A dynamic programming based optimization approach for appointment scheduling in banking

In banking where customers are served from various channels, branch is still one of the most preferred service channels as a face to face communication channel. Key performance indicator of branch services is to minimize waiting times so that customers are served in a timely fashion. With the advances in digitalization capabilities, reservation ticketing systems for branches has become much more disseminated. Remote queuematic tickets taken from digital channels has been evaluated to be a valuable opportunity for optimizing resource and capacity plan of branches and diminishing service times, hence a research and development study has been initiated. This paper describes our novel dynamic programming algorithm approach, which is branch density and customer priority sensitive, aims to balance number of customers each branch serves within a particular region and minimize waiting times of customers. Proposed approach links this problem in banking domain to assortment optimization and appointment scheduling problems in the literature and solves an optimization problem that maximizes the added value for bank at branches.