Routing analyses for call centers with human and automated services

Benjamin Legros ()
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Benjamin Legros: Métis Lab EM Normandie - EM Normandie - École de Management de Normandie = EM Normandie Business School

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Abstract: We analyze a call center with robot and human agents. Customers arrive over time and have a preference for being served by an agent. Thus, although robots are infinite in number, it might be preferable to let some customers wait so as to give them a human service. The aim of this paper is to determine how agents and robots should be placed in the call center architecture to deliver the lowest wait- and service-dissatisfaction. We prove that in terms of expected wait- and expected service-dissatisfaction, a preventive policy where scheduling to robots or to agents is made at arrival, outperforms corrective policies, where scheduling is made after a certain wait, or policies where the robot service can be interrupted. This conclusion is only true with respect to expectation, however. When considering higher moments of the wait, a corrective policy appears to be preferable. Service interruption leads to less variability in service-dissatisfaction, which can be appreciated when customer fairness is sought.

Keywords: Queueing; Call center; Robot agents; Routing; Scheduling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-10-01
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-03605426v1
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Published in International Journal of Production Economics, 2021, 240, pp.108247. ⟨10.1016/j.ijpe.2021.108247⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03605426

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpe.2021.108247

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