Practice Summary: Henkel Uses Analytics to Improve Call Center Performance

This article presents a customized decision support system for labor allocation at Henkel Corporation’s Loctite adhesives call center, which mainly serves business-to-business customers who use Loctite adhesives to bond parts during manufacturing. The project includes an analysis of call center data, a simulation model that captures nuances of its operations, and a metamodel that generates optimal server utilization targets. The system, which projects performance on an hour-by-hour basis, maintains flexibility when assigning staff. Its use has decreased caller abandonment rates from 4.26% to 2.83% without increasing agent labor costs.

History: This paper was refereed.