Telephone Call Centers: Tutorial, Review, and Research Prospects

Manufacturing and Service Operations Management - Tập 5 Số 2 - Trang 79-141 - 2003
Noah Gans1, Ger Koole2, Avishai Mandelbaum3
1The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 19104
2Vrije Universiteit, De Boelelaan 1081a, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands
3Industrial Engineering and Management, Technion, Haifa 32000, Israel

Tóm tắt

Telephone call centers are an integral part of many businesses, and their economic role is significant and growing. They are also fascinating sociotechnical systems in which the behavior of customers and employees is closely intertwined with physical performance measures. In these environments traditional operational models are of great value—and at the same time fundamentally limited—in their ability to characterize system performance.

We review the state of research on telephone call centers. We begin with a tutorial on how call centers function and proceed to survey academic research devoted to the management of their operations. We then outline important problems that have not been addressed and identify promising directions for future research.

Từ khóa


Tài liệu tham khảo

10.1177/109467059921003

10.1287/mnsc.47.2.324.9842

10.1016/S0377-2217(02)00274-6

10.1017/S0269964801152022

10.1287/inte.25.6.1

10.1287/inte.19.6.1

10.1287/inte.23.2.14

10.1108/09564230010323534

Armony M., 1999, Proc. 37th Allerton Conf., 42

10.1287/mnsc.42.4.591

Baccelli F., 1981, Performance '81, 159

10.2307/1427501

Bartholomew D. J., 1991, Statistical Techniques for Manpower Planning, 2

10.1214/aoap/1015345343

Bhulai S., 2000, Proc. 39th IEEE CDC, 1421

Bickel P. J., 2001, Mathematical Statistics: Basic Ideas and Selected Topics, 2

10.1016/B978-0-444-82031-0.50021-4

10.1016/S0377-2217(00)00049-7

Borst S. C., Flockhart A. D., Reiman M. I., Seery J. B. DEFINITY queue to best: Multisite routing simulations (1996) Compas Document ID 53921, Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies

10.1023/A:1010009304213

10.1016/S0166-5316(98)00042-X

10.1016/S1388-3437(97)80019-4

10.1287/inte.24.1.6

Brown L., Gans N., Mandelbaum A., Sakov A., Shen H., Zeltyn S., Zhao L. Empirical analysis of a network of retail-banking call centers (2002b) Work in progress, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA

Brown R. G., 1963, Smoothing, Forecasting and Prediction of Discrete Time Series

10.1287/mnsc.46.12.1630.12074

10.1111/j.1540-5915.1976.tb00706.x

Charnes A., 1978, Management Science Approaches to Manpower Planning and Organizational Design

10.1023/A:1016015213287

10.1007/978-1-4757-5301-1

Chlebus E., 1997, Proc. 15th Internat. Teletraffic Conf., 1179

Çinlar E., 1975, Introduction to Stochastic Processes

Cleveland B., 1997, Call Center Management on Fast Forward

Duxbury D., 1999, British Telecomm. Engrg., 18, 165

10.1287/opre.41.4.731

10.1287/mnsc.39.2.241

Erlang A. K., 1948, The Life and Works of A.K. Erlang

10.1007/978-1-4899-2977-8

10.1287/mnsc.34.9.1121

10.1109/GLOCOM.1990.116547

Fleming P. J., 1994, 2nd Internat. Congress on Telecomm. Systems, Modeling, and Anal., 158

10.1287/opre.48.2.327.13375

10.1287/mnsc.48.2.207.256

10.1287/opre.45.5.677

Gans N., Mandelbaum A. Staff scheduling problems with large, random staffing requirements (2002) Work in progress

10.1287/opre.50.6.991.343

10.1287/opre.51.2.255.12787

10.1287/msom.4.3.208.7753

Gordon J. J., 1994, Proc. 14th Internat. Teletraffic Conf., 339

10.1016/0305-0548(77)90007-7

10.1287/inte.18.2.94

10.1287/mnsc.37.1.84

10.1287/mnsc.43.1.80

10.1287/opre.49.4.549.11228

Green L., 2003, Productions and Oper. Management, 12

Grinold R. C., 1977, Manpower Planning Models

10.1007/1-4020-0611-X_95

Gustafson H. W., 1982, Employee Turnover: Causes, Consequences, and Control

10.1287/opre.29.3.567

10.1287/msom.2.2.144.12353

10.1287/opre.35.4.504

10.1023/A:1019188531950

Harrison J. M., 2003, Oper. Res.

10.1016/S0167-6377(03)00027-0

10.1287/mnsc.22.12.1372

10.1016/0377-2217(86)90062-7

Holt C. C., 1960, Planning Production, Inventory and Work Force

10.1287/msom.3.4.321.9968

10.1016/S0377-2217(01)00169-2

10.1002/j.1538-7305.1974.tb02756.x

10.1287/mnsc.42.10.1383

10.1002/asmb.444

Kingman J. F. C., 1962, J. Roy. Statist. Soc. Series B, 24, 383

10.1002/nav.3800110105

10.1287/opre.15.1.104

10.1023/A:1019132630984

10.1023/A:1020949626017

Koole G. M., 2000, Proc. QNETs 2000, 23, 1

Koole G. M., IIE Trans.

Kort B. W., 1983, Proc. IEEE GLOBECOM '83, 706

10.1057/jors.1959.5

Makridakis S., 1998, Forecasting: Methods and Applications, 3

Mandelbaum A., 2002, Call Centers (Centres): Research Bibliography with Abstracts

10.1287/moor.20.1.33

10.1023/A:1019131203242

10.1023/A:1019112920622

Mandelbaum A., 1999, Proc. 16th Internat. Teletraffic Conf., 737

Mandelbaum A., 1999, Proc. 37th Allerton Conf., 1095

Mandelbaum A., 2000, Selected Proc. 5th INFORMS Telecommunications Conf.

10.1023/A:1019156418862

10.1007/BF02112523

Mehrotra V., 1997, OR/MS Today, 18

10.1002/9781118627372

Palm C., 1943, Ericsson Technics, 44, 1

Palm C., 1953, Tele, 4, 189

Perry M., 1992, XIV International Switching Symposium, 294

Pinedo M., 1999, Creating Value in Financial Services: Strategies, Operations and Technologies

10.1287/msom.2.1.32.23268

10.1239/aap/1013540179

10.1287/inte.21.1.75

Riordan J., 1961, Stochastic Service Systems

Roberts J. W., 1979, Proc. 9th Internat. Teletraffic Conf.

Ross A. M. Queueing systems with daily cycles and stochastic demand with uncertain parameters (2001) Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, CA

10.1287/inte.29.5.66

10.1037/0021-9010.83.2.150

10.1287/opre.22.4.808

10.1023/A:1022642624300

10.1287/mnsc.49.7.839.16387

10.1090/fic/028/02

10.1287/opre.32.2.229

10.1287/mnsc.41.4.595

10.1287/inte.27.4.1

10.1214/aoap/1177004706

van Mieghem J. A., 1999, Management Sci., 49, 1249

10.1287/mnsc.38.5.708

10.1111/j.1937-5956.1993.tb00094.x

10.1287/mnsc.45.2.192

10.1287/mnsc.45.6.870

10.1287/opre.51.4.531.16093

10.1007/b97479

Williams R. J., 2000, Analysis of Communication Networks: Call Centres, Traffic and Performance, 28, 49

10.1214/ss/1177010131

10.1287/opre.30.2.223

Yoo J. Queueing models for staffing service operations (1996) Ph.D. dissertation, University of Maryland, College Park, MD

10.1287/mnsc.48.4.566.211