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

22. Evenson, Ann, Patrick T. Harker and Frances X. Frei. Effective call center management: Evidence
from financial services, Working paper, Wharton School Center for Financial Institutions,
University of Pennsylvania, January 1999.
Abstract. Call centers are quickly becoming the major point of contact for serving customers
and generating new revenue in a variety of industries. No where is this growth in the importance
of call centers more apparent than in the financial services industry. This paper presents
the results of a survey of the management of call center operations at major financial service
firms. The results clearly indicate the importance of human resource management practices and
technology in creating high-performance call center environments.
23. Fischer, M.J., D.A. Garbin, A. Gharakhanian and D.M. Masi. Traffic engineering of distributed
call centers: not as straightforward as it may seem. Proceedings of the Applied Telecommunications
Symposium (ATS’99). 1999 Advanced Simulation Technologies Conference. SCS, San
Diego, CA, USA, 1999, 53–59.
Abstract. As of 1994, AT&T estimated that 350000 businesses employed 6.5 million people
in call centers. In 1997, call center revenue was estimated at $900M, with annual spending on
call centers growing at 12 percent each year. Accurate performance analyses are essential in
determining staffing levels and trunk requirements in call centers, because poor performance
means lost business opportunities. The purpose of this paper is to show that as the complexity
of these systems increases, traditional methods, like Erlang B and C table lookup, can result in
poor evaluation of the call center performance. We start by examining the simplest of all call
centers and show traditional methods can result in poor estimates of system performance and
then present a more accurate model for this call center configuration. As the complexity of call
centers increases more advance methods are required. This is demonstrated by considering two
more complex systems: distributed systems of multiple interdependent call centers and a virtual
call center configuration. We also discuss methods to analytically solve each of these systems.
Keywords: Traffic engineering, Distributed call centers, AT&T, Performance analyses, Staffing
levels, Trunk requirements, Erlang B model, Erlang C model, Table lookup, Multiple interdependent
call centers, Virtual call center configuration
(Appears also in Section IX.)
24. Harris, Foster R. and S. De Reyt. Re-inventing the call centre with predictive and adaptive
execution, British Telecommunications Engineering, 18 (2), 1999, 180–184.
Abstract. Call centres have evolved from simple single-function centres to offer access, convenience,
choice and courtesy to callers. Forecasting and staffing tools support planning, enterprise
databases permit the business to craft specific caller treatments, and cross trained agents using
desktop applications can respond to a wider range of caller needs and business opportunities
on a single call. One key element of the call centre, however has changed only superficially-the
question of ‘What should each agent do next?’ The ‘oldest waiting call’ rule has answered that
question for the last 20 years. Signs that this methodology is obsolete are seen in call centres
where designs become more complex and results more difficult to achieve; where manual intervention
moves agents from skill to skill chasing problems; where the most talented agents are
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