Patent ID: 7778937
Filing Date: 2010-08-17
Classification: G06Q

Abstract:
1. An automated method for managing personal service transactions, comprising: continuously collecting and storing current service information in real-time with regard to service transactions provided to customers at a service establishment, processing the current service information to determine a current service throughput data for each unit time period in a given day and storing current service throughput data; processing the stored current service throughput data collected over a period of days, months and years to determine historical service throughput data; and in response to a customer request to obtain a service, providing the customer with an estimate of a waiting time for obtaining access to the service based on the customer's position in a waiting list queue, wherein providing an estimate of the waiting time comprises estimating a first waiting time using the stored current service throughput data for a previous unit time period, estimating a second waiting time based on the stored historical service throughput data and estimating the waiting time based on a weighted percentage of the first and second estimated waiting time values, wherein the estimated first waiting time is computed by employing the relation TA wherein said automated method is implemented in and executed by a computing device employing at least one storage device.