Analysis of ticket queues with reneging customers

In this paper we analyse queues in which customer waiting positions are represented by ticket numbers. The customers at any time can observe the number being served and may leave the queue without obtaining the service (reneging). Assuming the customers’ tendency to renege depends dynamically on the difference between their ticket number and the number being served, we develop an approximation procedure in order to calculate the percentage of reneging customers. We give a detailed exposition of the analysis for the case of single‐server system and provide a highlight of extension to multi‐server systems. As an application of the approximating procedure, we also illustrate numerically that, under a hypothetical reneging behaviour, offering customers extra information on the actual queue length can reduce the customer reneging percentage by as much as 65%.