Application of queueing models with abandonment for Call Center congestion analysis

Aplicação de modelos de filas com abandono para análise de congestão em call centers

Abstract

This paper studies and applies queueing systems to Call Centers regarding the possibility of customer abandonment from the system before being served due to their impatience in waiting for a service. Call Centers are service organizations that predominantly serve customers via phone calls. One of the main concerns in managing them is to provide quality service at a minimum cost. Noticing the quality of services offered is expressed by customers, for example by abandonment from the queue. This paper shows that the M/M/c+G analytical queueing models with abandonment, with patience time represented by generic distributions (particularly mixed distributions), are more effective than the M/M/c+M analytical queueing models with abandonment, with Exponential patience, commonly used to evaluate congestion problems in Call Centers and support sizing and operational decisions in these systems. We conducted a study using data extracted from a Bank Call Center located in Israel and the parameters and some performance measures are determined based on this data. These sampling measures are compared with the same measures achieved by the M/M/c+M and M/M/c+G analytical queueing models considered in this research, which use parameters obtained empirically and the mixed and non-mixed distributions based on Exponential and Lognormal to represent user patience. An experimental discrete simulation model was also used to explore an alternative scenario, showing the potential of using the approaches based on analytical models with abandonment for Call Center analysis.

Keywords:
Call Center; Contact Center; Impatient customers; Queueing models with abandonment; Mixed distributions; Congestion Analysis; Simulation