Separable routing: a scheme for state-dependent routing of circuit switched telephone traffic
Annals of Operations Research - Special issue on stochastic modeling of telecommunication systems
Markov Decision Processes: Discrete Stochastic Dynamic Programming
Markov Decision Processes: Discrete Stochastic Dynamic Programming
Neuro-Dynamic Programming
On the value function of a priority queue with an application to a controlled polling model
Queueing Systems: Theory and Applications
A Call-Routing Problem with Service-Level Constraints
Operations Research
Commissioned Paper: Telephone Call Centers: Tutorial, Review, and Research Prospects
Manufacturing & Service Operations Management
Approximating multi-skill blocking systems by hyperexponential decomposition
Performance Evaluation
A Staffing Algorithm for Call Centers with Skill-Based Routing
Manufacturing & Service Operations Management
Service-Level Differentiation in Call Centers with Fully Flexible Servers
Management Science
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We consider the problem of routing calls dynamically in a multiskill call center. Calls from different skill classes are offered to the call center according to a Poisson process. The agents in the center are grouped according to their heterogeneous skill sets that determine the classes of calls they can serve. Each agent group serves calls with independent exponentially distributed service times. We consider two scenarios. The first scenario deals with a call center with no buffers in the system, so that every arriving call either has to be routed immediately or has to be blocked and is lost. The objective in the system is to minimize the average number of blocked calls. The second scenario deals with call centers consisting of only agents that have one skill and fully cross-trained agents, where calls are pooled in common queues. The objective in this system is to minimize the average number of calls in the system. We obtain nearly optimal dynamic routing policies that are scalable with the problem instance and can be computed online. The algorithm is based on one-step policy improvement using the relative value functions of simpler queuing systems. Numerical experiments demonstrate the good performance of the routing policies. Finally, we discuss how the algorithm can be used to handle more general cases with the techniques described in this article.