IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/proeco/v240y2021ics0925527321002231.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Routing analyses for call centers with human and automated services

Author

Listed:
  • Legros, Benjamin

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Legros, Benjamin, 2021. "Routing analyses for call centers with human and automated services," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 240(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:proeco:v:240:y:2021:i:c:s0925527321002231
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpe.2021.108247
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0925527321002231
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ijpe.2021.108247?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Noah Gans & Yong-Pin Zhou, 2007. "Call-Routing Schemes for Call-Center Outsourcing," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 9(1), pages 33-50, May.
    2. Qiuping Yu & Gad Allon & Achal Bassamboo & Seyed Iravani, 2018. "Managing Customer Expectations and Priorities in Service Systems," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(8), pages 3942-3970, August.
    3. Itai Gurvich & Ohad Perry, 2012. "Overflow Networks: Approximations and Implications to Call Center Outsourcing," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 60(4), pages 996-1009, August.
    4. Alexander Dudin & Varghese Jacob & Achyutha Krishnamoorthy, 2015. "A multi-server queueing system with service interruption, partial protection and repetition of service," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 233(1), pages 101-121, October.
    5. Gao, Shan & Wang, Jinting, 2014. "Performance and reliability analysis of an M/G/1-G retrial queue with orbital search and non-persistent customers," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 236(2), pages 561-572.
    6. Amy R. Ward & Sunil Kumar, 2008. "Asymptotically Optimal Admission Control of a Queue with Impatient Customers," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 33(1), pages 167-202, February.
    7. Gad Allon & Achal Bassamboo, 2011. "The Impact of Delaying the Delay Announcements," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 59(5), pages 1198-1210, October.
    8. Ku, Cheng-Yuan & Jordan, Scott, 2003. "Near optimal admission control for multiserver loss queues in series," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 144(1), pages 166-178, January.
    9. I. L. Mitrany & B. Avi-Itzhak, 1968. "A Many-Server Queue with Service Interruptions," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 16(3), pages 628-638, June.
    10. Kuang Xu, 2015. "Necessity of Future Information in Admission Control," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 63(5), pages 1213-1226, October.
    11. Sarah Hudson & Helena González-Gómez & Aude Rychalski, 2017. "Call centers: is there an upside to the dissatisfied customer experience?," Post-Print hal-02006507, HAL.
    12. G. M. Koole & B. F. Nielsen & T. B. Nielsen, 2012. "First in Line Waiting Times as a Tool for Analysing Queueing Systems," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 60(5), pages 1258-1266, October.
    13. Legros, Benjamin, 2020. "Late-rejection, a strategy to perform an overflow policy," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 281(1), pages 66-76.
    14. Pengfei Guo & Paul Zipkin, 2007. "Analysis and Comparison of Queues with Different Levels of Delay Information," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 53(6), pages 962-970, June.
    15. Bountali, Olga & Economou, Antonis, 2017. "Equilibrium joining strategies in batch service queueing systems," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 260(3), pages 1142-1151.
    16. Benjamin Legros, 2016. "Unintended consequences of optimizing a queue discipline for a service level defined by a percentile of the waiting time," Post-Print hal-02065945, HAL.
    17. Qiuping Yu & Gad Allon & Achal Bassamboo, 2017. "How Do Delay Announcements Shape Customer Behavior? An Empirical Study," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(1), pages 1-20, January.
    18. Niyirora, Jerome & Zhuang, Jun, 2017. "Fluid approximations and control of queues in emergency departments," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 261(3), pages 1110-1124.
    19. Maglaras, Constantinos & Van Mieghem, Jan A., 2005. "Queueing systems with leadtime constraints: A fluid-model approach for admission and sequencing control," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 167(1), pages 179-207, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Benjamin Legros, 2021. "Routing analyses for call centers with human and automated services," Post-Print hal-03605426, HAL.
    2. Abhishek, & Legros, Benjamin & Fransoo, Jan C., 2021. "Performance evaluation of stochastic systems with dedicated delivery bays and general on-street parking," Other publications TiSEM 09ed9572-d59c-4f28-a9c4-b, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    3. Abhishek Abhishek & Benjamin Legros & Jan Fransoo, 2021. "Performance Evaluation of Stochastic Systems with Dedicated Delivery Bays and General On-Street Parking," Post-Print hal-03605434, HAL.
    4. Benjamin Legros, 2021. "Age-based Markovian approximation of the G/M/1 queue," Post-Print hal-03605431, HAL.
    5. Kraig Delana & Nicos Savva & Tolga Tezcan, 2021. "Proactive Customer Service: Operational Benefits and Economic Frictions," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 23(1), pages 70-87, 1-2.
    6. Debjit Roy & Eirini Spiliotopoulou & Jelle de Vries, 2022. "Restaurant analytics: Emerging practice and research opportunities," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 31(10), pages 3687-3709, October.
    7. Dimitrios Logothetis & Antonis Economou, 2023. "The impact of information on transportation systems with strategic customers," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 32(7), pages 2189-2206, July.
    8. Qiuping Yu & Yiming Zhang & Yong-Pin Zhou, 2022. "Delay Information in Virtual Queues: A Large-Scale Field Experiment on a Major Ride-Sharing Platform," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(8), pages 5745-5757, August.
    9. Liu, Jian & Chen, Jian & Bo, Rui & Meng, Fanlin & Xu, Yong & Li, Peng, 2023. "Increases or discounts: Price strategies based on customers’ patience times," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 305(2), pages 722-737.
    10. Brett A. Hathaway & Seyed M. Emadi & Vinayak Deshpande, 2021. "Don’t Call Us, We’ll Call You: An Empirical Study of Caller Behavior Under a Callback Option," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(3), pages 1508-1526, March.
    11. Pengfei Guo & Moshe Haviv & Zhenwei Luo & Yulan Wang, 2022. "Optimal queue length information disclosure when service quality is uncertain," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 31(5), pages 1912-1927, May.
    12. Sheng Zhu & Jinting Wang & Bin Liu, 2020. "Equilibrium joining strategies in the Mn/G/1 queue with server breakdowns and repairs," Operational Research, Springer, vol. 20(4), pages 2163-2187, December.
    13. Rouba Ibrahim & Mor Armony & Achal Bassamboo, 2017. "Does the Past Predict the Future? The Case of Delay Announcements in Service Systems," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(6), pages 1762-1780, June.
    14. Qiuping Yu & Gad Allon & Achal Bassamboo & Seyed Iravani, 2018. "Managing Customer Expectations and Priorities in Service Systems," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(8), pages 3942-3970, August.
    15. Benjamin Legros & Sihan Ding & Rob Mei & Oualid Jouini, 2017. "Call centers with a postponed callback offer," OR Spectrum: Quantitative Approaches in Management, Springer;Gesellschaft für Operations Research e.V., vol. 39(4), pages 1097-1125, October.
    16. Madhu Jain & Sandeep Kaur & Parminder Singh, 2021. "Supplementary variable technique (SVT) for non-Markovian single server queue with service interruption (QSI)," Operational Research, Springer, vol. 21(4), pages 2203-2246, December.
    17. Rouba Ibrahim, 2018. "Sharing delay information in service systems: a literature survey," Queueing Systems: Theory and Applications, Springer, vol. 89(1), pages 49-79, June.
    18. Olga Bountali & Antonis Economou, 2019. "Equilibrium threshold joining strategies in partially observable batch service queueing systems," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 277(2), pages 231-253, June.
    19. Ming Hu & Yang Li & Jianfu Wang, 2018. "Efficient Ignorance: Information Heterogeneity in a Queue," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(6), pages 2650-2671, June.
    20. Vasiliki Kostami, 2020. "Price and Lead time Disclosure Strategies in Inventory Systems," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 29(12), pages 2760-2788, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:proeco:v:240:y:2021:i:c:s0925527321002231. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ijpe .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.