Shift-scheduling of Call Centers with Uncertain Arrival Parameters
نویسندگان
چکیده
This paper considers a multi-periodic multi-shift call center staffing problem with two types of jobs: calls and emails. The arrival rate of calls is random and the workforce presents some flexibility: the agents can be affected to one job type in real-time. At each period of the day, a service quality constraint limits the waiting time for a call. The staffing problem is modeled as a newsboy-type model under an expected cost criterion. We then consider three different approaches in order to solve the optimization problem. First, we explicitly formulate the expected cost newsboy-type formulation as a stochastic program. Second, the formulation is extended to the conditional value-at-risk (CVaR) setting. Third, we develop the robust optimization approach. The proposed approaches are evaluated with real data obtained from the call center of a Dutch hospital. Computational results show that the robust approach is highly tractable and the solutions have good quality under several conditions. We show in addition the necessity of taking into account the randomness of the call arrival rates. We also show that profiting from the email job flexibility is highly attractive.
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