In queuing theory, enhancing the service time—the duration it takes to serve a customer or process a request—can have a remarkably significant and often disproportionate impact on the overall response time. While it may seem intuitive that faster service leads to shorter waits, the mathematical principles of queuing theory reveal a non-linear relationship, meaning a small improvement in service speed can yield a much larger reduction in total time spent in the system, especially as the system becomes busier.
The response time is the total time a customer or request spends in a system, from arrival to departure. It is the sum of the waiting time (time spent in the queue) and the service time itself. The effectiveness of improving service time is most clearly understood through its effect on system utilization.