CALL CENTERS (CENTRES) - Faculty of Industrial Engineering and ...

agement planning.
33. Foo, S., S.C. Hui and P.C. Leong. Web-based intelligent helpdesk support environment, International
Journal of Systems Science, 33 (6), 2002, 389–402.
Abstract. With the advent of Internet technology, it is now feasible to provide effective and
efficient helpdesk service over the global Internet to meet customers’ requirements and satisfaction.
In this research, we have designed and developed a Web-based intelligent helpdesk-support
environment, WebHotLine, to support the customer service centre of a large multinational corporation
in the electronics industry. The paper describes the basic architecture of the environment
that supports the major functions of Web-based fault information retrieval, online multilingual
translation capability, different operating modes of video-conferencing for enhanced support and
direct intelligent fault diagnosis by customers or customer support engineers. As a result, Web-
HotLine helps to save cost in eliminating the expensive overseas telephone charges, reduction
in machine down time and number of on-site visits by service engineers as in the traditional
helpdesk environment.
34. Fukunaga, A., E. Hamilton, J. Fama, D. Andre, O. Matan and I. Nourbakhsh. Staff scheduling
for inbound call centers and customer contact centers, AI Magazine, 23 (4), 2002, 30–40.
Abstract. The staff scheduling problem is a critical problem in the call center (or, more generally,
customer contact center) industry. This article describes DIRECTOR, a staff scheduling
system for contact centers. DIRECTOR is a constraint-based system that uses AI search techniques
to generate schedules that satisfy and optimize a wide range of constraints and servicequality
metrics. DIRECTOR has successfully been deployed at more than 800 contact centers,
with significant measurable benefits, some of which are documented in case studies included in
this article.
35. Rossler, G. and T. Steinert. A flexible traffic generator for testing PABX and call center performance.
Testing of Communicating Systems XIV—Application to Internet Technologies and
Services, IFIP-TC6/WG6.1, I. Schieferdecker, H. Konig and A. Wolisz (Eds.), 2002, 139–147.
Abstract. Testing PABXs and call centers under high load is of paramount importance because
customers rely on these systems for safety and business critical applications. A traffic generator
for high traffic volumes is presented. The two key characteristics of the traffic generator are the
generation of traffic with configurable statistical properties and its flexibility in many aspects,
ranging from the number and kind of emulated users to the user behaviour models and signalling
protocols. This extraordinary flexibility could only be achieved by a pure software approach.
The architecture clearly separates the basic run-time system and support functions which are
implemented in the traffic generator core from user models and signalling protocols which the
traffic generator reads and executes during tests.
36. Suhm, B., J. Bers, D. McCarthy, B. Freeman, D. Getty, K. Godfrey and P. Peterson. A comparative
study of speech in the call center: Natural language call routing vs. touch-tone menus.
CHI 2002 - Changing the World, Changing Ourselves, Proceedings of the Conference on Human
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