Why Waiting Less Might Mean Doing Less: The Surprising Power of ‘Strategic Idling’
Why It Matters
Long waits frustrate customers, but speeding everything up is not always the answer. Sometimes, slowing parts of a service process can improve the overall experience.
Key Takeaways
Deliberately pausing earlier service stages can reduce long waits later
Traditional scheduling often shifts delays downstream, worsening customer experience
Smart scheduling combined with strategic idling can balance wait times and improve satisfaction
The Hidden Problem with Appointment Systems
Many services, from healthcare clinics to government counters, rely on appointment systems where customers move through several stages, such as registration, consultation and payment. These are known as sequential service systems.
Most scheduling methods focus on efficiency: minimising total waiting time and staff overtime. However, this approach overlooks a simple reality: it matters not just how long people wait, but when in the process the wait happens.
Research shows that delays tend to accumulate at later stages. Even when the total waiting time is reasonable, customers often encounter long queues at the final step. This can lead to greater frustration because people’s perception of waiting follows a threshold effect---once waiting time exceeds a certain limit, dissatisfaction increases sharply. Concentrating delays at the later stages therefore tends to feel worse than distributing the waiting time more evenly across multiple stages.
In addition, service times are unpredictable and often influence one another. For example, a complex case may take longer at every stage. Traditional models struggle to capture such correlations among uncertain service times.
A Counterintuitive Fix: Strategic Idling
To tackle this imbalance, researchers have proposed a simple but counterintuitive idea: strategic idling.
Instead of working continuously whenever customers are waiting, earlier service points deliberately pause at certain times. This controlled slowdown prevents too many customers from reaching later stages all at once, easing congestion downstream.
In essence, the system reallocates waiting time across different stages. Customers might experience slightly longer waits early on, but this prevents excessive delays at the end, resulting in a more balanced overall experience. Surprisingly, the researchers also noted that under certain conditions, it is possible to achieve a slight balance of waiting times without any additional worst-case cost.
Unlike reactive approaches that adjust in real time, this method plans pauses in advance. That makes it easier to implement in practice, allowing staff to use idle periods productively, like catching up on administrative work or taking breaks.
Smarter Scheduling Under Uncertainty
The study combines scheduling with strategic idling using a robust planning approach that accounts for correlated uncertainty in service times. Instead of relying on precise forecasts, it prepares for a range of possible scenarios.
Several insights emerge:
First, traditional schedules tend to follow a “dome-shaped” pattern, where appointments are spaced more widely in the middle of the day to absorb variability. This remains effective in multi-stage systems, especially when demand is high across several service points.
Second, strategic idling works is most effective when workloads are uneven. When later stages are more congested, introducing pauses earlier can significantly reduce bottlenecks.
Third, understanding how service times are linked improves performance. For instance, if longer service at one stage usually means longer service later, the system can adjust more effectively. In some cases, these natural patterns even help reduce congestion without intervention.
A real-world case study using clinic data shows that combining scheduling with strategic idling not only balances waiting times but can also reduce total waiting in certain scenarios, albeit sometimes at the cost of slightly longer staff overtime.
Business Implications
This research challenges a deeply held assumption: that maximising utilisation is always the best way to run a service operation.
For managers, the message is clear, that fairness and experience matter as much as efficiency. Customers are more sensitive to uneven waiting than to slightly longer but evenly distributed delays.
Strategic idling offers a practical tool to improve service quality without major structural changes. It is particularly relevant for healthcare providers, call centres and public services where customers move through multiple stages.
The approach also highlights the importance of planning for uncertainty rather than relying on precise forecasts. By preparing for variability and recognising how different parts of a system interact, organisations can deliver smoother and more predictable experiences.
Ultimately, doing less at the right time can lead to better outcomes for both customers and service providers.
Authors and sources
Authors: You Hui Goh, Zihao Li, Zhenzhen Yan
Original article: Strategic Idling in Appointment Systems with Sequential Servers
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