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Activity Number:
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432
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Type:
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Contributed
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Date/Time:
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Wednesday, August 5, 2009 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
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Sponsor:
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IMS
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| Abstract - #305537 |
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Title:
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Workload Forecasting for a Call Center: Methodology and a Case Study
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Author(s):
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Sivan Aldor-Noiman*+ and Paul D. Feigin and Avishai Mandelbaum
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Companies:
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The Wharton School and Technion--Israel Institute of Technology and Technion--Israel Institute of Technology
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Address:
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400 Jon M. Huntsman Hall, Philadelphia, PA, 19104.6340,
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Keywords:
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Call Centers ; QED regime ; square-root staffing ; forecasting arrival count ; mixed Poisson process ; exogenous variables
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Abstract:
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One of the most common operational decisions in a call center is determining the weekly staffing levels to ensure customer satisfaction and meeting their needs while minimizing service costs. An initial step for producing the weekly schedule is forecasting the future system loads which involves predicting both arrival counts and average service times. We introduce an arrival count model which is based on a mixed Poisson process approach. The model is applied to data from an Israeli telecom company call center. The model incorporates the effect of billing on the arrival process. After obtaining the forecasted system load a manager can choose to apply the Quality-Efficiency Driven (QED) "square-root staffing" rule. We develop goodness-of-fit criteria that help determine our model's practical performance under the QED regime. These show the model can reach desired precision levels.
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