Staffing many-server queues with impatient customers: Constraint satisfaction in call centers

Operations Research

Volumn 57, Issue 5, 2009, Pages 1189-1205

  Mandelbaum, Avishai ^a   Zeltyn, Sergey ^b  

^a TECHNION ISRAEL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY   (Israel)

^b IBM HAIFA RESEARCH LAB   (Israel)

Author keywords

Abandonment; Call centers; Ed+qed; Halfin whitt (qed); Limit theorems; Optimization; Queues; Staffing; Workforce management

Indexed keywords

ABANDONMENT; CALL CENTERS; ED+QED; HALFIN-WHITT (QED); LIMIT THEOREMS; QUEUES; STAFFING; WORKFORCE MANAGEMENT;

COSTS; ENTERPRISE RESOURCE MANAGEMENT; OPTIMIZATION; PERSONNEL SELECTION; PROBABILITY; QUEUEING THEORY; SERVERS; STEELMAKING;

ASYMPTOTIC ANALYSIS;

EID: 65349176278     PISSN: 0030364X     EISSN: 15265463     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1287/opre.1080.0651     Document Type: Article

References (44)

1. Armony, M., E. Plambeck, S. Seshadri. 2009. Sensitivity of optimal capacity to customer impatience in an unobservable M/M/S queue (Why You Shouldn't Shout at the DMV). Manufacturing Service Oper . Management 11(1) 19-32.
2. Baccelli, F., G. Hebuterne. 1981. On queues with impatient customers. F. J. Kylstra, ed. Performance '81. North-Holland Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 159-179.
3. Baron, O., J. Milner. 2009. Staffing to maximize profit for call centers with alternate service-level agreements. Oper. Res. 57(3) 685-700.
4. Bassamboo, A., J. M. Harrison, A. Zeevi. 2005. Dynamic routing and admission control in high-volume service systems: Asymptotic analysis via multi-scaled fluid limits. Queueing Systems- Theory Appl. 51 249-285.
5. Bassamboo, A., J. M. Harrison, A. Zeevi. 2006. Design and control of a large call center: Asymptotic analysis of an LP-based method. Oper. Res. 54(3) 419-435.
6. Borst, S., A. Mandelbaum, M. Reiman. 2004. Dimensioning large call centers. Oper. Res. 52(1) 17-34.
7. Boxma, O. J., P. R. de Waal. 1994. Multiserver queues with impatient customers. Internat. Teletraffic Congress 14 743-756.
8. Brandt, A., M. Brandt. 1999. On the M(n)/M(n)/s queue with impatient calls. Performance Evaluation 35 1-18.
9. Brandt, A., M. Brandt. 2002. Asymptotic results and a Markovian approximation for the M(n)/M(n)/s+GI system. Queueing Systems- Theory Appl. 41 73-94.
10. Brown, L. D., N. Gans, A. Mandelbaum, A. Sakov, H. Shen, S. Zeltyn, L. Zhao. 2005. Statistical analysis of a telephone call center: A queueing science perspective. J. Amer. Statist. Assoc. 100(469) 36-50.
11. Delorey, E. 2009. Correlating IVR performance and customer satisfaction. http://www.easyivr.com/tech-ivr-applications-108.htm.
12. de V́ricourt, F., O. B. Jennings. 2008. Dimensioning large-scale membership services. Oper. Res. 56(1) 173-187.
13. Erlang, A. K. 1948. On the rational determination of the number of circuits. E. Brockmeyer, H. L. Halstrom, A. Jensen, eds. The Life and Works of A. K. Erlang. The Copenhagen Telephone Company, Copenhagen, 216-221.
14. Feldman, Z., A. Mandelbaum, W. Massey, W. Whitt. 2008. Staffing of time-varying queues to achieve time-stable performance. Management Sci. 54(2) 324-338.
15. 4CallCenters Software. 2002. http://iew3.technion.ac.il/serveng/4Call Centers/Downloads.htm.
16. Gans, N., G. Koole, A. Mandelbaum. 2003. Telephone call centers: A tutorial and literature review. Invited review paper. Manufacturing Service Oper. Management 5(2) 79-141.
17. Garnett, O., A. Mandelbaum, M. Reiman. 2002. Designing a call center with impatient customers. Manufacturing Service Oper. Management 4(3) 208-227.
18. Gilson, K. A., D. K. Khandelwal. 2005. Getting more from call centers. The McKinsey Quaterly. http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/getting-more-from-call- centers-1597.
19. Green, L. V., P. J. Kolesar, J. Soares. 2001. Improving the SIPP approach for staffing service systems that have cyclic demand. Oper. Res. 49 549-564.
20. Green, L. V., P. J. Kolesar, J. Soares. 2003. An improved heuristic for staffing telephone call centers with limited operating hours. Production Oper. Management 12(1) 46-61.
21. Green, L. V., P. J. Kolesar, W. Whitt. 2007. Coping with time-varying demand when setting staffing requirements for a service system. Production Oper. Management 16(1) 13-39.
22. Halfin, S., W. Whitt. 1981. Heavy-traffic limits for queues with many exponential servers. Oper. Res. 29 567-588.
23. Harrison, J. M., A. Zeevi. 2005. A method for staffing large call centers based on stochastic fluid models. Manufacturing Service Oper. Management 7(1) 20-36.
24. Holman, D., R. Batt, U. Holtgrewe. 2007. The global call centre report: International perspectives on management and employment. Industrial and Labor Relations Collection, Research Studies and Reports, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/reports/13/.
25. Koole, G. 2006. Monotonicity in Markov reward and decision chains: Theory and applications. Foundations and Trends in Stochastic Systems 1 1-76.
26. Koole, G., E. van der Sluis. 2003. Optimal shift scheduling with a global service level constraint. IEE Trans. 35(11) 1049-1055.
27. Maman, S. 2009. Uncertainty in the demand for service: The case of call centers and emergency departments. M.Sc. thesis, Technion, Haifa, Israel.
28. Mandelbaum, A., S. Zeltyn. 2007. Service engineering in action: The Palm/Erlang-A queue, with applications to call centers. D. Spath, K.-P. Fähnrich, eds. Advances in Services Innovations. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 17-48.
29. Mandelbaum, A., S. Zeltyn. 2009. Dimensioning call centers with abandonment: Cost optimization. In preparation.
30. Palm, C. 1957. Research on telephone traffic carried by full availability groups. Tele 1 107. (English translation of results first published in 1946 in Swedish in the same journal, then entitled Tekniska Meddelanden fran Kungl. Telegrafstyrelsen.)
31. Randhawa, R. S., S. Kumar. 2008. Usage restriction and subscription services: Operational benefits with rational users. Manufacturing Service Oper. Management 10(3) 429-447.
32. Randhawa, R. S., S. Kumar. 2009. Multi-server loss systems with subscribers. Math. Oper. Res. 34(1) 142-179.
33. Reed, J. E. 2007a. The G/GI/N queue in the Halfin-Whitt regime I: Infinite server queue system equations. http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~jreed/ Papers/ReedHalfinWhitt101507.pdf.
34. Reed, J. E. 2007b. The G/GI/N queue in the Halfin-Whitt regime II: Idle time system equations. http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~reed/Papers/ HalfinWhittIdleTimeEquations121407.pdf.
35. Weinberg, J., L. D. Brown, J. R. Stroud. 2007. Bayesian forecasting of an inhomogeneous Poisson process with applications to call center data. J. Amer. Statist. Assoc. 102 1185-1198.
36. Whitt, W. 1992. Understanding the efficiency of multi-server service systems. Management Sci. 38(5) 708-723.
37. Whitt, W. 2005a. Engineering solution of a basic call-center model. Management Sci. 51(2) 221-235.
38. Whitt, W. 2005b. Two fluid approximations for multi-server queues with abandonments. Oper. Res. Lett. 33 363-372.
39. Whitt, W. 2006a. Fluid models for many-server queues with abandonments. Oper. Res. 54(1) 37-54.
40. Whitt, W. 2006b. Sensitivity of performance in the Erlang A model to changes in the model parameters. Oper. Res. 54(2) 247-260.
41. Whitt, W. 2006c. Staffing a call center with uncertain arrival rate and absenteeism. Production Oper. Management 15(1) 88-102.
42. Whitt, W. 2006d. A multi-class fluid model for a contact center with scaled-based routing. Internat. J. Electronics Comm. 60(2) 95-102.
43. Zeltyn, S., A. Mandelbaum. 2005a. Call centers with impatient customers: Many-server asymptotics of the M/M/n+G queue. Queueing Systems- Theory Appl. 51 361-402.
44. Zeltyn, S., A. Mandelbaum. 2005b. Call centers with impatient customers: Many-server asymptotics of the M/M/n+G queue. Internet supplement. http://iew3.technion.ac.il/serveng/References/references.html.