Multichannel Call centers

Multichannel Call centers
Année et Spécialité du Master Recherche :
M2 OSIL
Titre du sujet proposé : Queueing Models in Multichannel Call centers
Nom de l’organisme ou de l’entreprise qui propose le sujet : Laboratoire Génie Industriel
Nom du resp. du sujet (encadrant) :
Oualid Jouini, Benjamin Legros
Numéro de téléphone du resp. du sujet :
Email du resp. du sujet : [email protected] ; [email protected]
Contexte et présentation du sujet :
A call center is a service system. It is a facility designed to support the delivery of some interactive service
via telephone communications, email, chat, etc. The definition of a call center is continuously changing with
technological development, but the core fundamentals of a customer making a call (via a phone, email,
web site, fax or Interactive Voice Response) to a center (collection of resources) will remain constant. The
development of alternative channels goes together with an adaptation to impatient customers with higher
expectations. The recent report of ICMI (2013) based on the analysis of 361 large contact centers, presents
the increasing use of new channels and the related research issues. In particular, they point out that
outbound tasks require intensive integration with inbound ones in most call centers. Although the inbound
calls remain present in most call centers (98%), emails are also widely used (89%). Moreover, outbound
calls (76%), Web (70%) and chats (40%) are important and developing channels.
The classical approach for the tasks treatment in call centers was to consider a one to one conversation
between an agent and a customer. This conversation could not be interrupted and an agent could treat
customers only one by one. With new channels, new way of working appears; with emails we encounter
possibilities of group treatment and preemption; with chats we can be interested in simultaneous
treatment; with web sites we create situations where customers have a high access of the information
before reaching a call center.
We therefore are interested in how the operation research literature captures these new working
possibilities into queueing models. We are also interested on the questions related to the routing of tasks
and the performance evaluation.
Objectifs et résultats attendus de l’étude bibliographique :
In this “mémoire thématique”, we aim to conduct a comprehensive literature review on queueing models
papers for the analysis of multichannel call centers.
Connaissances requises éventuelles :
Références
Tolga Tezcan and Jiheng Zhang (2014). Routing and staffing in customer service chat systems with impatient
customers. Working paper
Aksin, O.Z., Armony, M. and Mehrotra, V. (2007) The Modern Call-Center: A Multi-Disciplinary Perspective
on Operations Management Research. Production and Operations Management, 16:6, 665-688.