Quantitative fairness for assessing perceived service quality in queues

Perceived service quality is eminent for service quality assessment from the customer perspective. As a major aspect of any service facility, customers expect a fair treatment. If human customers are involved in service operations, fairness significantly influences the perceived service quality and becomes crucial for customer satisfaction. Consequently, quantifying fairness in order to evaluate the degree of perceived fairness should be an integral part of service quality assessment. We consider quantitative fairness in the context of queueing systems and propose the discrimination frequency as an appropriate concept embedded in general service quality research. Proper formalization provides an extensible and flexible mathematical framework for assessing perceived service quality and customer satisfaction in queues with regard to the scheduling policy operated by the service provider.