Introduction to operations research, 4th ed.
Introduction to operations research, 4th ed.
Modeling the IRS taxpayer information system
Operations Research
Simulation with Arena
Designing a Call Center with Impatient Customers
Manufacturing & Service Operations Management
Commissioned Paper: Telephone Call Centers: Tutorial, Review, and Research Prospects
Manufacturing & Service Operations Management
A Method for Staffing Large Call Centers Based on Stochastic Fluid Models
Manufacturing & Service Operations Management
A Staffing Algorithm for Call Centers with Skill-Based Routing
Manufacturing & Service Operations Management
Computers and Industrial Engineering
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This paper develops a flexible and tractable scheduling methodology that produces near-optimal call center agent schedules while taking into account the costs associated with customer waiting time, customer abandonment, and call center agents. Our methodology combines integer programming (to find a desirable staffing plan for a given total number of agents) and simulation modeling (to evaluate the weekly costs of a given staffing plan). We describe the advantages of this approach over the traditional scheduling method, and test both methods by building schedules based on actual demand and shift data from an actual call center operated by Expedia.com under a variety of cost scenarios. The new scheduling approach not only out-performs the traditional staffing approach in all scenarios examined, it reduces total weekly costs of the call center's existing agent schedule by 8--25%, depending on the scenario.