) ` The customer service conceptrsquorsquo Review of Business amp EconomicResearch No 2 Winter pp 55-66

Ramaswamy R (1996) Design and Management of Service Process Addison-Wesley PublishingCompany Reading MA

Shostack GL (1984) ` Designing services that deliverrsquorsquo Harvard Business Review January-FebruaryVol 62 pp 133-9

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

149

at the Seoul Adventist Hospital Seoul Adventist Hospital operates 17departments and has 110 doctors and 406 beds The hospital keeps the annualmonthlydaily number of patients of each department from which we couldassume the customerrsquos arrival pattern and branching ratio On average about1100 outpatients come to the hospital for doctor consultations each day Wepicked the outpatientrsquos consultation process across the internal medicine (IM)department testing room and pharmacy because it is representative of themost critical and time-consuming processes

Analysis and performance measurement of the current situationThe top level of the outpatientrsquos visit process is shown in Figure 7 The processis initiated by a patientrsquos arrival at the hospital Patients arrive at the hospitalrandomly or by appointment with a rate of 1 patient045min It follows anexponential distribution Arrived patients register and pay in advance thedoctorrsquos fee after waiting for a while in a queue This process can be performedby one of the eight servers with an average processing time of two minutes(here processing time follows a normal distribution) Registered outpatientswalk to the internal medicine department and the moving time follows anormal distribution with a mean of one minute and standard deviation of 05minute Arriving at the internal medicine departmentrsquos waiting room thepatient waits for his turn During that time the patient chart will be deliveredfrom the chart room to the department (W1) which takes about 15 minutesThose data about processing time at each step came from the measurementtime analysis Those specification data about the number of servers at astation input and output were gathered from interview These several process-related data can be specified and managed using the tool

There are four doctors in the internal medicine department Each out-patientwill be consulted by one of them for about ten minutes After the consultationthose who need additional step(s) plusmn medicine or testing plusmn have to pay again forthe step(s) in advance Arriving at the testing room the patient submits the pre-paid slip and is tested Arriving at the pharmacy desk the patient submits hisher prescription slip to request medicine The amount of time the customer hasto wait for his medicine is represented as ` waitrsquorsquo It can be exploded into a lowerlevel Dynamic-EPC (Figure 8) where the prescription slip (customer object)takes the customerrsquos (patient) role and goes through the internal pharmacyprocess The ` Proportionrsquorsquo process is specified using the tool After receiving themedicine the patient leaves the hospital

The current situation about the outpatientrsquos visit process is simulated withSIMPROCESS II5 (CACI 1993) The visualization capability enables us toverify the simulation model easily After verifying the model we should setthree parameters (warm-up period run-length number of replications) for thesimulation In the hospital case the run-length is eight hours because thehospital operates from 8 am to 5 pm except for one hour lunch time with zerowarm-up period The number of replications can be set by choosing thedesired risk and the width of the (1 plusmn a) confidence interval for the output

BPMJ72

150

variables selected We set it at 19 times with the 95 per cent confidence intervalbased on 387 as half width of the confidence interval and 866 as standarddeviation

Figure 7Outpatientrsquos visitprocess current case

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

151

The simulation results are summarized in Table III The throughput time of theprocess is 755 minutes Patients have to wait too long at the internal medicinedepartment (312 min) and at the pharmacy (219 min) while these two stationsrsquoutilization is higher (internal medicine department 974 per cent pharmacy964 per cent) than that of others And the number of outpatients consulted bythe doctors at the internal medicine department is 182 according to thesimulation However a small portion of arrived patients cannot be consultedbecause of the IM departmentrsquos limited capacity

Organizational change and performance measurementWe should investigate which station incurs a long delay time based on thesuggested change guidelines From the performance measurement resultsabout the current case delay times at the internal medicine department (312minutes) and the pharmacy (219 minutes) are longer than those at otherstations And the utilization of those two stations is higher (IM dept 974 percent pharmacy 964 per cent) than others These two cases therefore belong to

Figure 8Dynamic-EPC exploded

from W2

Table IIIPerformance

measurement resultsabout the current case

Customer service perspective Organizational performance perspective

Delay time Recept desk 58 min Utilization Recept 819IM dept 312 min Desk 974Pharmacy 219 min IM dept 964Exam room 16 min Pharmacy 714

Test roomThroughput time 755 min Throughput 182 patients

BPMJ72

152

situation 2 plusmn long delay time and high utilization plusmn in Figure 3 We need tochange the service processes between these two stations

According to the change guideline (G2 Minimize customerrsquos delay time) insituation 2 we consider performing processevent parallel That is themedicine requesttesting is transmitted electronically to the pharmacy or thetesting room during the patientrsquos consultation with the doctor by using a newconsultation support system Also we consider automating most of theactivities inside the pharmacy to shorten the processing time By the time thepatient arrives at the pharmacy hisher medicine is already waiting for him orher Or the patient can be tested without any delay at the testing room

Also the internal medicine department is a change target as it falls intosituation 2 According to the change guideline (G3) we should increase thestationrsquos work capacity The internal medicine departmentrsquos work capacitydepends on the number of doctors because the consultation by nature is amanual process Since adding more servers (doctors) usually incurs highorganizational costs however we need to recommend such an alternative verycarefully and after all other alternatives are first applied

Next we consider patients at the reception desk Since the currentregistration is performed manually it is slow and time-consuming Also thereare redundant tasks plusmn Register and pay Pay for the next step plusmn in Figure 7According to the change guideline (G2 Minimize customerrsquos delay time) insituation 2 we integrated the registration and payment processes by issuingeach patient a smart card with all their personal health history and bankaccount information When the patient arrives at the doctorrsquos office afterchecking hisher card at the reception desk with the registration system server(not human server) the patient is registered and the consultation history data isalready prepared Using the smart card we can change the ` registration andpayrsquorsquo process into an event Also all the patientrsquos expenses that day will behandled through his or her bank account All of these changes are reflected inthe alternative case 1 (Figure 9)

Case 1 is simulated and its performance measurement results aresummarized and compared with the current situation in Table IV According tothe simulation the throughput time is shortened from 755 to 611 minutesPatientrsquos delay times at each station are shortened except at the internalmedicine department And the utilization of the reception desk is reduced from819 per cent to 347 per cent with the help of IT plusmn smart card Finally theshortened throughput time increased the throughput the number of consultedoutpatients from 182 to 194 More patients can be consulted in the changedcase than the current one

Case 1 reveals some improvements in throughput time patientrsquos delay timeand stationsrsquo utilization But we can expect more improvement because case 1still shows long delay time at the internal medicine department and too lowutilization of the reception desk Patients at the internal department still belongto situation 2 plusmn long delay time and high utilization The reception desk belongsto situation 3 plusmn short delay time and low utilization For this reason we decided

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

153

to increase the internal medicine departmentrsquos work capacity according to thesuggested action guideline (G3 Increase the stationrsquos work capacity) Since thedoctorrsquos consultation work cannot be automated we added two more doctors tothe internal medicine department in the redesigned case 2 Also according tothe guideline (G4 Transfer some of work capacity) in situation 3 we reducedthe number of servers at the reception desk from eight to three without anyprocedural change

Performance measurement results about case 2 and its comparison withcurrent situation are summarized in Table V The throughput time is shortenedfrom 755 minutes to 182 minutes Customerrsquos delay times at each station aresignificantly shorter than the current one Also workload balancing amongthose stations is more even than in case 1 except the reception desk consists ofregistration system servers not employees The throughput is also increasedfrom 182 to 213 From these results we can know that all of the stations belong

Figure 9Changed visit process

case 1

Table IVPerformance

measurement resultsabout current and

case 1

Factor Current case Case 1 Difference

Stationrsquos utilization Reception desk 819 347 plusmn 472IM department 974 988 +14Pharmacy 964 781 plusmn 183Testing room 714 770 plusmn 54

Delay time Reception desk (min) 58 02 plusmn 56IM department (min) 312 474 +162Pharmacy (min) 219 12 plusmn 207Testing room (min) 16 12 plusmn 04

Throughput time Mean time (min) 755 611 plusmn 143Standard deviation 87 56

Throughput Number of consulted patients 182 194 +12

BPMJ72

154

to situation 1 We tested that there is difference between the current case andcase 2 using the null hypothesis test at a = 005

We can compare the results from the organizational performance andcustomer service dimensions From the organizational performanceperspective productivity of throughput and efficiency of throughput time havebeen improved The use of resource with utilization is lower than the currentsituation except the reception desk while those stations in the current situationare overloaded Case 2 however achieved a more even use of resources thanthe current situation across the IM department pharmacy and testingdepartment From the customer service perspective shortened delay times atseveral stations and the dramatically shortened throughput time imply that theresponsiveness of customer service is enhanced in case 2

DiscussionIn addition to the hospital case the method and tool have been applied toseveral real cases such as order processing at a cable-TV home shoppingcompany and project order tracking process at an advertising agency (Kim1998) We can classify customer service processes by the frequency of contactsbetween customer and server-organization low-contact type and high-contacttype Based on the classification we can discuss the applications of theproposed method as in Table VI In the low-contact type customers initiate theserver-organizationrsquos service process and wait for the process output withoutparticipating in it such as customerrsquos order cycle process There is just one waitbetween the start and the end of a service process Since the waiting time takesthe entire throughput time of a service process performed inside the server-organization it is relatively longer than that of the high-contact type Sincecustomers do not participate in the server-organizationrsquos process they can dosomething else during the wait For this reason a time-related goal of this typeis minimizing the waiting time The focus of service process analysis and

Table VComparison betweencurrent and case 2

CriteriaCurrent with

sdCase 2 with

sd DifferenceConfidence

interval

Utilization Recept desk 819 (34) 924 (51) +135 (plusmn 154 plusmn 56)IM dept 974 (21) 659 (62) plusmn 315 (266 365)Pharmacy 964 (23) 795 (43) plusmn 169 (133 205)Test room 714 (68) 784 (67) plusmn 70 (plusmn 115 plusmn 25)

Delay time Recept desk 58 min (13) 09 min(02) plusmn 49 min (43 55)IM Dept 312 min (46) 24 min(07) plusmn 288 min (266 310)Pharmacy 219 min (32) 13 min(04) plusmn 206 min (190 222)Test room 16 min (05) 15 min(05) plusmn 01 min (plusmn 02 04)

Through-put time Mean time 755 min(87) 182 min(21) plusmn 573 min (519 627)Through-put Consulted

patients 182 (51) 213 (63) + 32 (plusmn 347 plusmn 272)

Notes Current gt Case 2 Current = Case 2 Current lt Case 2

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

155

design in this type is the service delivery Therefore a customerrsquos mainconcerns are service process output and waiting time

In the high-contact type there are numerous contact points in this type ofpatientrsquos visit process at a hospital because customers initiate a service processand also participate in it along the process flow While the customerrsquos role inthe low-contact type is the recipient of service process output the customerrsquosrole in the high-contact type is as the participant in performing the serviceprocess For this reason several waits can be created along the process flowwhich take a relatively shorter time when compared to the low-contact typeThe participation characteristic inhibits customers from doing something elseduring not only the wait but also during the entire service process For thisreason a time-related goal of this type is minimizing the throughput time Andthe focus of service process analysis and design is the customer-serverinteraction Therefore customer satisfaction in this type is mainly related to theserverrsquos attitude and the responsiveness-related factors such as throughputtime and delay time (moving and waiting time)

ConclusionIn this research we suggested a service process rationalization methodcomposed of a service process model performance measurement and changeguidelines This research sets forth a way to explicitly link the customer viewto a service process model and yet have the process model be able to supportsimulation Compared to other service process models Dynamic-EPCincorporates not only the customer viewpoint but also reflects fourrepresentation perspectives in it Second the performance simulation resultsprovide a more objective basis for service change decisions which reduce therisk inherent in service process change Third the proposed change guidelinescan be used by practitioners in devising a contingency approach to serviceprocess change projects While some general change principles have beensuggested previously the classified customer service process situations and the

Table VIDiscussion about the

service rationalizationmethod

Low-contact type High-contact type

Contact points At the start and at the endof a service process

Numerous along the processflow

Role of customer Recipient of service processoutput

Participant in the serviceprocess

Frequency of wait One Many waits along the processflow

Waiting time Relatively long Relatively shortNature of wait for customers Can do something else Be captiveTime-related goal Minimize waiting time Minimize throughput timeAnalysisdesign focus Service delivery Customer-server interactionCustomer satisfaction-relatedfactors

Waiting time serviceprocess output

Serverrsquos attitude throughputtime moving and waitingtime

BPMJ72

156

contingent guidelines have advantages in identifying the service situation anddevising situation-specific change alternatives However we need to expandthe performance measurement about customer service from quantitative toqualitative factors

References

CACI Products Company (1993) SIMFACTORY II5 and SIMPROCESS Manual

Congram C and Epelman M (1995) ` How to describe your service an invitation to thestructured analysis and design techniquersquorsquo International Journal of Service IndustryManagement Vol 6 No 2 pp 6-23

Cronin JJ and Taylor SA (1992) `Measuring service quality a reexamination and extensionrsquorsquoJournal of Marketing Vol 56 July pp 55-63

Curtis B Keller MI and Over J (1992) ` Process modelingrsquorsquo Communications of the ACMVol 35 No 9 pp 75-90

Fisk RP Brown SW and Bitner MJ (1993) ` Tracking the evolution of the service marketingliteraturersquorsquo Journal of Retailing Vol 69 No 1 Spring pp 61-103

Galbraith JR (1993) Competing with Flexible Lateral Organizations 2nd ed Addison-WesleyReading MA

Innis DE and LaLonde BJ (1994) ` Customer service the key to customer satisfactioncustomer loyalty and market sharersquorsquo Journal of Business Logistics Vol 15 No 1 pp 1-27

Kim HW (1998) Enhancement of Organizational Performance Using Dynamic Process Modelingand Simulation PhD Dissertation Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology

Kim HW and Kim YG (1997) ` Dynamic process modeling for BPRrsquorsquo Information ampManagement Vol 32 No 1 pp 1-13

Kim YG (1995) `Process modeling for BPR event-process chain approachrsquorsquo Proceedings ofInternational Conference on Information Systems pp 109-21

LaLonde BJ and Zinszer PH (1976) Customer Service Meaning and Measurement NationalCouncil of Physical Distribution Management Chicago IL

Lovelock CH (1996) Service Marketing 3rd ed Prentice-Hall Englewood Cliffs NS

Mackenzie KD (1989) ` The process approach to organizational designrsquorsquo Human SystemsManagement Vol 8 pp 31-43

Parasuraman A Zeithaml VA and Berry LL (1988) ` SERVQUAL a multiple-item scale formeasuring consumer perceptions of service qualityrsquorsquo Journal of Retailing Vol 6 No 1pp 12-40

Quinn RE and Rohrbaugh J (1983) `A spatial model of effectiveness criteria towards acompeting values approaches to organizational analysisrsquorsquo Management Science Vol 29No 3 pp 363-77

Rakowski JP (1981-82) ` The customer service conceptrsquorsquo Review of Business amp EconomicResearch No 2 Winter pp 55-66

Ramaswamy R (1996) Design and Management of Service Process Addison-Wesley PublishingCompany Reading MA

Shostack GL (1984) ` Designing services that deliverrsquorsquo Harvard Business Review January-FebruaryVol 62 pp 133-9

BPMJ72

150

variables selected We set it at 19 times with the 95 per cent confidence intervalbased on 387 as half width of the confidence interval and 866 as standarddeviation

Figure 7Outpatientrsquos visitprocess current case

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

151

The simulation results are summarized in Table III The throughput time of theprocess is 755 minutes Patients have to wait too long at the internal medicinedepartment (312 min) and at the pharmacy (219 min) while these two stationsrsquoutilization is higher (internal medicine department 974 per cent pharmacy964 per cent) than that of others And the number of outpatients consulted bythe doctors at the internal medicine department is 182 according to thesimulation However a small portion of arrived patients cannot be consultedbecause of the IM departmentrsquos limited capacity

Organizational change and performance measurementWe should investigate which station incurs a long delay time based on thesuggested change guidelines From the performance measurement resultsabout the current case delay times at the internal medicine department (312minutes) and the pharmacy (219 minutes) are longer than those at otherstations And the utilization of those two stations is higher (IM dept 974 percent pharmacy 964 per cent) than others These two cases therefore belong to

Figure 8Dynamic-EPC exploded

from W2

Table IIIPerformance

measurement resultsabout the current case

Customer service perspective Organizational performance perspective

Delay time Recept desk 58 min Utilization Recept 819IM dept 312 min Desk 974Pharmacy 219 min IM dept 964Exam room 16 min Pharmacy 714

Test roomThroughput time 755 min Throughput 182 patients

BPMJ72

152

situation 2 plusmn long delay time and high utilization plusmn in Figure 3 We need tochange the service processes between these two stations

According to the change guideline (G2 Minimize customerrsquos delay time) insituation 2 we consider performing processevent parallel That is themedicine requesttesting is transmitted electronically to the pharmacy or thetesting room during the patientrsquos consultation with the doctor by using a newconsultation support system Also we consider automating most of theactivities inside the pharmacy to shorten the processing time By the time thepatient arrives at the pharmacy hisher medicine is already waiting for him orher Or the patient can be tested without any delay at the testing room

Also the internal medicine department is a change target as it falls intosituation 2 According to the change guideline (G3) we should increase thestationrsquos work capacity The internal medicine departmentrsquos work capacitydepends on the number of doctors because the consultation by nature is amanual process Since adding more servers (doctors) usually incurs highorganizational costs however we need to recommend such an alternative verycarefully and after all other alternatives are first applied

Next we consider patients at the reception desk Since the currentregistration is performed manually it is slow and time-consuming Also thereare redundant tasks plusmn Register and pay Pay for the next step plusmn in Figure 7According to the change guideline (G2 Minimize customerrsquos delay time) insituation 2 we integrated the registration and payment processes by issuingeach patient a smart card with all their personal health history and bankaccount information When the patient arrives at the doctorrsquos office afterchecking hisher card at the reception desk with the registration system server(not human server) the patient is registered and the consultation history data isalready prepared Using the smart card we can change the ` registration andpayrsquorsquo process into an event Also all the patientrsquos expenses that day will behandled through his or her bank account All of these changes are reflected inthe alternative case 1 (Figure 9)

Case 1 is simulated and its performance measurement results aresummarized and compared with the current situation in Table IV According tothe simulation the throughput time is shortened from 755 to 611 minutesPatientrsquos delay times at each station are shortened except at the internalmedicine department And the utilization of the reception desk is reduced from819 per cent to 347 per cent with the help of IT plusmn smart card Finally theshortened throughput time increased the throughput the number of consultedoutpatients from 182 to 194 More patients can be consulted in the changedcase than the current one

Case 1 reveals some improvements in throughput time patientrsquos delay timeand stationsrsquo utilization But we can expect more improvement because case 1still shows long delay time at the internal medicine department and too lowutilization of the reception desk Patients at the internal department still belongto situation 2 plusmn long delay time and high utilization The reception desk belongsto situation 3 plusmn short delay time and low utilization For this reason we decided

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

153

to increase the internal medicine departmentrsquos work capacity according to thesuggested action guideline (G3 Increase the stationrsquos work capacity) Since thedoctorrsquos consultation work cannot be automated we added two more doctors tothe internal medicine department in the redesigned case 2 Also according tothe guideline (G4 Transfer some of work capacity) in situation 3 we reducedthe number of servers at the reception desk from eight to three without anyprocedural change

Performance measurement results about case 2 and its comparison withcurrent situation are summarized in Table V The throughput time is shortenedfrom 755 minutes to 182 minutes Customerrsquos delay times at each station aresignificantly shorter than the current one Also workload balancing amongthose stations is more even than in case 1 except the reception desk consists ofregistration system servers not employees The throughput is also increasedfrom 182 to 213 From these results we can know that all of the stations belong

Figure 9Changed visit process

case 1

Table IVPerformance

measurement resultsabout current and

case 1

Factor Current case Case 1 Difference

Stationrsquos utilization Reception desk 819 347 plusmn 472IM department 974 988 +14Pharmacy 964 781 plusmn 183Testing room 714 770 plusmn 54

Delay time Reception desk (min) 58 02 plusmn 56IM department (min) 312 474 +162Pharmacy (min) 219 12 plusmn 207Testing room (min) 16 12 plusmn 04

Throughput time Mean time (min) 755 611 plusmn 143Standard deviation 87 56

Throughput Number of consulted patients 182 194 +12

BPMJ72

154

to situation 1 We tested that there is difference between the current case andcase 2 using the null hypothesis test at a = 005

We can compare the results from the organizational performance andcustomer service dimensions From the organizational performanceperspective productivity of throughput and efficiency of throughput time havebeen improved The use of resource with utilization is lower than the currentsituation except the reception desk while those stations in the current situationare overloaded Case 2 however achieved a more even use of resources thanthe current situation across the IM department pharmacy and testingdepartment From the customer service perspective shortened delay times atseveral stations and the dramatically shortened throughput time imply that theresponsiveness of customer service is enhanced in case 2

DiscussionIn addition to the hospital case the method and tool have been applied toseveral real cases such as order processing at a cable-TV home shoppingcompany and project order tracking process at an advertising agency (Kim1998) We can classify customer service processes by the frequency of contactsbetween customer and server-organization low-contact type and high-contacttype Based on the classification we can discuss the applications of theproposed method as in Table VI In the low-contact type customers initiate theserver-organizationrsquos service process and wait for the process output withoutparticipating in it such as customerrsquos order cycle process There is just one waitbetween the start and the end of a service process Since the waiting time takesthe entire throughput time of a service process performed inside the server-organization it is relatively longer than that of the high-contact type Sincecustomers do not participate in the server-organizationrsquos process they can dosomething else during the wait For this reason a time-related goal of this typeis minimizing the waiting time The focus of service process analysis and

Table VComparison betweencurrent and case 2

CriteriaCurrent with

sdCase 2 with

sd DifferenceConfidence

interval

Utilization Recept desk 819 (34) 924 (51) +135 (plusmn 154 plusmn 56)IM dept 974 (21) 659 (62) plusmn 315 (266 365)Pharmacy 964 (23) 795 (43) plusmn 169 (133 205)Test room 714 (68) 784 (67) plusmn 70 (plusmn 115 plusmn 25)

Delay time Recept desk 58 min (13) 09 min(02) plusmn 49 min (43 55)IM Dept 312 min (46) 24 min(07) plusmn 288 min (266 310)Pharmacy 219 min (32) 13 min(04) plusmn 206 min (190 222)Test room 16 min (05) 15 min(05) plusmn 01 min (plusmn 02 04)

Through-put time Mean time 755 min(87) 182 min(21) plusmn 573 min (519 627)Through-put Consulted

patients 182 (51) 213 (63) + 32 (plusmn 347 plusmn 272)

Notes Current gt Case 2 Current = Case 2 Current lt Case 2

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

155

design in this type is the service delivery Therefore a customerrsquos mainconcerns are service process output and waiting time

In the high-contact type there are numerous contact points in this type ofpatientrsquos visit process at a hospital because customers initiate a service processand also participate in it along the process flow While the customerrsquos role inthe low-contact type is the recipient of service process output the customerrsquosrole in the high-contact type is as the participant in performing the serviceprocess For this reason several waits can be created along the process flowwhich take a relatively shorter time when compared to the low-contact typeThe participation characteristic inhibits customers from doing something elseduring not only the wait but also during the entire service process For thisreason a time-related goal of this type is minimizing the throughput time Andthe focus of service process analysis and design is the customer-serverinteraction Therefore customer satisfaction in this type is mainly related to theserverrsquos attitude and the responsiveness-related factors such as throughputtime and delay time (moving and waiting time)

ConclusionIn this research we suggested a service process rationalization methodcomposed of a service process model performance measurement and changeguidelines This research sets forth a way to explicitly link the customer viewto a service process model and yet have the process model be able to supportsimulation Compared to other service process models Dynamic-EPCincorporates not only the customer viewpoint but also reflects fourrepresentation perspectives in it Second the performance simulation resultsprovide a more objective basis for service change decisions which reduce therisk inherent in service process change Third the proposed change guidelinescan be used by practitioners in devising a contingency approach to serviceprocess change projects While some general change principles have beensuggested previously the classified customer service process situations and the

Table VIDiscussion about the

service rationalizationmethod

Low-contact type High-contact type

Contact points At the start and at the endof a service process

Numerous along the processflow

Role of customer Recipient of service processoutput

Participant in the serviceprocess

Frequency of wait One Many waits along the processflow

Waiting time Relatively long Relatively shortNature of wait for customers Can do something else Be captiveTime-related goal Minimize waiting time Minimize throughput timeAnalysisdesign focus Service delivery Customer-server interactionCustomer satisfaction-relatedfactors

Waiting time serviceprocess output

Serverrsquos attitude throughputtime moving and waitingtime

BPMJ72

156

contingent guidelines have advantages in identifying the service situation anddevising situation-specific change alternatives However we need to expandthe performance measurement about customer service from quantitative toqualitative factors

References

CACI Products Company (1993) SIMFACTORY II5 and SIMPROCESS Manual

Congram C and Epelman M (1995) ` How to describe your service an invitation to thestructured analysis and design techniquersquorsquo International Journal of Service IndustryManagement Vol 6 No 2 pp 6-23

Cronin JJ and Taylor SA (1992) `Measuring service quality a reexamination and extensionrsquorsquoJournal of Marketing Vol 56 July pp 55-63

Curtis B Keller MI and Over J (1992) ` Process modelingrsquorsquo Communications of the ACMVol 35 No 9 pp 75-90

Fisk RP Brown SW and Bitner MJ (1993) ` Tracking the evolution of the service marketingliteraturersquorsquo Journal of Retailing Vol 69 No 1 Spring pp 61-103

Galbraith JR (1993) Competing with Flexible Lateral Organizations 2nd ed Addison-WesleyReading MA

Innis DE and LaLonde BJ (1994) ` Customer service the key to customer satisfactioncustomer loyalty and market sharersquorsquo Journal of Business Logistics Vol 15 No 1 pp 1-27

Kim HW (1998) Enhancement of Organizational Performance Using Dynamic Process Modelingand Simulation PhD Dissertation Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology

Kim HW and Kim YG (1997) ` Dynamic process modeling for BPRrsquorsquo Information ampManagement Vol 32 No 1 pp 1-13

Kim YG (1995) `Process modeling for BPR event-process chain approachrsquorsquo Proceedings ofInternational Conference on Information Systems pp 109-21

LaLonde BJ and Zinszer PH (1976) Customer Service Meaning and Measurement NationalCouncil of Physical Distribution Management Chicago IL

Lovelock CH (1996) Service Marketing 3rd ed Prentice-Hall Englewood Cliffs NS

Mackenzie KD (1989) ` The process approach to organizational designrsquorsquo Human SystemsManagement Vol 8 pp 31-43

Parasuraman A Zeithaml VA and Berry LL (1988) ` SERVQUAL a multiple-item scale formeasuring consumer perceptions of service qualityrsquorsquo Journal of Retailing Vol 6 No 1pp 12-40

Quinn RE and Rohrbaugh J (1983) `A spatial model of effectiveness criteria towards acompeting values approaches to organizational analysisrsquorsquo Management Science Vol 29No 3 pp 363-77

Rakowski JP (1981-82) ` The customer service conceptrsquorsquo Review of Business amp EconomicResearch No 2 Winter pp 55-66

Ramaswamy R (1996) Design and Management of Service Process Addison-Wesley PublishingCompany Reading MA

Shostack GL (1984) ` Designing services that deliverrsquorsquo Harvard Business Review January-FebruaryVol 62 pp 133-9

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

151

The simulation results are summarized in Table III The throughput time of theprocess is 755 minutes Patients have to wait too long at the internal medicinedepartment (312 min) and at the pharmacy (219 min) while these two stationsrsquoutilization is higher (internal medicine department 974 per cent pharmacy964 per cent) than that of others And the number of outpatients consulted bythe doctors at the internal medicine department is 182 according to thesimulation However a small portion of arrived patients cannot be consultedbecause of the IM departmentrsquos limited capacity

Organizational change and performance measurementWe should investigate which station incurs a long delay time based on thesuggested change guidelines From the performance measurement resultsabout the current case delay times at the internal medicine department (312minutes) and the pharmacy (219 minutes) are longer than those at otherstations And the utilization of those two stations is higher (IM dept 974 percent pharmacy 964 per cent) than others These two cases therefore belong to

Figure 8Dynamic-EPC exploded

from W2

Table IIIPerformance

measurement resultsabout the current case

Customer service perspective Organizational performance perspective

Delay time Recept desk 58 min Utilization Recept 819IM dept 312 min Desk 974Pharmacy 219 min IM dept 964Exam room 16 min Pharmacy 714

Test roomThroughput time 755 min Throughput 182 patients

BPMJ72

152

situation 2 plusmn long delay time and high utilization plusmn in Figure 3 We need tochange the service processes between these two stations

According to the change guideline (G2 Minimize customerrsquos delay time) insituation 2 we consider performing processevent parallel That is themedicine requesttesting is transmitted electronically to the pharmacy or thetesting room during the patientrsquos consultation with the doctor by using a newconsultation support system Also we consider automating most of theactivities inside the pharmacy to shorten the processing time By the time thepatient arrives at the pharmacy hisher medicine is already waiting for him orher Or the patient can be tested without any delay at the testing room

Also the internal medicine department is a change target as it falls intosituation 2 According to the change guideline (G3) we should increase thestationrsquos work capacity The internal medicine departmentrsquos work capacitydepends on the number of doctors because the consultation by nature is amanual process Since adding more servers (doctors) usually incurs highorganizational costs however we need to recommend such an alternative verycarefully and after all other alternatives are first applied

Next we consider patients at the reception desk Since the currentregistration is performed manually it is slow and time-consuming Also thereare redundant tasks plusmn Register and pay Pay for the next step plusmn in Figure 7According to the change guideline (G2 Minimize customerrsquos delay time) insituation 2 we integrated the registration and payment processes by issuingeach patient a smart card with all their personal health history and bankaccount information When the patient arrives at the doctorrsquos office afterchecking hisher card at the reception desk with the registration system server(not human server) the patient is registered and the consultation history data isalready prepared Using the smart card we can change the ` registration andpayrsquorsquo process into an event Also all the patientrsquos expenses that day will behandled through his or her bank account All of these changes are reflected inthe alternative case 1 (Figure 9)

Case 1 is simulated and its performance measurement results aresummarized and compared with the current situation in Table IV According tothe simulation the throughput time is shortened from 755 to 611 minutesPatientrsquos delay times at each station are shortened except at the internalmedicine department And the utilization of the reception desk is reduced from819 per cent to 347 per cent with the help of IT plusmn smart card Finally theshortened throughput time increased the throughput the number of consultedoutpatients from 182 to 194 More patients can be consulted in the changedcase than the current one

Case 1 reveals some improvements in throughput time patientrsquos delay timeand stationsrsquo utilization But we can expect more improvement because case 1still shows long delay time at the internal medicine department and too lowutilization of the reception desk Patients at the internal department still belongto situation 2 plusmn long delay time and high utilization The reception desk belongsto situation 3 plusmn short delay time and low utilization For this reason we decided

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

153

to increase the internal medicine departmentrsquos work capacity according to thesuggested action guideline (G3 Increase the stationrsquos work capacity) Since thedoctorrsquos consultation work cannot be automated we added two more doctors tothe internal medicine department in the redesigned case 2 Also according tothe guideline (G4 Transfer some of work capacity) in situation 3 we reducedthe number of servers at the reception desk from eight to three without anyprocedural change

Performance measurement results about case 2 and its comparison withcurrent situation are summarized in Table V The throughput time is shortenedfrom 755 minutes to 182 minutes Customerrsquos delay times at each station aresignificantly shorter than the current one Also workload balancing amongthose stations is more even than in case 1 except the reception desk consists ofregistration system servers not employees The throughput is also increasedfrom 182 to 213 From these results we can know that all of the stations belong

Figure 9Changed visit process

case 1

Table IVPerformance

measurement resultsabout current and

case 1

Factor Current case Case 1 Difference

Stationrsquos utilization Reception desk 819 347 plusmn 472IM department 974 988 +14Pharmacy 964 781 plusmn 183Testing room 714 770 plusmn 54

Delay time Reception desk (min) 58 02 plusmn 56IM department (min) 312 474 +162Pharmacy (min) 219 12 plusmn 207Testing room (min) 16 12 plusmn 04

Throughput time Mean time (min) 755 611 plusmn 143Standard deviation 87 56

Throughput Number of consulted patients 182 194 +12

BPMJ72

154

to situation 1 We tested that there is difference between the current case andcase 2 using the null hypothesis test at a = 005

We can compare the results from the organizational performance andcustomer service dimensions From the organizational performanceperspective productivity of throughput and efficiency of throughput time havebeen improved The use of resource with utilization is lower than the currentsituation except the reception desk while those stations in the current situationare overloaded Case 2 however achieved a more even use of resources thanthe current situation across the IM department pharmacy and testingdepartment From the customer service perspective shortened delay times atseveral stations and the dramatically shortened throughput time imply that theresponsiveness of customer service is enhanced in case 2

DiscussionIn addition to the hospital case the method and tool have been applied toseveral real cases such as order processing at a cable-TV home shoppingcompany and project order tracking process at an advertising agency (Kim1998) We can classify customer service processes by the frequency of contactsbetween customer and server-organization low-contact type and high-contacttype Based on the classification we can discuss the applications of theproposed method as in Table VI In the low-contact type customers initiate theserver-organizationrsquos service process and wait for the process output withoutparticipating in it such as customerrsquos order cycle process There is just one waitbetween the start and the end of a service process Since the waiting time takesthe entire throughput time of a service process performed inside the server-organization it is relatively longer than that of the high-contact type Sincecustomers do not participate in the server-organizationrsquos process they can dosomething else during the wait For this reason a time-related goal of this typeis minimizing the waiting time The focus of service process analysis and

Table VComparison betweencurrent and case 2

CriteriaCurrent with

sdCase 2 with

sd DifferenceConfidence

interval

Utilization Recept desk 819 (34) 924 (51) +135 (plusmn 154 plusmn 56)IM dept 974 (21) 659 (62) plusmn 315 (266 365)Pharmacy 964 (23) 795 (43) plusmn 169 (133 205)Test room 714 (68) 784 (67) plusmn 70 (plusmn 115 plusmn 25)

Delay time Recept desk 58 min (13) 09 min(02) plusmn 49 min (43 55)IM Dept 312 min (46) 24 min(07) plusmn 288 min (266 310)Pharmacy 219 min (32) 13 min(04) plusmn 206 min (190 222)Test room 16 min (05) 15 min(05) plusmn 01 min (plusmn 02 04)

Through-put time Mean time 755 min(87) 182 min(21) plusmn 573 min (519 627)Through-put Consulted

patients 182 (51) 213 (63) + 32 (plusmn 347 plusmn 272)

Notes Current gt Case 2 Current = Case 2 Current lt Case 2

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

155

design in this type is the service delivery Therefore a customerrsquos mainconcerns are service process output and waiting time

In the high-contact type there are numerous contact points in this type ofpatientrsquos visit process at a hospital because customers initiate a service processand also participate in it along the process flow While the customerrsquos role inthe low-contact type is the recipient of service process output the customerrsquosrole in the high-contact type is as the participant in performing the serviceprocess For this reason several waits can be created along the process flowwhich take a relatively shorter time when compared to the low-contact typeThe participation characteristic inhibits customers from doing something elseduring not only the wait but also during the entire service process For thisreason a time-related goal of this type is minimizing the throughput time Andthe focus of service process analysis and design is the customer-serverinteraction Therefore customer satisfaction in this type is mainly related to theserverrsquos attitude and the responsiveness-related factors such as throughputtime and delay time (moving and waiting time)

ConclusionIn this research we suggested a service process rationalization methodcomposed of a service process model performance measurement and changeguidelines This research sets forth a way to explicitly link the customer viewto a service process model and yet have the process model be able to supportsimulation Compared to other service process models Dynamic-EPCincorporates not only the customer viewpoint but also reflects fourrepresentation perspectives in it Second the performance simulation resultsprovide a more objective basis for service change decisions which reduce therisk inherent in service process change Third the proposed change guidelinescan be used by practitioners in devising a contingency approach to serviceprocess change projects While some general change principles have beensuggested previously the classified customer service process situations and the

Table VIDiscussion about the

service rationalizationmethod

Low-contact type High-contact type

Contact points At the start and at the endof a service process

Numerous along the processflow

Role of customer Recipient of service processoutput

Participant in the serviceprocess

Frequency of wait One Many waits along the processflow

Waiting time Relatively long Relatively shortNature of wait for customers Can do something else Be captiveTime-related goal Minimize waiting time Minimize throughput timeAnalysisdesign focus Service delivery Customer-server interactionCustomer satisfaction-relatedfactors

Waiting time serviceprocess output

Serverrsquos attitude throughputtime moving and waitingtime

BPMJ72

156

contingent guidelines have advantages in identifying the service situation anddevising situation-specific change alternatives However we need to expandthe performance measurement about customer service from quantitative toqualitative factors

References

CACI Products Company (1993) SIMFACTORY II5 and SIMPROCESS Manual

Congram C and Epelman M (1995) ` How to describe your service an invitation to thestructured analysis and design techniquersquorsquo International Journal of Service IndustryManagement Vol 6 No 2 pp 6-23

Cronin JJ and Taylor SA (1992) `Measuring service quality a reexamination and extensionrsquorsquoJournal of Marketing Vol 56 July pp 55-63

Curtis B Keller MI and Over J (1992) ` Process modelingrsquorsquo Communications of the ACMVol 35 No 9 pp 75-90

Fisk RP Brown SW and Bitner MJ (1993) ` Tracking the evolution of the service marketingliteraturersquorsquo Journal of Retailing Vol 69 No 1 Spring pp 61-103

Galbraith JR (1993) Competing with Flexible Lateral Organizations 2nd ed Addison-WesleyReading MA

Innis DE and LaLonde BJ (1994) ` Customer service the key to customer satisfactioncustomer loyalty and market sharersquorsquo Journal of Business Logistics Vol 15 No 1 pp 1-27

Kim HW (1998) Enhancement of Organizational Performance Using Dynamic Process Modelingand Simulation PhD Dissertation Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology

Kim HW and Kim YG (1997) ` Dynamic process modeling for BPRrsquorsquo Information ampManagement Vol 32 No 1 pp 1-13

Kim YG (1995) `Process modeling for BPR event-process chain approachrsquorsquo Proceedings ofInternational Conference on Information Systems pp 109-21

LaLonde BJ and Zinszer PH (1976) Customer Service Meaning and Measurement NationalCouncil of Physical Distribution Management Chicago IL

Lovelock CH (1996) Service Marketing 3rd ed Prentice-Hall Englewood Cliffs NS

Mackenzie KD (1989) ` The process approach to organizational designrsquorsquo Human SystemsManagement Vol 8 pp 31-43

Parasuraman A Zeithaml VA and Berry LL (1988) ` SERVQUAL a multiple-item scale formeasuring consumer perceptions of service qualityrsquorsquo Journal of Retailing Vol 6 No 1pp 12-40

Quinn RE and Rohrbaugh J (1983) `A spatial model of effectiveness criteria towards acompeting values approaches to organizational analysisrsquorsquo Management Science Vol 29No 3 pp 363-77

Rakowski JP (1981-82) ` The customer service conceptrsquorsquo Review of Business amp EconomicResearch No 2 Winter pp 55-66

Ramaswamy R (1996) Design and Management of Service Process Addison-Wesley PublishingCompany Reading MA

Shostack GL (1984) ` Designing services that deliverrsquorsquo Harvard Business Review January-FebruaryVol 62 pp 133-9

BPMJ72

152

situation 2 plusmn long delay time and high utilization plusmn in Figure 3 We need tochange the service processes between these two stations

According to the change guideline (G2 Minimize customerrsquos delay time) insituation 2 we consider performing processevent parallel That is themedicine requesttesting is transmitted electronically to the pharmacy or thetesting room during the patientrsquos consultation with the doctor by using a newconsultation support system Also we consider automating most of theactivities inside the pharmacy to shorten the processing time By the time thepatient arrives at the pharmacy hisher medicine is already waiting for him orher Or the patient can be tested without any delay at the testing room

Also the internal medicine department is a change target as it falls intosituation 2 According to the change guideline (G3) we should increase thestationrsquos work capacity The internal medicine departmentrsquos work capacitydepends on the number of doctors because the consultation by nature is amanual process Since adding more servers (doctors) usually incurs highorganizational costs however we need to recommend such an alternative verycarefully and after all other alternatives are first applied

Next we consider patients at the reception desk Since the currentregistration is performed manually it is slow and time-consuming Also thereare redundant tasks plusmn Register and pay Pay for the next step plusmn in Figure 7According to the change guideline (G2 Minimize customerrsquos delay time) insituation 2 we integrated the registration and payment processes by issuingeach patient a smart card with all their personal health history and bankaccount information When the patient arrives at the doctorrsquos office afterchecking hisher card at the reception desk with the registration system server(not human server) the patient is registered and the consultation history data isalready prepared Using the smart card we can change the ` registration andpayrsquorsquo process into an event Also all the patientrsquos expenses that day will behandled through his or her bank account All of these changes are reflected inthe alternative case 1 (Figure 9)

Case 1 is simulated and its performance measurement results aresummarized and compared with the current situation in Table IV According tothe simulation the throughput time is shortened from 755 to 611 minutesPatientrsquos delay times at each station are shortened except at the internalmedicine department And the utilization of the reception desk is reduced from819 per cent to 347 per cent with the help of IT plusmn smart card Finally theshortened throughput time increased the throughput the number of consultedoutpatients from 182 to 194 More patients can be consulted in the changedcase than the current one

Case 1 reveals some improvements in throughput time patientrsquos delay timeand stationsrsquo utilization But we can expect more improvement because case 1still shows long delay time at the internal medicine department and too lowutilization of the reception desk Patients at the internal department still belongto situation 2 plusmn long delay time and high utilization The reception desk belongsto situation 3 plusmn short delay time and low utilization For this reason we decided

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

153

to increase the internal medicine departmentrsquos work capacity according to thesuggested action guideline (G3 Increase the stationrsquos work capacity) Since thedoctorrsquos consultation work cannot be automated we added two more doctors tothe internal medicine department in the redesigned case 2 Also according tothe guideline (G4 Transfer some of work capacity) in situation 3 we reducedthe number of servers at the reception desk from eight to three without anyprocedural change

Performance measurement results about case 2 and its comparison withcurrent situation are summarized in Table V The throughput time is shortenedfrom 755 minutes to 182 minutes Customerrsquos delay times at each station aresignificantly shorter than the current one Also workload balancing amongthose stations is more even than in case 1 except the reception desk consists ofregistration system servers not employees The throughput is also increasedfrom 182 to 213 From these results we can know that all of the stations belong

Figure 9Changed visit process

case 1

Table IVPerformance

measurement resultsabout current and

case 1

Factor Current case Case 1 Difference

Stationrsquos utilization Reception desk 819 347 plusmn 472IM department 974 988 +14Pharmacy 964 781 plusmn 183Testing room 714 770 plusmn 54

Delay time Reception desk (min) 58 02 plusmn 56IM department (min) 312 474 +162Pharmacy (min) 219 12 plusmn 207Testing room (min) 16 12 plusmn 04

Throughput time Mean time (min) 755 611 plusmn 143Standard deviation 87 56

Throughput Number of consulted patients 182 194 +12

BPMJ72

154

to situation 1 We tested that there is difference between the current case andcase 2 using the null hypothesis test at a = 005

We can compare the results from the organizational performance andcustomer service dimensions From the organizational performanceperspective productivity of throughput and efficiency of throughput time havebeen improved The use of resource with utilization is lower than the currentsituation except the reception desk while those stations in the current situationare overloaded Case 2 however achieved a more even use of resources thanthe current situation across the IM department pharmacy and testingdepartment From the customer service perspective shortened delay times atseveral stations and the dramatically shortened throughput time imply that theresponsiveness of customer service is enhanced in case 2

DiscussionIn addition to the hospital case the method and tool have been applied toseveral real cases such as order processing at a cable-TV home shoppingcompany and project order tracking process at an advertising agency (Kim1998) We can classify customer service processes by the frequency of contactsbetween customer and server-organization low-contact type and high-contacttype Based on the classification we can discuss the applications of theproposed method as in Table VI In the low-contact type customers initiate theserver-organizationrsquos service process and wait for the process output withoutparticipating in it such as customerrsquos order cycle process There is just one waitbetween the start and the end of a service process Since the waiting time takesthe entire throughput time of a service process performed inside the server-organization it is relatively longer than that of the high-contact type Sincecustomers do not participate in the server-organizationrsquos process they can dosomething else during the wait For this reason a time-related goal of this typeis minimizing the waiting time The focus of service process analysis and

Table VComparison betweencurrent and case 2

CriteriaCurrent with

sdCase 2 with

sd DifferenceConfidence

interval

Utilization Recept desk 819 (34) 924 (51) +135 (plusmn 154 plusmn 56)IM dept 974 (21) 659 (62) plusmn 315 (266 365)Pharmacy 964 (23) 795 (43) plusmn 169 (133 205)Test room 714 (68) 784 (67) plusmn 70 (plusmn 115 plusmn 25)

Delay time Recept desk 58 min (13) 09 min(02) plusmn 49 min (43 55)IM Dept 312 min (46) 24 min(07) plusmn 288 min (266 310)Pharmacy 219 min (32) 13 min(04) plusmn 206 min (190 222)Test room 16 min (05) 15 min(05) plusmn 01 min (plusmn 02 04)

Through-put time Mean time 755 min(87) 182 min(21) plusmn 573 min (519 627)Through-put Consulted

patients 182 (51) 213 (63) + 32 (plusmn 347 plusmn 272)

Notes Current gt Case 2 Current = Case 2 Current lt Case 2

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

155

design in this type is the service delivery Therefore a customerrsquos mainconcerns are service process output and waiting time

In the high-contact type there are numerous contact points in this type ofpatientrsquos visit process at a hospital because customers initiate a service processand also participate in it along the process flow While the customerrsquos role inthe low-contact type is the recipient of service process output the customerrsquosrole in the high-contact type is as the participant in performing the serviceprocess For this reason several waits can be created along the process flowwhich take a relatively shorter time when compared to the low-contact typeThe participation characteristic inhibits customers from doing something elseduring not only the wait but also during the entire service process For thisreason a time-related goal of this type is minimizing the throughput time Andthe focus of service process analysis and design is the customer-serverinteraction Therefore customer satisfaction in this type is mainly related to theserverrsquos attitude and the responsiveness-related factors such as throughputtime and delay time (moving and waiting time)

ConclusionIn this research we suggested a service process rationalization methodcomposed of a service process model performance measurement and changeguidelines This research sets forth a way to explicitly link the customer viewto a service process model and yet have the process model be able to supportsimulation Compared to other service process models Dynamic-EPCincorporates not only the customer viewpoint but also reflects fourrepresentation perspectives in it Second the performance simulation resultsprovide a more objective basis for service change decisions which reduce therisk inherent in service process change Third the proposed change guidelinescan be used by practitioners in devising a contingency approach to serviceprocess change projects While some general change principles have beensuggested previously the classified customer service process situations and the

Table VIDiscussion about the

service rationalizationmethod

Low-contact type High-contact type

Contact points At the start and at the endof a service process

Numerous along the processflow

Role of customer Recipient of service processoutput

Participant in the serviceprocess

Frequency of wait One Many waits along the processflow

Waiting time Relatively long Relatively shortNature of wait for customers Can do something else Be captiveTime-related goal Minimize waiting time Minimize throughput timeAnalysisdesign focus Service delivery Customer-server interactionCustomer satisfaction-relatedfactors

Waiting time serviceprocess output

Serverrsquos attitude throughputtime moving and waitingtime

BPMJ72

156

contingent guidelines have advantages in identifying the service situation anddevising situation-specific change alternatives However we need to expandthe performance measurement about customer service from quantitative toqualitative factors

References

CACI Products Company (1993) SIMFACTORY II5 and SIMPROCESS Manual

Congram C and Epelman M (1995) ` How to describe your service an invitation to thestructured analysis and design techniquersquorsquo International Journal of Service IndustryManagement Vol 6 No 2 pp 6-23

Cronin JJ and Taylor SA (1992) `Measuring service quality a reexamination and extensionrsquorsquoJournal of Marketing Vol 56 July pp 55-63

Curtis B Keller MI and Over J (1992) ` Process modelingrsquorsquo Communications of the ACMVol 35 No 9 pp 75-90

Fisk RP Brown SW and Bitner MJ (1993) ` Tracking the evolution of the service marketingliteraturersquorsquo Journal of Retailing Vol 69 No 1 Spring pp 61-103

Galbraith JR (1993) Competing with Flexible Lateral Organizations 2nd ed Addison-WesleyReading MA

Innis DE and LaLonde BJ (1994) ` Customer service the key to customer satisfactioncustomer loyalty and market sharersquorsquo Journal of Business Logistics Vol 15 No 1 pp 1-27

Kim HW (1998) Enhancement of Organizational Performance Using Dynamic Process Modelingand Simulation PhD Dissertation Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology

Kim HW and Kim YG (1997) ` Dynamic process modeling for BPRrsquorsquo Information ampManagement Vol 32 No 1 pp 1-13

Kim YG (1995) `Process modeling for BPR event-process chain approachrsquorsquo Proceedings ofInternational Conference on Information Systems pp 109-21

LaLonde BJ and Zinszer PH (1976) Customer Service Meaning and Measurement NationalCouncil of Physical Distribution Management Chicago IL

Lovelock CH (1996) Service Marketing 3rd ed Prentice-Hall Englewood Cliffs NS

Mackenzie KD (1989) ` The process approach to organizational designrsquorsquo Human SystemsManagement Vol 8 pp 31-43

Parasuraman A Zeithaml VA and Berry LL (1988) ` SERVQUAL a multiple-item scale formeasuring consumer perceptions of service qualityrsquorsquo Journal of Retailing Vol 6 No 1pp 12-40

Quinn RE and Rohrbaugh J (1983) `A spatial model of effectiveness criteria towards acompeting values approaches to organizational analysisrsquorsquo Management Science Vol 29No 3 pp 363-77

Rakowski JP (1981-82) ` The customer service conceptrsquorsquo Review of Business amp EconomicResearch No 2 Winter pp 55-66

Ramaswamy R (1996) Design and Management of Service Process Addison-Wesley PublishingCompany Reading MA

Shostack GL (1984) ` Designing services that deliverrsquorsquo Harvard Business Review January-FebruaryVol 62 pp 133-9

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

153

to increase the internal medicine departmentrsquos work capacity according to thesuggested action guideline (G3 Increase the stationrsquos work capacity) Since thedoctorrsquos consultation work cannot be automated we added two more doctors tothe internal medicine department in the redesigned case 2 Also according tothe guideline (G4 Transfer some of work capacity) in situation 3 we reducedthe number of servers at the reception desk from eight to three without anyprocedural change

Performance measurement results about case 2 and its comparison withcurrent situation are summarized in Table V The throughput time is shortenedfrom 755 minutes to 182 minutes Customerrsquos delay times at each station aresignificantly shorter than the current one Also workload balancing amongthose stations is more even than in case 1 except the reception desk consists ofregistration system servers not employees The throughput is also increasedfrom 182 to 213 From these results we can know that all of the stations belong

Figure 9Changed visit process

case 1

Table IVPerformance

measurement resultsabout current and

case 1

Factor Current case Case 1 Difference

Stationrsquos utilization Reception desk 819 347 plusmn 472IM department 974 988 +14Pharmacy 964 781 plusmn 183Testing room 714 770 plusmn 54

Delay time Reception desk (min) 58 02 plusmn 56IM department (min) 312 474 +162Pharmacy (min) 219 12 plusmn 207Testing room (min) 16 12 plusmn 04

Throughput time Mean time (min) 755 611 plusmn 143Standard deviation 87 56

Throughput Number of consulted patients 182 194 +12

BPMJ72

154

to situation 1 We tested that there is difference between the current case andcase 2 using the null hypothesis test at a = 005

We can compare the results from the organizational performance andcustomer service dimensions From the organizational performanceperspective productivity of throughput and efficiency of throughput time havebeen improved The use of resource with utilization is lower than the currentsituation except the reception desk while those stations in the current situationare overloaded Case 2 however achieved a more even use of resources thanthe current situation across the IM department pharmacy and testingdepartment From the customer service perspective shortened delay times atseveral stations and the dramatically shortened throughput time imply that theresponsiveness of customer service is enhanced in case 2

DiscussionIn addition to the hospital case the method and tool have been applied toseveral real cases such as order processing at a cable-TV home shoppingcompany and project order tracking process at an advertising agency (Kim1998) We can classify customer service processes by the frequency of contactsbetween customer and server-organization low-contact type and high-contacttype Based on the classification we can discuss the applications of theproposed method as in Table VI In the low-contact type customers initiate theserver-organizationrsquos service process and wait for the process output withoutparticipating in it such as customerrsquos order cycle process There is just one waitbetween the start and the end of a service process Since the waiting time takesthe entire throughput time of a service process performed inside the server-organization it is relatively longer than that of the high-contact type Sincecustomers do not participate in the server-organizationrsquos process they can dosomething else during the wait For this reason a time-related goal of this typeis minimizing the waiting time The focus of service process analysis and

Table VComparison betweencurrent and case 2

CriteriaCurrent with

sdCase 2 with

sd DifferenceConfidence

interval

Utilization Recept desk 819 (34) 924 (51) +135 (plusmn 154 plusmn 56)IM dept 974 (21) 659 (62) plusmn 315 (266 365)Pharmacy 964 (23) 795 (43) plusmn 169 (133 205)Test room 714 (68) 784 (67) plusmn 70 (plusmn 115 plusmn 25)

Delay time Recept desk 58 min (13) 09 min(02) plusmn 49 min (43 55)IM Dept 312 min (46) 24 min(07) plusmn 288 min (266 310)Pharmacy 219 min (32) 13 min(04) plusmn 206 min (190 222)Test room 16 min (05) 15 min(05) plusmn 01 min (plusmn 02 04)

Through-put time Mean time 755 min(87) 182 min(21) plusmn 573 min (519 627)Through-put Consulted

patients 182 (51) 213 (63) + 32 (plusmn 347 plusmn 272)

Notes Current gt Case 2 Current = Case 2 Current lt Case 2

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

155

design in this type is the service delivery Therefore a customerrsquos mainconcerns are service process output and waiting time

In the high-contact type there are numerous contact points in this type ofpatientrsquos visit process at a hospital because customers initiate a service processand also participate in it along the process flow While the customerrsquos role inthe low-contact type is the recipient of service process output the customerrsquosrole in the high-contact type is as the participant in performing the serviceprocess For this reason several waits can be created along the process flowwhich take a relatively shorter time when compared to the low-contact typeThe participation characteristic inhibits customers from doing something elseduring not only the wait but also during the entire service process For thisreason a time-related goal of this type is minimizing the throughput time Andthe focus of service process analysis and design is the customer-serverinteraction Therefore customer satisfaction in this type is mainly related to theserverrsquos attitude and the responsiveness-related factors such as throughputtime and delay time (moving and waiting time)

ConclusionIn this research we suggested a service process rationalization methodcomposed of a service process model performance measurement and changeguidelines This research sets forth a way to explicitly link the customer viewto a service process model and yet have the process model be able to supportsimulation Compared to other service process models Dynamic-EPCincorporates not only the customer viewpoint but also reflects fourrepresentation perspectives in it Second the performance simulation resultsprovide a more objective basis for service change decisions which reduce therisk inherent in service process change Third the proposed change guidelinescan be used by practitioners in devising a contingency approach to serviceprocess change projects While some general change principles have beensuggested previously the classified customer service process situations and the

Table VIDiscussion about the

service rationalizationmethod

Low-contact type High-contact type

Contact points At the start and at the endof a service process

Numerous along the processflow

Role of customer Recipient of service processoutput

Participant in the serviceprocess

Frequency of wait One Many waits along the processflow

Waiting time Relatively long Relatively shortNature of wait for customers Can do something else Be captiveTime-related goal Minimize waiting time Minimize throughput timeAnalysisdesign focus Service delivery Customer-server interactionCustomer satisfaction-relatedfactors

Waiting time serviceprocess output

Serverrsquos attitude throughputtime moving and waitingtime

BPMJ72

156

contingent guidelines have advantages in identifying the service situation anddevising situation-specific change alternatives However we need to expandthe performance measurement about customer service from quantitative toqualitative factors

References

CACI Products Company (1993) SIMFACTORY II5 and SIMPROCESS Manual

Congram C and Epelman M (1995) ` How to describe your service an invitation to thestructured analysis and design techniquersquorsquo International Journal of Service IndustryManagement Vol 6 No 2 pp 6-23

Cronin JJ and Taylor SA (1992) `Measuring service quality a reexamination and extensionrsquorsquoJournal of Marketing Vol 56 July pp 55-63

Curtis B Keller MI and Over J (1992) ` Process modelingrsquorsquo Communications of the ACMVol 35 No 9 pp 75-90

Fisk RP Brown SW and Bitner MJ (1993) ` Tracking the evolution of the service marketingliteraturersquorsquo Journal of Retailing Vol 69 No 1 Spring pp 61-103

Galbraith JR (1993) Competing with Flexible Lateral Organizations 2nd ed Addison-WesleyReading MA

Innis DE and LaLonde BJ (1994) ` Customer service the key to customer satisfactioncustomer loyalty and market sharersquorsquo Journal of Business Logistics Vol 15 No 1 pp 1-27

Kim HW (1998) Enhancement of Organizational Performance Using Dynamic Process Modelingand Simulation PhD Dissertation Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology

Kim HW and Kim YG (1997) ` Dynamic process modeling for BPRrsquorsquo Information ampManagement Vol 32 No 1 pp 1-13

Kim YG (1995) `Process modeling for BPR event-process chain approachrsquorsquo Proceedings ofInternational Conference on Information Systems pp 109-21

LaLonde BJ and Zinszer PH (1976) Customer Service Meaning and Measurement NationalCouncil of Physical Distribution Management Chicago IL

Lovelock CH (1996) Service Marketing 3rd ed Prentice-Hall Englewood Cliffs NS

Mackenzie KD (1989) ` The process approach to organizational designrsquorsquo Human SystemsManagement Vol 8 pp 31-43

Parasuraman A Zeithaml VA and Berry LL (1988) ` SERVQUAL a multiple-item scale formeasuring consumer perceptions of service qualityrsquorsquo Journal of Retailing Vol 6 No 1pp 12-40

Quinn RE and Rohrbaugh J (1983) `A spatial model of effectiveness criteria towards acompeting values approaches to organizational analysisrsquorsquo Management Science Vol 29No 3 pp 363-77

Rakowski JP (1981-82) ` The customer service conceptrsquorsquo Review of Business amp EconomicResearch No 2 Winter pp 55-66

Ramaswamy R (1996) Design and Management of Service Process Addison-Wesley PublishingCompany Reading MA

Shostack GL (1984) ` Designing services that deliverrsquorsquo Harvard Business Review January-FebruaryVol 62 pp 133-9

BPMJ72

154

to situation 1 We tested that there is difference between the current case andcase 2 using the null hypothesis test at a = 005

We can compare the results from the organizational performance andcustomer service dimensions From the organizational performanceperspective productivity of throughput and efficiency of throughput time havebeen improved The use of resource with utilization is lower than the currentsituation except the reception desk while those stations in the current situationare overloaded Case 2 however achieved a more even use of resources thanthe current situation across the IM department pharmacy and testingdepartment From the customer service perspective shortened delay times atseveral stations and the dramatically shortened throughput time imply that theresponsiveness of customer service is enhanced in case 2

DiscussionIn addition to the hospital case the method and tool have been applied toseveral real cases such as order processing at a cable-TV home shoppingcompany and project order tracking process at an advertising agency (Kim1998) We can classify customer service processes by the frequency of contactsbetween customer and server-organization low-contact type and high-contacttype Based on the classification we can discuss the applications of theproposed method as in Table VI In the low-contact type customers initiate theserver-organizationrsquos service process and wait for the process output withoutparticipating in it such as customerrsquos order cycle process There is just one waitbetween the start and the end of a service process Since the waiting time takesthe entire throughput time of a service process performed inside the server-organization it is relatively longer than that of the high-contact type Sincecustomers do not participate in the server-organizationrsquos process they can dosomething else during the wait For this reason a time-related goal of this typeis minimizing the waiting time The focus of service process analysis and

Table VComparison betweencurrent and case 2

CriteriaCurrent with

sdCase 2 with

sd DifferenceConfidence

interval

Utilization Recept desk 819 (34) 924 (51) +135 (plusmn 154 plusmn 56)IM dept 974 (21) 659 (62) plusmn 315 (266 365)Pharmacy 964 (23) 795 (43) plusmn 169 (133 205)Test room 714 (68) 784 (67) plusmn 70 (plusmn 115 plusmn 25)

Delay time Recept desk 58 min (13) 09 min(02) plusmn 49 min (43 55)IM Dept 312 min (46) 24 min(07) plusmn 288 min (266 310)Pharmacy 219 min (32) 13 min(04) plusmn 206 min (190 222)Test room 16 min (05) 15 min(05) plusmn 01 min (plusmn 02 04)

Through-put time Mean time 755 min(87) 182 min(21) plusmn 573 min (519 627)Through-put Consulted

patients 182 (51) 213 (63) + 32 (plusmn 347 plusmn 272)

Notes Current gt Case 2 Current = Case 2 Current lt Case 2

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

155

design in this type is the service delivery Therefore a customerrsquos mainconcerns are service process output and waiting time

In the high-contact type there are numerous contact points in this type ofpatientrsquos visit process at a hospital because customers initiate a service processand also participate in it along the process flow While the customerrsquos role inthe low-contact type is the recipient of service process output the customerrsquosrole in the high-contact type is as the participant in performing the serviceprocess For this reason several waits can be created along the process flowwhich take a relatively shorter time when compared to the low-contact typeThe participation characteristic inhibits customers from doing something elseduring not only the wait but also during the entire service process For thisreason a time-related goal of this type is minimizing the throughput time Andthe focus of service process analysis and design is the customer-serverinteraction Therefore customer satisfaction in this type is mainly related to theserverrsquos attitude and the responsiveness-related factors such as throughputtime and delay time (moving and waiting time)

ConclusionIn this research we suggested a service process rationalization methodcomposed of a service process model performance measurement and changeguidelines This research sets forth a way to explicitly link the customer viewto a service process model and yet have the process model be able to supportsimulation Compared to other service process models Dynamic-EPCincorporates not only the customer viewpoint but also reflects fourrepresentation perspectives in it Second the performance simulation resultsprovide a more objective basis for service change decisions which reduce therisk inherent in service process change Third the proposed change guidelinescan be used by practitioners in devising a contingency approach to serviceprocess change projects While some general change principles have beensuggested previously the classified customer service process situations and the

Table VIDiscussion about the

service rationalizationmethod

Low-contact type High-contact type

Contact points At the start and at the endof a service process

Numerous along the processflow

Role of customer Recipient of service processoutput

Participant in the serviceprocess

Frequency of wait One Many waits along the processflow

Waiting time Relatively long Relatively shortNature of wait for customers Can do something else Be captiveTime-related goal Minimize waiting time Minimize throughput timeAnalysisdesign focus Service delivery Customer-server interactionCustomer satisfaction-relatedfactors

Waiting time serviceprocess output

Serverrsquos attitude throughputtime moving and waitingtime

BPMJ72

156

contingent guidelines have advantages in identifying the service situation anddevising situation-specific change alternatives However we need to expandthe performance measurement about customer service from quantitative toqualitative factors

References

CACI Products Company (1993) SIMFACTORY II5 and SIMPROCESS Manual

Congram C and Epelman M (1995) ` How to describe your service an invitation to thestructured analysis and design techniquersquorsquo International Journal of Service IndustryManagement Vol 6 No 2 pp 6-23

Cronin JJ and Taylor SA (1992) `Measuring service quality a reexamination and extensionrsquorsquoJournal of Marketing Vol 56 July pp 55-63

Curtis B Keller MI and Over J (1992) ` Process modelingrsquorsquo Communications of the ACMVol 35 No 9 pp 75-90

Fisk RP Brown SW and Bitner MJ (1993) ` Tracking the evolution of the service marketingliteraturersquorsquo Journal of Retailing Vol 69 No 1 Spring pp 61-103

Galbraith JR (1993) Competing with Flexible Lateral Organizations 2nd ed Addison-WesleyReading MA

Innis DE and LaLonde BJ (1994) ` Customer service the key to customer satisfactioncustomer loyalty and market sharersquorsquo Journal of Business Logistics Vol 15 No 1 pp 1-27

Kim HW (1998) Enhancement of Organizational Performance Using Dynamic Process Modelingand Simulation PhD Dissertation Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology

Kim HW and Kim YG (1997) ` Dynamic process modeling for BPRrsquorsquo Information ampManagement Vol 32 No 1 pp 1-13

Kim YG (1995) `Process modeling for BPR event-process chain approachrsquorsquo Proceedings ofInternational Conference on Information Systems pp 109-21

LaLonde BJ and Zinszer PH (1976) Customer Service Meaning and Measurement NationalCouncil of Physical Distribution Management Chicago IL

Lovelock CH (1996) Service Marketing 3rd ed Prentice-Hall Englewood Cliffs NS

Mackenzie KD (1989) ` The process approach to organizational designrsquorsquo Human SystemsManagement Vol 8 pp 31-43

Parasuraman A Zeithaml VA and Berry LL (1988) ` SERVQUAL a multiple-item scale formeasuring consumer perceptions of service qualityrsquorsquo Journal of Retailing Vol 6 No 1pp 12-40

Quinn RE and Rohrbaugh J (1983) `A spatial model of effectiveness criteria towards acompeting values approaches to organizational analysisrsquorsquo Management Science Vol 29No 3 pp 363-77

Rakowski JP (1981-82) ` The customer service conceptrsquorsquo Review of Business amp EconomicResearch No 2 Winter pp 55-66

Ramaswamy R (1996) Design and Management of Service Process Addison-Wesley PublishingCompany Reading MA

Shostack GL (1984) ` Designing services that deliverrsquorsquo Harvard Business Review January-FebruaryVol 62 pp 133-9

Rationalizing thecustomer service

process

155

design in this type is the service delivery Therefore a customerrsquos mainconcerns are service process output and waiting time

In the high-contact type there are numerous contact points in this type ofpatientrsquos visit process at a hospital because customers initiate a service processand also participate in it along the process flow While the customerrsquos role inthe low-contact type is the recipient of service process output the customerrsquosrole in the high-contact type is as the participant in performing the serviceprocess For this reason several waits can be created along the process flowwhich take a relatively shorter time when compared to the low-contact typeThe participation characteristic inhibits customers from doing something elseduring not only the wait but also during the entire service process For thisreason a time-related goal of this type is minimizing the throughput time Andthe focus of service process analysis and design is the customer-serverinteraction Therefore customer satisfaction in this type is mainly related to theserverrsquos attitude and the responsiveness-related factors such as throughputtime and delay time (moving and waiting time)

ConclusionIn this research we suggested a service process rationalization methodcomposed of a service process model performance measurement and changeguidelines This research sets forth a way to explicitly link the customer viewto a service process model and yet have the process model be able to supportsimulation Compared to other service process models Dynamic-EPCincorporates not only the customer viewpoint but also reflects fourrepresentation perspectives in it Second the performance simulation resultsprovide a more objective basis for service change decisions which reduce therisk inherent in service process change Third the proposed change guidelinescan be used by practitioners in devising a contingency approach to serviceprocess change projects While some general change principles have beensuggested previously the classified customer service process situations and the

Table VIDiscussion about the

service rationalizationmethod

Low-contact type High-contact type

Contact points At the start and at the endof a service process

Numerous along the processflow

Role of customer Recipient of service processoutput

Participant in the serviceprocess

Frequency of wait One Many waits along the processflow

Waiting time Relatively long Relatively shortNature of wait for customers Can do something else Be captiveTime-related goal Minimize waiting time Minimize throughput timeAnalysisdesign focus Service delivery Customer-server interactionCustomer satisfaction-relatedfactors

Waiting time serviceprocess output

Serverrsquos attitude throughputtime moving and waitingtime

BPMJ72

156

contingent guidelines have advantages in identifying the service situation anddevising situation-specific change alternatives However we need to expandthe performance measurement about customer service from quantitative toqualitative factors

References

CACI Products Company (1993) SIMFACTORY II5 and SIMPROCESS Manual

Congram C and Epelman M (1995) ` How to describe your service an invitation to thestructured analysis and design techniquersquorsquo International Journal of Service IndustryManagement Vol 6 No 2 pp 6-23

Cronin JJ and Taylor SA (1992) `Measuring service quality a reexamination and extensionrsquorsquoJournal of Marketing Vol 56 July pp 55-63

Curtis B Keller MI and Over J (1992) ` Process modelingrsquorsquo Communications of the ACMVol 35 No 9 pp 75-90

Fisk RP Brown SW and Bitner MJ (1993) ` Tracking the evolution of the service marketingliteraturersquorsquo Journal of Retailing Vol 69 No 1 Spring pp 61-103

Galbraith JR (1993) Competing with Flexible Lateral Organizations 2nd ed Addison-WesleyReading MA

Innis DE and LaLonde BJ (1994) ` Customer service the key to customer satisfactioncustomer loyalty and market sharersquorsquo Journal of Business Logistics Vol 15 No 1 pp 1-27

Kim HW (1998) Enhancement of Organizational Performance Using Dynamic Process Modelingand Simulation PhD Dissertation Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology

Kim HW and Kim YG (1997) ` Dynamic process modeling for BPRrsquorsquo Information ampManagement Vol 32 No 1 pp 1-13

Kim YG (1995) `Process modeling for BPR event-process chain approachrsquorsquo Proceedings ofInternational Conference on Information Systems pp 109-21

LaLonde BJ and Zinszer PH (1976) Customer Service Meaning and Measurement NationalCouncil of Physical Distribution Management Chicago IL

Lovelock CH (1996) Service Marketing 3rd ed Prentice-Hall Englewood Cliffs NS

Mackenzie KD (1989) ` The process approach to organizational designrsquorsquo Human SystemsManagement Vol 8 pp 31-43

Parasuraman A Zeithaml VA and Berry LL (1988) ` SERVQUAL a multiple-item scale formeasuring consumer perceptions of service qualityrsquorsquo Journal of Retailing Vol 6 No 1pp 12-40

Quinn RE and Rohrbaugh J (1983) `A spatial model of effectiveness criteria towards acompeting values approaches to organizational analysisrsquorsquo Management Science Vol 29No 3 pp 363-77

Rakowski JP (1981-82) ` The customer service conceptrsquorsquo Review of Business amp EconomicResearch No 2 Winter pp 55-66

Ramaswamy R (1996) Design and Management of Service Process Addison-Wesley PublishingCompany Reading MA

Shostack GL (1984) ` Designing services that deliverrsquorsquo Harvard Business Review January-FebruaryVol 62 pp 133-9

BPMJ72

156

contingent guidelines have advantages in identifying the service situation anddevising situation-specific change alternatives However we need to expandthe performance measurement about customer service from quantitative toqualitative factors

References

CACI Products Company (1993) SIMFACTORY II5 and SIMPROCESS Manual

Congram C and Epelman M (1995) ` How to describe your service an invitation to thestructured analysis and design techniquersquorsquo International Journal of Service IndustryManagement Vol 6 No 2 pp 6-23

Cronin JJ and Taylor SA (1992) `Measuring service quality a reexamination and extensionrsquorsquoJournal of Marketing Vol 56 July pp 55-63

Curtis B Keller MI and Over J (1992) ` Process modelingrsquorsquo Communications of the ACMVol 35 No 9 pp 75-90

Fisk RP Brown SW and Bitner MJ (1993) ` Tracking the evolution of the service marketingliteraturersquorsquo Journal of Retailing Vol 69 No 1 Spring pp 61-103

Galbraith JR (1993) Competing with Flexible Lateral Organizations 2nd ed Addison-WesleyReading MA

Innis DE and LaLonde BJ (1994) ` Customer service the key to customer satisfactioncustomer loyalty and market sharersquorsquo Journal of Business Logistics Vol 15 No 1 pp 1-27

Kim HW (1998) Enhancement of Organizational Performance Using Dynamic Process Modelingand Simulation PhD Dissertation Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology

Kim HW and Kim YG (1997) ` Dynamic process modeling for BPRrsquorsquo Information ampManagement Vol 32 No 1 pp 1-13

Kim YG (1995) `Process modeling for BPR event-process chain approachrsquorsquo Proceedings ofInternational Conference on Information Systems pp 109-21

LaLonde BJ and Zinszer PH (1976) Customer Service Meaning and Measurement NationalCouncil of Physical Distribution Management Chicago IL

Lovelock CH (1996) Service Marketing 3rd ed Prentice-Hall Englewood Cliffs NS

Mackenzie KD (1989) ` The process approach to organizational designrsquorsquo Human SystemsManagement Vol 8 pp 31-43

Parasuraman A Zeithaml VA and Berry LL (1988) ` SERVQUAL a multiple-item scale formeasuring consumer perceptions of service qualityrsquorsquo Journal of Retailing Vol 6 No 1pp 12-40

Quinn RE and Rohrbaugh J (1983) `A spatial model of effectiveness criteria towards acompeting values approaches to organizational analysisrsquorsquo Management Science Vol 29No 3 pp 363-77

Rakowski JP (1981-82) ` The customer service conceptrsquorsquo Review of Business amp EconomicResearch No 2 Winter pp 55-66

Ramaswamy R (1996) Design and Management of Service Process Addison-Wesley PublishingCompany Reading MA

Shostack GL (1984) ` Designing services that deliverrsquorsquo Harvard Business Review January-FebruaryVol 62 pp 133-9