From the customer to the firm: evaluating generic service process designs for incoming customer requests

Authors:
Michael Zapf
Affiliations:
Ottmannsreuth 23, D-95473 Creussen, Germany and Department of Information Systems 1, University of Mannheim, Schloss, D-68131 Mannheim, Germany
Venue:
Computers in Industry
Year:
2004

Citing 8
Cited 1

Commonalities in reengineered business processes: models and issues

Management Science
A tutorial on validation and verification of simulation models

WSC '88 Proceedings of the 20th conference on Winter simulation
Workflow redesign through consolidation in information-intensive business processes

ICIS '97 Proceedings of the eighteenth international conference on Information systems
Re-engineering knock-out processes

Decision Support Systems
Discrete System Simulation

Discrete System Simulation
Simulation with Arena

Simulation with Arena
Tools for Inventing Organizations: Toward a Handbook of Organizational Processes

Management Science
A model management approach to business process reengineering

Journal of Management Information Systems

A redesign framework for call centers

BPM'06 Proceedings of the 4th international conference on Business Process Management

Quantified Score

Hi-index	0.00

Visualization

Abstract

In this paper, generic service process designs are presented for handling customer requests within a communication center. The process characteristics which are relevant in this domain are the level of difficulty (standard versus special requests) and the communication channel (synchronous versus a-synchronous requests). The design dimensions are task allocation to generalists and specialists, front-office and back-office role and degree of integration of synchronous and a-synchronous requests. The process designs are evaluated within an experimental simulation study with empirical data from a car rental company. The analysis shows strengths and weaknesses of the process designs under different conditions. Based on these results a model of competing effects is developed which helps to understand the complex dependencies within service process designs.