Optimizing a call center performance using queueing models – an Albanian Case

Abstract

The world of call centers is an important reality nowadays and helping the decision 
making of the operations management is fundamental for this industry. A call 
center generally represents the first contact of a customer with a specific company. 
As a result, the quality of the service offered is of fundamental importance. The 
objective of this paper is to see how to apply the queueing models in order to 
optimize the call centers’ performance. A crucial factor of the call centers’ 
optimization is determining the proper number of agents, during a working day, 
considering the chosen performance measure. The experiment is done in one of 
the Albanian outsourcing call centers. The literature related to the application of 
such models at call centers is reviewed. A suitable number of agents was 
determined for different peak periods of the working day, considering the most 
important performance measures. The obtained results prove how useful and 
applicable are the stochastic queueing models as a tool for a call centers’ 
performance, in terms of the expected waiting time, number of customers waiting 
for service and of call centers service levels optimization. Practically, all the data 
needed for this mathematical/analytical approach is provided. This paper has the 
purpose to illustrate how such data can be efficiently used to advantage the 
operations management.