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Improving Customer Service Operations at Amazon.com

Author

Listed:
  • Matthew F. Keblis

    (Mays Business School, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas 77843)

  • Maomao Chen

    (Amazon.com, 605 5th Avenue South, Seattle, Washington 98104)

Abstract

The success of the Internet retailer Amazon.com depends on its providing high-quality customer service. Amazon.com’s customer service operations consist of internally and externally managed contact centers. Amazon.com must size its contact centers appropriately, deciding about hiring and training at internally managed centers, and the volume of voice calls and e-mail messages to allocate to external service providers. We developed an approach based on mathematical programming that Amazon.com uses in planning capacity, reducing the average cost of handling a customer contact, and increasing the service level provided customers.

Suggested Citation

  • Matthew F. Keblis & Maomao Chen, 2006. "Improving Customer Service Operations at Amazon.com," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 36(5), pages 433-445, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:orinte:v:36:y:2006:i:5:p:433-445
    DOI: 10.1287/inte.1060.0219
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bert Chen & Shane Henderson, 2001. "Two Issues in Setting Call Centre Staffing Levels," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 108(1), pages 175-192, November.
    2. J. Michael Harrison & Assaf Zeevi, 2005. "A Method for Staffing Large Call Centers Based on Stochastic Fluid Models," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 7(1), pages 20-36, September.
    3. Mor Armony & Constantinos Maglaras, 2004. "On Customer Contact Centers with a Call-Back Option: Customer Decisions, Routing Rules, and System Design," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 52(2), pages 271-292, April.
    4. Noah Gans & Yong-Pin Zhou, 2002. "Managing Learning and Turnover in Employee Staffing," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 50(6), pages 991-1006, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Suryandari, Retno Tanding & Paswan, Audhesh K., 2014. "Online customer service and retail type-product congruence," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 69-76.
    2. Nisar, Tahir M. & Prabhakar, Guru, 2017. "What factors determine e-satisfaction and consumer spending in e-commerce retailing?," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 135-144.
    3. Legros, Benjamin & Jouini, Oualid & Akşin, O. Zeynep & Koole, Ger, 2020. "Front-office multitasking between service encounters and back-office tasks," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 287(3), pages 946-963.

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