Regional Airlines is establishing a new telephone system forhandling flight reservations. During the 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM timeperiod, calls to the reservation agent occur randomly at an averagerate of one call every 3.75 minutes. Historical service time datashow that a reservation agent spends an average of 3 minutes witheach customer. The waiting line model assumptions of Poissonarrivals and exponential service times appear reasonable for thetelephone reservation system.
At a planning meeting, Regional’s management team agreed that anacceptable customer service goal is to answer at least 75% of theincoming calls immediately. During the planning meeting, Regional’svice president of administration pointed out that the data showthat the average service rate for an agent is faster than theaverage arrival rate of the telephone calls. The vice president’sconclusion was that personnel costs could be minimized by using oneagent and that single agent must be able to handle the telephonereservations and still have some idle time. The vice president ofmarketing restated the importance of customer service and expressedsupport for at least two reservation agents.
We already analyzed the single-agent system’s performance accordingto the opinion of vice president of administration. We concludedthat operating the telephone reservation service with only oneticket agent appears unacceptable because they won’t be able tomeet their goal. Answer to the following questions to evaluate theopinion of vice president of marketing:

1. What is the service rate for the 2-agent system? Interpret thenumber.





2. What percentage of time both agents are idle?





3. What percentage of time a caller will be blocked if the systemdesign does not allow callers to wait?



4. What percentage of time only one ticket agent is busy?