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Experience-Based Routing in Call Center Environments

Authors: Thomas R. Robbins;

Experience-Based Routing in Call Center Environments

Abstract

In this paper we examine some assumptions commonly made in modeling call centers. In particular, we evaluate the assumption that agents are homogeneous, statistically equivalent servers. We examine empirical data to highlight the issues that create heterogeneity between agents. We explore a call center environment where agents increase their productivity over time, but eventually leave the organization. We consider the implication of this heterogeneity and explore a routing policy that attempts to exploit this heterogeneity and improve long-term call center performance. We consider the application of experience-based routing; that is, routing to agents based on their availability and experience relative to other available agents. We examine policies where calls are routed to the most experienced agents when the call center is busy, to facilitate efficiency, and to the least experienced agent when the call center is slow, to facilitate learning. We investigate the potential improvement in performance that can be achieved by considering agent experience when making routing decisions and characterize the conditions under which the improvement is most significant. We find that routing to agents based on experience can yield substantial improvements over a wide range of conditions.

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selected citations
These citations are derived from selected sources.
This is an alternative to the "Influence" indicator, which also reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
BIP!Citations provided by BIP!
popularity
This indicator reflects the "current" impact/attention (the "hype") of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network.
BIP!Popularity provided by BIP!
influence
This indicator reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
BIP!Influence provided by BIP!
impulse
This indicator reflects the initial momentum of an article directly after its publication, based on the underlying citation network.
BIP!Impulse provided by BIP!
5
Average
Average
Average
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