15:10 Jan 20 

Thanks to everyone for their assistance on this.
I can't really select one of the answers as being the most helpful because I have in just been informed that my client uses a fixed term for this, namely "customer throughput". This was my original translation before I posted my question. I asked for your advice because I have never personally come across this collocation. I am not personally happy with the phrase, but that's how the German company wants it in English. Thanks again to all for taking the time to respond to my post. You suggestions will certainly be useful to me in future in other contexts. Kind regards, Ian

12:05 Jan 19 

This would reflect the order for a car repair being a part of workflow and consisting of more than only one step.

11:52 Jan 19 

I think the solution has something to do with queues and acceptable waiting times. Each process of serviceing a car and the interaction with customers consists of several steps:
Accepting the car and taking the original order, communication with the repair´s shop staff what is to do, the mechanics find additional work, communicate it to the service employee contacting/phoning the customer, he allows/disallows the work, mechanics find more work to do.
And so on.
So in each step a communication between (1) customer and service employee and (2) mechanics and service employee is necessary.

In order to reduce inproductive waiting times for the mechanics the maximum number of repairs which can be handled at the same time may be limited to 15.
So 1-15 orders per day (at one branch) require 1 service employee/customer relationship manager, 16-30 require 2 and so on.

That would be my thought. Have no clue about the "durchgänge" but may others bringt light and solutions. Maybe I will find a term myself.

11:24 Jan 19 

Don't worry, I know the feeling - sometimes it takes a bit for a message to appear on the screen. But it's interesting that we have the same idea despite the somewhat unclear original. :-)

10:54 Jan 19 

Sorry, Brigitte - you must have posted this as I was typing! Sounds like we were thinking along the same lines.

10:53 Jan 19 

was that every fifteenth customer processed entitles them to 1 additional qualified service consultant, but when I take my car in for a service it comes back with each process broken down as a number of units, so I wonder whether it is not per customer but per unit

10:51 Jan 19 

Just an idea

10:07 Jan 19 

Yes, the correct word is "KundendurchGänge". Unfortunately there is very little context. The phrase is a heading in a matrix. The column to the left is headed "Serviceberatung" und contains a list of various parts of a car which can be serviced or repaired, i.e., air conditioning, chassis, paintwork, power drive etc. The subheading under "Pro angefangene 15 Kundendurchgänge" is "1 geprüfter Serviceberater". The columns for the car parts contains a number between 1 und 3. The number of "Kundendurchgänge" in the matrix is either < 15, 15-40 or > 40. Hope this helps.

09:55 Jan 19 

It, whatever it is, is measured not by each and every customer but is triggered by every 15th customer the member of staff begins to deal with. More context would definitely help.

09:54 Jan 19 

Context is missing. How about at least one original sentence? And could you please spell the essential word correctly - "Kundendurchänge" is not a German word, I guess you mean "KundendurchGänge".

09:40 Jan 19 

would be helpful. Does the member of staff maybe get some sort of bonus or have to perform some task each time he or she has served at least fifteen customers? If there's some sort of bonus involved, it would make sense in this context: then they'd get it twice as soon as they served a sixteenth customer. But whatever it is, it's not, in my opinion, for each and every customer.