|
|
DSC Tech Library
This section of our technical library presents information and documentation relating to Call Center technology and Best Practices plus software and products.
DSC is a leading provider of contact center technology and software solutions as well as predictive dialer phone systems for the modern call center. Customer contact center software includes CRM software and computer telephony integration solutions. These modern products help call center phone agents communicate effectively with your customers and prospects.
The following article presents product or service information relating to call centers and customer service help desks.
Using Simulation In Call Centers
Page 3
Vivek Bapat Eddie B. Pruitte, Jr., Systems Modeling Corporation
Eddie B. Pruitte, Jr., Navy Federal Credit Union
Simulation, on the other hand enables call centers to
perform staffing analysis in a framework of a model, that
allows all of the interrelationships between callers,
agents, skills, technology, call management algorithms
and techniques to be explicitly defined (Pegden,
Shannon, and Sadowski 1995). This framework ensures
the best staffing decisions and provides the analyst with
a virtual call center that can be tweaked to answer
questions about operational issues and even long-term
strategic business decisions. The real value of Erlangbased
calculations then comes in providing an initial
input data set required to feed a model.
2.2 OPERATIONAL TOOLS
Call centers are run today through Call Management
Systems (CMS), also known in some cases as
Workforce Management Systems (WFM's). These
systems not only do the grunt work of call handling and
monitoring, but also provide useful benefits in the call
forecasting and agent scheduling areas. Workforce
management systems are operational workhorses,
collecting data and providing detailed reports on how
the call center is performing. These systems constitute
the backbone of many medium and large call centers. In
the workforce management area, scheduling of agents is
the major driver. Unfortunately, many of the workforce
management systems still rely on Erlang calculations as
a means of providing staffing recommendations and, as
such, are subject to same limitations as that of Erlang
calculators.
WFM's are also limited in their predictive ability and
can rarely identify bottlenecks. Furthermore, they cannot
address business issues in the manner that simulation
can.
3 GENERAL INDUSTRY TRENDS
There is now an increasing industry trend by WFM
vendors to include simulation tools as a powerful analysis
weapon in their arsenal. This becomes a key differentiation
against the competition and offers an added
value in their services. Similarly, there is a complementary
upward trend of customers demanding that
WFM vendors include simulation in their analysis
methodologies while configuring WFM systems to suit
the unique needs of their call center. The combination of
these trends is a measure of the growing level of
acceptance of simulation in call-center technology.
The simulation industry is gearing up to meet this
demand. It recognizes that one of the biggest assets of
using a WFM is that it is a great source of good data that
a model would need in order to provide good results.
Not only are the data easily available, but they are stored
in repositories that can be accessed by simulation tools.
Advances in simulation technology have made it
possible to transfer credible historical and forecasted
data, such as call volumes and patterns, agent schedules,
and so forth, from these repositories into a simulation
model with little or no massaging. Efforts are under way
to provide a seamless interface to WFM systems not
only from the data entry viewpoint, but also on the
reporting side.
In addition, products built specifically for the callcenter
industry now make it extremely easy to construct
a model and also derive useful inferences from them.
Modular products with specialized constructs reduce
some of the baggage and clutter associated with generalpurpose
tools, thereby dramatically reducing the
learning curve. In the past what took specialized
knowledge, extensive training, and then usually weeks
and months to do with general-purpose tools, can now
be done in a few minutes or hours. Added is the capability
to embed call center sub-model deep within a
company’s supply chain model to study broader organizational
issues of strategic importance. This path
toward domain-specific, customizable, and scaleable
product lineage makes it easier for the analysts in the
call-center industry to embrace and derive benefit
rapidly from simulation.
There are several applications within the call-center
industry to which simulation provides a clear and compelling
value over other analysis techniques. Some
issues of critical importance to modern-day call centers
of all sizes and types are:
- Efficient call handling processes
- Service level
- Call center consolidation
- Skill-based routing
- Simultaneous queuing
- Customer abandonment patterns
- Call routing and overflow
- Messaging and call return
- Priority queuing
- Call transfer and agent conferencing
- Agent preferences and proficiency
- Agent schedules
Previously, using traditional methods, many of these
applications could never be analyzed. Many decisions
were made on a combination of gut-feel, raw experience,
and rudimentary calculators. Customers were then
subjected to disruption of service while these decisions
were enforced. Many poor decisions went unnoticed
until after the companies had paid the high price of lost
customers and a tarnished reputation. No customer
conscious company can afford to take such risks in this
competitive age.
Page
[1]
[2]
3
[4]
Next Page
|
