 On the estimation of the true demand in call centers with redials and reconnectsSi Ding, G. Koole and R.D. van der Mei European Journal of Operational Research, 2015, vol. 246, issue 1, 250-262 Abstract: In practice, in many call centers customers often perform redials (i.e., reattempt after an abandonment) and reconnects (i.e., reattempt after an answered call). In the literature, call center models usually do not cover these features, while real data analysis and simulation results show ignoring them inevitably leads to inaccurate estimation of the total inbound volume. Therefore, in this paper we propose a performance model that includes both features. In our model, the total volume consists of three types of calls: (1) fresh calls (i.e., initial call attempts), (2) redials, and (3) reconnects. In practice, the total volume is used to make forecasts, while according to the simulation results, this could lead to high forecast errors, and subsequently wrong staffing decisions. However, most of the call center data sets do not have customer-identity information, which makes it difficult to identify how many calls are fresh and what fractions of the calls are redials and reconnects. Keywords: Queueing; Forecasting; Redials; Reconnects; Call centers (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ejores:v:246:y:2015:i:1:p:250-262 DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2015.04.018 Access Statistics for this article European Journal of Operational Research is currently edited by Roman Slowinski, Jesus Artalejo, Jean-Charles. Billaut, Robert Dyson and Lorenzo Peccati More articles in European Journal of Operational Research from Elsevier |
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