Συντάχθηκε 31-05-2010 11:43
από Vasileios Kouikoglou
Email συντάκτη: vkouikoglou<στο>tuc.gr
Ενημερώθηκε:
31-05-2010 11:44
Ιδιότητα: ΔΕΠ ΜΠΔ.
Μετά από πρόσκληση του τμήματος ΜΠΔ, ο καθηγητής Oualid Jouini της Ecole Centrale Paris θα δώσει διάλεξη με θέμα
Call Centers with Delay Information: Models and Insights
Πέμπτη 3 Ιουνίου 2003, 12.00
Αίθουσα συνεδριάσεων ΜΠΔ
Abstract:
We analyze a call center with impatient customers. We study how informing customers about their anticipated delays affects performance. Customers react by balking upon hearing the delay announcement, and may subsequently renege, particularly if the realized waiting time exceeds the delay that has originally been announced to them. The balking and reneging from such a system are a function of the delay announcement. Modeling the call center as an M/M/s+M queue with endogenized customer reactions to announcements, we analytically characterize performance measures for this model. The analysis allows us to explore the role announcing different percentiles of the waiting time distribution, i.e., announcement coverage, plays on subsequent performance in terms of balking and reneging.
Through a numerical analysis, we illustrate tradeoffs between reneging and balking that have to be made in choosing the announcement percentile, and illustrate the role cost and system size parameters play on this choice. It is shown that more coverage is not necessarily better for the service provider and that announcement coverage has to be carefully controlled in the presence of different customer reactions. This additional control, if properly used, provides managers with a means of improving costs and reaping higher benefits from pooling. Considering different performance measures as comparison points, conditions are established under which the model with delay information is preferred. This analysis highlights that in some settings, particularly in smaller call centers, managers may prefer not to provide delay information.
Keywords: Queues; call centers; customer behavior: impatient customers; balking; state-dependent analysis; predicting and announcing delays.
Short bio:
Oualid Jouini is an assistant professor at Laboratoire Génie Industriel, Ecole Centrale Paris. He received a B.S degree in Industrial Engineering from Ecole Nationale d'Ingénieurs de Tunis in 2001 and a M.S degree in Industrial Engineering from Ecole Centrale Paris in 2003. He carried out his Ph.D research on "Operations Management in Call Centers" at Ecole Centrale Paris and received a Ph.D degree in 2006. During 2007 and 2008, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Koç University and University of Minnesota. His research interests are in stochastic modeling and service operations management. His main application area is call centers: Strategic and real-time operations decisions, agents planning and Skill-Based Routing.
