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Computing, Information Systems, Development Informatics & Allied Research Journal
ISBN 978-2257-44-7 (Print) ISSN 2167-1710 (online)
Vol. 5 No. 1. March, 2014 – www.cisdijournal.net

BANKING QUEUE SYSTEM IN NIGERIA

1*
J.C. Odirichukwu
Department of Computer Science
Federal University of Technology
Owerri, Imo State
chiomajaco@yahoo.com

Tonye Lekara
Department of Computer Science
Federal University of Technology
Owerri, Imo State
Tonye4u2001@yahoo.com

J.N. Odii
Department of Computer Science
Federal University of Technology
Owerri, Imo State
jnodii@yahoo.com

* Correspondence Author

ABSTRACT
Queuing in Nigerian bank is an approach that involves lining up of customers in bank hall in order to be served by
bank personnel at each terminal (server). At any point in service time, customers usually move to the desk for one
enquiries or the other. This and other obstructions result to much delay in customers waiting time. It now becomes
one of the challenges for banks, to be able to manage the time spent by customers in the banking hall to remain
competitive. The aim of this research is to minimize waiting time in queue by proper queue management and
thereby maximizing throughput. We developed a web based application that assigns each customer queue number
on arrival based on touching the screen and the queue number are stored electronically. First in First out Queue
Method is implemented in the design to achieve an orderly service delivery, also customer who have successful
gotten the queue number are attended to first based on FIFO-Queue Model already programmed, After a
successfully daily operation in the bank, performance measure can be display. The proposed system when
implemented will minimize the problems of congestion, and better service will be achieved. This research uncovered
the applicability and extent of usage of queuing models in achieving customer satisfaction at the lowest cost.

Keyword: Queue, Fifo, Bank, Customer, Operation

1. INTRODUCTION TO QUEUE SYSTEM

Every relationship is a game and banker-customer relationship is not an exception. The corporate objective of any
bank which is maximization of shareholders’ wealth can only be achieved if customers are retained and satisfied.
This is in line with Philip Kotler’s (1999) perception that the key to successful marketing of financial services is
identification and packaging of customers’ needs to their satisfaction. The competition in Nigerian banking sector is
getting more intense, partly due to regulatory imperatives of universal banking and also due to customers’ awareness
of their rights. Bank customers have become increasingly demanding, as they require high quality, low priced and
immediate service delivery. They want additional improvement of value from their chosen banks (Olaniyi, 2004).

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 www.iiste.org
Computing, Information Systems, Development Informatics & Allied Research Journal
ISBN 978-2257-44-7 (Print) ISSN 2167-1710 (online)
Vol. 5 No. 1. March, 2014 – www.cisdijournal.net

Service delivery in banks is personal, customers are either served immediately or join a queue (waiting line) if the
system is busy. A queue occurs where facilities are limited and cannot satisfy demand made against them at a
particular period. However, most customers are not comfortable with waiting or queuing (Olaniyi, 2004). The
danger of keeping customers in a queue is that their waiting time may amount to or could become a cost to them (i.e.
bank customers). According to Elegalam (1978), customers are prepared not to spend more cost of waiting /
queuing. The time wasted on the queue would have been judiciously utilized elsewhere (the opportunity cost of time
spent in queuing). This researcher has then gone ahead to design a solution which when implemented will minimize
the problems of congestion. This work covers the FIFO-Queue method to optimization queues in bank.

1.1 Review of Queue in Nigeria

In Nigeria, a study conducted by Olaniyi (2004) revealed a positive correlation between arrival rates of customers
and bank’s service rates. He concluded that the potential utilization of the banks service facility was 3.18% efficient
and idle 68.2% of the time. However, Ashley (2000) asserted that even if service system can provide service at a
faster rate than customers arrival rate, waiting lines can still form if the arrival and service processes are random.

One week survey conducted by Elegalam (1978) revealed that 59.2% of the 390 persons making withdrawals from
their accounts spent between 30 to 60 minutes while 7% spent between 90 and 120 minutes. Baale (1996) while
paraphrasing Alamatu and Ariyo (1983) observed that the mean time spent was 53 minutes but customers prefer to
spend a maximum of 20 minutes. Their study revealed worse service delays in urban centres (average of 64.32
minutes) compared to (average of 22.2 minutes) in rural areas. To buttress these observations, Juwah (1986) found
out that customers spend between 55.27 to 64.56 minutes making withdrawal from their accounts. Efforts in this
study are directed towards application of queuing models in capacity planning to reduce customer waiting time and
total operating costs.

2. NEED FOR A PROPOSED QUEUEING SYSTEM

Against all the drawbacks observed in banking queue, it is pertinent that the new Queue System will be able to
eliminate the shortcomings. The new system will be designed in such a way that it will among others:
Increase efficiency and reliability of stored information.
Produce accurate data and information for report generation.
Produce neater work and achieve controlled & restricted access to the central database.
Production of performance measure
effective timing and orderliness in queue traffic based on FIFO

In this new proposed system, when a customer comes into the banking hall, a queue Number is given to the customer
base on touching the screen and the queue number are stored electronically,, also Customer who have successful
gotten the queue number are attended to first based on FIFO-Queue Model already programmed, After a successfully
daily operation in the bank, performance measure can be display.

2.1 Overview of the New System

For a clearer view of what the database looks like, there will be a display that will contain records of customers queue
entering.
This system holds the solution to all the problems encountered in the present system:
Data will be more secure, since you must process the administrator password before you can use the
program.
Efficiency and reliability of the data is increased and data redundancy is reduced.

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 www.iiste.org
Computing, Information Systems, Development Informatics & Allied Research Journal
ISBN 978-2257-44-7 (Print) ISSN 2167-1710 (online)
Vol. 5 No. 1. March, 2014 – www.cisdijournal.net

2.2 Algorithm for Proposed Queue System

In the course of investigation and data collection, the modus operand of Queue records was learnt. In designing the
new system, easy interactive users interface was design to make it easy for users to access. The designing of the new
system was arranged as follows.

SAVINGS WEB FORM:

• Queue Number
• Date In
• Time In
• Process
CURRENT WEB FORM:
• Queue Number
• Date In
• Time In Start
• Process
FIXED DEPOSITE WEB FORM:
• Queue Number
Index
• Date In
• Time In
• Process
Customer

Savings Page Current Page Fixed Page

bankqueuedb Login Page no Decision

Auth Class Admin Page yes

Next Savings Next Current Fixed Current

Performance
Measure

End

2.3 Flowchart for the Proposed System

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 www.iiste.org
Computing, Information Systems, Development Informatics & Allied Research Journal
ISBN 978-2257-44-7 (Print) ISSN 2167-1710 (online)
Vol. 5 No. 1. March, 2014 – www.cisdijournal.net

3. DISCUSSION/ANALYSIS

Research service management experts believe that customer service is one of the most important issues. Customer is
characterized by random arrival, and called for an immediate access to services, if the customer arrives, all the
service capabilities are already being used, then the customer need to wait patiently in queues.
Customers waiting in line to receive services in any one service system are inevitable. Bank Queue management has
been facing a huge challenge. Nature cannot be avoided because of the queue for a long time on the queue has been
a lot of theoretical research, and the result of domestic banks queuing problem is very serious, this research on the
commercial banks is aim in improving customer satisfaction research in commercial banking services analysis and
management.

3.1 Queuing Theory

Queuing theory which is a branch of operations research, also known as stochastic service system theory or wait for
the line theory, is use to study the object of a service request generated by the randomness of customer arrivals and
services rate. There are several performance metrics of queuing theory put together for these research purpose such
as,
The average queue length Lq of customers in the system,
The average waiting time Wq of customers in the system,
The average length of stay Ws in system,
The average number of customers L.

And other several commonly used quantitative indicators such as:

Average arrival rate;
The average service rate;
The average service time;

X / Y / Z / A / B / C. X refers to the distribution of interval between successive arrival; Y refers to the distribution of
service time; Z refers to the number of help desk; A refers to system capacity limitations; B refers to the number of
clients source; C means the service rules.
Banking customer service system is arranged in parallel multi-server system, but is now common practice for banks
to use the window because of automatic calling system; all the same service needs of customers came in to the same
queue. In order to facilitate analysis of issues, can be multi-server as a whole. Then the queuing system is suitable
for single-queue queue model. Below is individual sub-system as regards to customers queuing for service.

Arrival process:
How customers arrive
How the arrivals are distributed in time

Service mechanism:
A description of the resources needed for service to begin
How long the service will take (the service time distribution)
The number of servers available
Whether the servers are in series (each server has a separate queue) or not
Changing the queue discipline (the rule by which we select the next customer to be served) can often reduce
congestion. Often the queues discipline "choose the customer who comes first.

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 www.iiste.org
Computing, Information Systems, Development Informatics & Allied Research Journal
ISBN 978-2257-44-7 (Print) ISSN 2167-1710 (online)
Vol. 5 No. 1. March, 2014 – www.cisdijournal.net

3.2 Queuing System Characteristics

Queuing system characteristics are summarized in the tables 3.1 below:

Tables 3.1
CHARACTERISTIC SUB-TYPE DESCRIPTION
Population Finite Arrivals are unrestricted and can exceed system
capacity at any time
Servers Finite Banking staff numbers are limited some times less
than service capacity
Arrival Pattern Number Poisson Distribution
Service Pattern Time/Rate Average time for attending to a customer
Queue Discipline FIFO First Come First Served

3.3 Queuing System Notations

As queuing theory is a mathematical theory there are several mathematical notations used in it. Few of the basic
notations used in this research queuing model calculations are enumerated in the table 3.2 below.

Table 3.2
NOTATION DESCRIPTION
λ Arrival Rate
µ Service Rate
Lq Average number of customers waiting for service
L Average number of customers in the system (waiting or being served)
Wq Average time customers wait in queue
Ws Average time customers spend in the system
ρ System Utilization

In this research we choose 3 servers as bank attendant who will serve customer on arrival in the banking hall. From
analysis of this research it is shown that on an average, every ½ minutes a new customer approaches the desk
(counter) on busy hour between 9:30am to 10:45am and based on 8 hours banking working hour. Suppose we use a
Poisson arrival distribution at a mean rate of lambda = 0.5 customer per minute (i.e. on average one customer appear
every 1 / lambda = 1/0.5 = 2 minute) and service time distribution, with a mean service rate of 4 customer per
minute. Using Simple M/M Queue System for a single server the following were obtained.
Inputs:

Service rate: µ = 4 customers / minute

Arrival rate: λ = 0.5 customers /minute

Number of server = 1
Using the M/M/1 model, we get the following results:
λ
0 .5
Average Server Utilization ( ρ ) = =
= 0.125 (1)
µ
4
ρ2 0.016
Average Number in the Queue (Lq) = = 0.0182 (2)
(1 − ρ ) 0.875
ρ 0.125
Average Number in the System (L) = = 0.143 (3)
(1 − ρ ) 0.875

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 www.iiste.org
Computing, Information Systems, Development Informatics & Allied Research Journal
ISBN 978-2257-44-7 (Print) ISSN 2167-1710 (online)
Vol. 5 No. 1. March, 2014 – www.cisdijournal.net

ρ 0.125
Average Time in the Queue (Wq) = = 0.0357 = 60*0.0357 = 2.142 min (4)
µ (1 − ρ ) 4 * 0.875
L 0.143
Average Time in the System (Ws) = = = 0.286 (5)
λ 0 .5
λ
For more than one Server, Average Server Utilization ( ρ ) = Where n (1, 2, 3…n (servers)) (6)
nµ

Table 3.3 below is the summary of the above solution

Table 3.3
S/N DESCRIPTION RESULT VALUE TIME(PER MIN)

1 Average Server Utilization 0.125 -

2 Average Number in the Queue 0.0182 -
3 Average Number in the System 0.143 -

4 Average Time in the Queue 0.0357 2.142

5 Average Time in the System (Ws) 0.286 17.16

4. INTERPRETATION OF RESULTS

The results shows that the capacity utilization is 12.5%, average number of people waiting in queue is 0.0182,
average number of people in the system at a point in time is 0.143, average waiting time in queue is 2.42 minutes
and average time in system is 1 hour and the arrival pattern has been Poisson distribution. This shows that the queue
and waiting times are less and would probably result in gain of business, increase satisfaction of the customer and
reduction of employee workload.

4.1 Limitations of Queuing Models

Queuing models have several limitations and are used in conjunction with the other decision analysis methods like
simulation and regression. Most of these limitations are the basic assumptions for application of queuing models.
Some of the limitations of queuing models are enumerated below:
Takes average of all variables rather than the real numbers itself
Assumes steady state
Based on assumption that service time is known
Service times are independent from one another
Service rate is known
Service rate is greater than arrival rate
Arrivals are served on first come first serve basis
Service times are described by the negative exponential probability distribution

4.2 Process Description For New System

Against the entire drawback observed in the manual process of recording of customers queue in the bank, it is
pertinent that the new system will be able to eliminate the shortcomings. The new system has been designed in such
a way that it will among others:
Increase efficiency and reliability of store information.
Produce accurate data and information for report generation.
Produce neater work and to achieve reliable access to resource.

100
 www.iiste.org
Computing, Information Systems, Development Informatics & Allied Research Journal
ISBN 978-2257-44-7 (Print) ISSN 2167-1710 (online)
Vol. 5 No. 1. March, 2014 – www.cisdijournal.net

4.3 Input Design

Input data information resources have been put together into the new system as a web application forms, processing
inputs will take the user to click/ touch a button he/she needs, various Forms has been organized and line together
for easy access around different resources, input design has been made in such away that response from user on any
button will process the request and give an instant result displaying them in the same web form. . Below are inputs
considered during system analysis:
Queue Number
Date In
Time In
Process

4.4 Output Design

This is the resultant respond from the user, which display the result required by the user organized in a predefined
format in order not to confuse users, but to provide the user with good and reliable result requested. Several
resources have been saved and organized in the new system for easy retrieval. These resources are as follows
Performance Measures
Automatic Graph Plotter

4.5 Overall System Implementation of Queue System

Queuing system is a complete easy menu driven application, such that the user is required to select any menu of
choice to get along with the application

Figure 4.1 below shows how the main interface of Queuing system is been implemented

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Computing, Information Systems, Development Informatics & Allied Research Journal
ISBN 978-2257-44-7 (Print) ISSN 2167-1710 (online)
Vol. 5 No. 1. March, 2014 – www.cisdijournal.net

Figure 4.2 shows the implementation of Queue Number collection Form

Figure 4.3 shows the implementation of Staff Attending to customers

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Computing, Information Systems, Development Informatics & Allied Research Journal
ISBN 978-2257-44-7 (Print) ISSN 2167-1710 (online)
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Figure 4.4 shows the implementation of Performance measure

Figure 4.5 shows the implementation of login Form

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Computing, Information Systems, Development Informatics & Allied Research Journal
ISBN 978-2257-44-7 (Print) ISSN 2167-1710 (online)
Vol. 5 No. 1. March, 2014 – www.cisdijournal.net

Figure 4.6 shows the implementation of the Admin Form

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Computing, Information Systems, Development Informatics & Allied Research Journal
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5. CONCLUSION
This research uncovered the applicability and extent of usage of queuing models in achieving customer satisfaction
at the lowest cost. Customers are unhappy due to delay in service delivery while in bank. A single server is not
effective when arrival rate exceeds service rate. The use of three server system and attending to only customers with
queue number eliminates waiting.

5.1 Recommendations

The following recommendations are suggested for efficiency improvement and quality of service to customers’
banks:

Adoption of three-server model to reduce total expected costs.

The management should educate their operation managers and other staff on the application of queuing
models to operational problems.

It should trust its employees, empower them, enrich their jobs by making them multi-skilled through
continuous training to enable them eliminate unnecessary counter-check handoffs while allowing them to
complete many processes in the front line.

The queue characteristics should be viewed from the stand point of customers as to whether the waiting
time is reasonable and acceptable by making queue discipline fair and varying the number of service
channels according to queue circumstances.

Reengineering the banking operations through IT solutions e.g. voicemail and online withdrawal system to
complement queuing model.

Making customers comfortable and unaware of the waiting time by providing electronic notice boards or
TV in the waiting room as well as comfortable seats, cooling and toilet facilities and;

Improvement of staff-customers relationship and provision of unlabelled paper bags for carrying
customers’ money.

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Computing, Information Systems, Development Informatics & Allied Research Journal
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