IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/oropre/v57y2009i2p299-313.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Cross-Selling in a Call Center with a Heterogeneous Customer Population

Author

Listed:
  • Itay Gurvich

    (Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60208)

  • Mor Armony

    (Stern School of Business, New York University, New York, New York 10012)

  • Constantinos Maglaras

    (Columbia Business School, New York, New York 10027)

Abstract

Cross-selling is becoming an increasingly prevalent practice in call centers, due, in part, to its unique capability to allow firms to dynamically segment their callers and customize their product offerings accordingly. This paper considers a call center with cross-selling capability that serves a pool of customers that are differentiated in terms of their revenue potential and delay sensitivity. It studies the operational decisions of staffing, call routing, and cross-selling under various forms of customer segmentation. It derives near-optimal controls in each of the settings analyzed, and characterizes the impact of a more refined customer segmentation on the structure of these policies and the center's profitability.

Suggested Citation

  • Itay Gurvich & Mor Armony & Constantinos Maglaras, 2009. "Cross-Selling in a Call Center with a Heterogeneous Customer Population," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 57(2), pages 299-313, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:oropre:v:57:y:2009:i:2:p:299-313
    DOI: 10.1287/opre.1080.0568
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/opre.1080.0568
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1287/opre.1080.0568?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Achal Bassamboo & J. Michael Harrison & Assaf Zeevi, 2006. "Design and Control of a Large Call Center: Asymptotic Analysis of an LP-Based Method," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 54(3), pages 419-435, June.
    2. Noah Gans & Ger Koole & Avishai Mandelbaum, 2003. "Telephone Call Centers: Tutorial, Review, and Research Prospects," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 5(2), pages 79-141, September.
    3. Constantinos Maglaras & Assaf Zeevi, 2005. "Pricing and Design of Differentiated Services: Approximate Analysis and Structural Insights," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 53(2), pages 242-262, April.
    4. Shlomo Halfin & Ward Whitt, 1981. "Heavy-Traffic Limits for Queues with Many Exponential Servers," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 29(3), pages 567-588, June.
    5. Itay Gurvich & Mor Armony & Avishai Mandelbaum, 2008. "Service-Level Differentiation in Call Centers with Fully Flexible Servers," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 54(2), pages 279-294, February.
    6. Zohar Feldman & Avishai Mandelbaum & William A. Massey & Ward Whitt, 2008. "Staffing of Time-Varying Queues to Achieve Time-Stable Performance," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 54(2), pages 324-338, February.
    7. Sem Borst & Avi Mandelbaum & Martin I. Reiman, 2004. "Dimensioning Large Call Centers," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 52(1), pages 17-34, February.
    8. Avishai Mandelbaum & Sergey Zeltyn, 2009. "Staffing Many-Server Queues with Impatient Customers: Constraint Satisfaction in Call Centers," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 57(5), pages 1189-1205, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ni, Guanqun & Xu, Yinfeng & Dong, Yucheng, 2013. "Price and speed decisions in customer-intensive services with two classes of customers," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 228(2), pages 427-436.
    2. Fei Gao & Xuanming Su, 2017. "Omnichannel Retail Operations with Buy-Online-and-Pick-up-in-Store," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(8), pages 2478-2492, August.
    3. Zhang, Ren-Qian & Zhang, Lan-Kang & Zhou, Wen-Hui & Saigal, Romesh & Wang, Hui-Wen, 2014. "The multi-item newsvendor model with cross-selling and the solution when demand is jointly normally distributed," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 236(1), pages 147-159.
    4. Tarek Abdallah, 2019. "On the Benefit (Or Cost) of Large‐Scale Bundling," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 28(4), pages 955-969, April.
    5. Xiaofang Wang & Laurens G. Debo & Alan Scheller-Wolf & Stephen F. Smith, 2010. "Design and Analysis of Diagnostic Service Centers," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 56(11), pages 1873-1890, November.
    6. Mor Armony & Efrat Perel & Nir Perel & Uri Yechiali, 2019. "Exact analysis for multiserver queueing systems with cross selling," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 274(1), pages 75-100, March.
    7. Vasiliki Kostami & Sampath Rajagopalan, 2014. "Speed–Quality Trade-Offs in a Dynamic Model," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 16(1), pages 104-118, February.
    8. Xiaofang Wang & Laurens G. Debo & Alan Scheller‐Wolf & Stephen F. Smith, 2012. "Service design at diagnostic service centers," Naval Research Logistics (NRL), John Wiley & Sons, vol. 59(8), pages 613-628, December.
    9. Guodong Pang & Ohad Perry, 2015. "A Logarithmic Safety Staffing Rule for Contact Centers with Call Blending," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 61(1), pages 73-91, January.
    10. Zhankun Sun & Nilay Tan?k Argon & Serhan Ziya, 2018. "Patient Triage and Prioritization Under Austere Conditions," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(10), pages 4471-4489, October.

    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. Achal Bassamboo & Assaf Zeevi, 2009. "On a Data-Driven Method for Staffing Large Call Centers," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 57(3), pages 714-726, June.
    2. Achal Bassamboo & Ramandeep S. Randhawa & Assaf Zeevi, 2010. "Capacity Sizing Under Parameter Uncertainty: Safety Staffing Principles Revisited," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 56(10), pages 1668-1686, October.
    3. Merve Bodur & James R. Luedtke, 2017. "Mixed-Integer Rounding Enhanced Benders Decomposition for Multiclass Service-System Staffing and Scheduling with Arrival Rate Uncertainty," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(7), pages 2073-2091, July.
    4. Opher Baron & Joseph Milner, 2009. "Staffing to Maximize Profit for Call Centers with Alternate Service-Level Agreements," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 57(3), pages 685-700, June.
    5. Eugene Furman & Adam Diamant & Murat Kristal, 2021. "Customer Acquisition and Retention: A Fluid Approach for Staffing," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 30(11), pages 4236-4257, November.
    6. Achal Bassamboo & Ramandeep S. Randhawa, 2010. "On the Accuracy of Fluid Models for Capacity Sizing in Queueing Systems with Impatient Customers," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 58(5), pages 1398-1413, October.
    7. Jinsheng Chen & Jing Dong, 2024. "Managing flexibility: optimal sizing and scheduling of flexible servers," Queueing Systems: Theory and Applications, Springer, vol. 108(3), pages 415-474, December.
    8. Jouini, Oualid & Pot, Auke & Koole, Ger & Dallery, Yves, 2010. "Online scheduling policies for multiclass call centers with impatient customers," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 207(1), pages 258-268, November.
    9. 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.
    10. Francis de Véricourt & Otis B. Jennings, 2008. "Dimensioning Large-Scale Membership Services," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 56(1), pages 173-187, February.
    11. A. J. E. M. Janssen & J. S. H. van Leeuwaarden & Bert Zwart, 2011. "Refining Square-Root Safety Staffing by Expanding Erlang C," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 59(6), pages 1512-1522, December.
    12. Sunil Kumar & Ramandeep S. Randhawa, 2010. "Exploiting Market Size in Service Systems," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 12(3), pages 511-526, September.
    13. Vijay Mehrotra & Kevin Ross & Geoff Ryder & Yong-Pin Zhou, 2012. "Routing to Manage Resolution and Waiting Time in Call Centers with Heterogeneous Servers," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 14(1), pages 66-81, January.
    14. Itai Gurvich & Junfei Huang & Avishai Mandelbaum, 2014. "Excursion-Based Universal Approximations for the Erlang-A Queue in Steady-State," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 39(2), pages 325-373, May.
    15. Tolga Tezcan & J. G. Dai, 2010. "Dynamic Control of N -Systems with Many Servers: Asymptotic Optimality of a Static Priority Policy in Heavy Traffic," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 58(1), pages 94-110, February.
    16. Avishai Mandelbaum & Petar Momčilović, 2008. "Queues with Many Servers: The Virtual Waiting-Time Process in the QED Regime," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 33(3), pages 561-586, August.
    17. Mor Armony & Avishai Mandelbaum, 2011. "Routing and Staffing in Large-Scale Service Systems: The Case of Homogeneous Impatient Customers and Heterogeneous Servers," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 59(1), pages 50-65, February.
    18. Noa Zychlinski, 2023. "Applications of fluid models in service operations management," Queueing Systems: Theory and Applications, Springer, vol. 103(1), pages 161-185, February.
    19. Itai Gurvich & Ward Whitt, 2010. "Service-Level Differentiation in Many-Server Service Systems via Queue-Ratio Routing," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 58(2), pages 316-328, April.
    20. Guodong Pang & Ward Whitt, 2009. "Service Interruptions in Large-Scale Service Systems," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 55(9), pages 1499-1512, September.

    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:inm:oropre:v:57:y:2009:i:2:p:299-313. 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: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.html .

    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.