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Contact Centers with a Call-Back Option and Real-Time Delay Information

Author

Listed:
  • Mor Armony

    (Stern School of Business, New York University, 44 West 4th Street, New York, New York 10012)

  • Constantinos Maglaras

    (Columbia Business School, 409 Uris Hall, 3022 Broadway, New York, New York 10027)

Abstract

Motivated by practices in customer contact centers, we consider a system that offers two modes of service: real-time and postponed with a delay guarantee. Customers are informed of anticipated delays and select their preferred option of service. The resulting system is a multiclass, multiserver queueing system with state-dependent arrival rates. We propose an estimation scheme for the anticipated real-time delay that is asymptotically correct, and a routing policy that is asymptotically optimal in the sense that it minimizes real-time delay subject to the deadline of the postponed service mode. We also show that our proposed state-dependent scheme performs better than a system in which customers make decisions based on steady-state waiting-time information. Our results are derived using an asymptotic analysis based on “many-server” limits for systems with state-dependent parameters.

Suggested Citation

  • Mor Armony & Constantinos Maglaras, 2004. "Contact Centers with a Call-Back Option and Real-Time Delay Information," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 52(4), pages 527-545, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:oropre:v:52:y:2004:i:4:p:527-545
    DOI: 10.1287/opre.1040.0123
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
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