We analyse the efficiency of the branches of a local bank in Cologne, Germany, using a novel two-stage Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approach. Traditional DEA studies frequently found that most branches of a bank were efficient, which led researchers to conclude that banks are usually "well...

In this paper, we analyze the performance of call centers of financial service providers with two levels of support and a time-dependent overflow mechanism. Waiting calls from the front-office queue flow over to the back office, if a waiting-time limit is reached and at least one back-office...