Should We Wait Before Outsourcing? Analysis of a Revenue-Generating Blended Contact Center

References

• Adusumilli K , Hasenbein J (2010) Dynamic admission and service rate control of a queue. Queueing Systems 66(2):131–154.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Akşin Z , Harker P (1999) To sell or not to sell: Determining the trade-offs between service and sales in retail banking phone centers. J. Service Res. 2(1):19–33.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Akşin Z , De Véricourt F , Karaesmen F (2008) Call center outsourcing contract analysis and choice. Management Sci. 54(2):354–368.Link, Google Scholar
• Akşin Z , Ata B , Emadi S , Su C (2016) Impact of delay announcements in call centers: An empirical approach. Oper. Res. 65(1):242–265.Link, Google Scholar
• Akşin Z , Ata B , Emadi SM , Su C-L (2013) Structural estimation of callers’ delay sensitivity in call centers. Management Sci. 59(12):2727–2746.Link, Google Scholar
• Altman E (1999) Constrained Markov Decision Processes , vol. 7 (CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL).Google Scholar
• Armony M , Gurvich I (2010) When promotions meet operations: Cross-selling and its effect on call center performance. Manufacturing Service Oper. Management 12(3):470–488.Link, Google Scholar
• Armony M , Plambeck E , Seshadri S (2009) Sensitivity of optimal capacity to customer impatience in an unobservable M/M/s queue (why you shouldn’t shout at the DMV). Manufacturing Service Oper. Management 11(1):19–32.Link, Google Scholar
• Bassamboo A , Harrison J , Zeevi A (2006) Design and control of a large call center: Asymptotic analysis of an LP-based method. Oper. Res. 54(3):419–435.Link, Google Scholar
• Bhulai S , Koole G (2003) A queueing model for call blending in call centers. IEEE Trans. Automatic Control 48(8):1434–1438.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Brown L , Gans N , Mandelbaum A , Sakov A , Shen H , Zeltyn S , Zhao L (2005) Statistical analysis of a telephone call center: A queueing-science perspective. J. Amer. Statist. Assoc. 100(469):36–50.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Byers R , So K (2007) Note—A mathematical model for evaluating cross-sales policies in telephone service centers. Manufacturing Service Oper. Management 9(1):1–8.Link, Google Scholar
• Chevalier P , Van den Schrieck J (2008) Optimizing the staffing and routing of small-size hierarchical call centers. Production Oper. Management 17(3):306–319.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Cui S , Veeraraghavan S , Wang J , Zhang Y (2018) In-queue observation and abandonment. Preprint, submitted December 5, https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3290868.Google Scholar
• Deslauriers A , L’Ecuyer P , Pichitlamken J , Ingolfsson A , Avramidis A (2007) Markov chain models of a telephone call center with call blending. Comput. Oper. Res. 34(6):1616–1645.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Emadi S , Swaminathan J (2018) Customer learning in call centers from previous waiting experiences. Oper. Res. 66(5):1433–1456.Google Scholar
• Gans N , Zhou Y (2003) A call-routing problem with service-level constraints. Oper. Res. 51(2):255–271.Link, Google Scholar
• Gans N , Zhou Y (2007) Call-routing schemes for call-center outsourcing. Manufacturing Service Oper. Management 9(1):33–50.Link, Google Scholar
• Green L , Kolesar P (1991) The pointwise stationary approximation for queues with nonstationary arrivals. Management Sci. 37(1):84–97.Link, Google Scholar
• Güneş E , Akşin O (2004) Value creation in service delivery: Relating market segmentation, incentives, and operational performance. Manufacturing Service Oper. Management 6(4):338–357.Link, Google Scholar
• Güneş E , Akşin O , Örmeci E , Özden S (2010) Modeling customer reactions to sales attempts: If cross-selling backfires. J. Service Res. 13(2):168–183.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Gurvich I , Perry O (2012) Overflow networks: Approximations and implications to call center outsourcing. Oper. Res. 60(4):996–1009.Link, Google Scholar
• Gurvich I , Armony M , Maglaras C (2009) Cross-selling in a call center with a heterogeneous customer population. Oper. Res. 57(2):299–313.Link, Google Scholar
• Harrison J , Zeevi A (2005) A method for staffing large call centers based on stochastic fluid models. Manufacturing Service Oper. Management 7(1):20–36.Link, Google Scholar
• Hasija S , Pinker E , Shumsky R (2008) Call center outsourcing contracts under information asymmetry. Management Sci. 54(4):793–807.Link, Google Scholar
• Jennings O , Mandelbaum A , Massey W , Whitt W (1996) Server staffing to meet time-varying demand. Management Sci. 42(10):1383–1394.Link, Google Scholar
• Jouini O , Dallery Y , Nait-Abdallah R (2008) Analysis of the impact of team-based organizations in call center management. Management Sci. 54(2):400–414.Link, Google Scholar
• Koçağa Y , Ward A (2010) Admission control for a multi-server queue with abandonment. Queueing Systems 65(3):275–323.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Koçağa YL , Armony M , Ward AR (2015) Staffing call centers with uncertain arrival rates and co-sourcing. Production Oper. Management 24(7):1101–1117.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Koole G (2013) Call Center Optimization (MG Books, Amsterdam).Google Scholar
• Koole G , Nielsen BF , Nielsen TB (2012) First in line waiting times as a tool for analysing queueing systems. Oper. Res. 60(5):1258–1266.Link, Google Scholar
• Legros B , Jouini O , Koole G (2017) A uniformization approach for the dynamic control of queueing systems with abandonments. Oper. Res. 66(1):200–209.Link, Google Scholar
• Lerzan Ö , Akşin Z (2010) Revenue management through dynamic cross selling in call centers. Production Oper. Management 19(6):742–756.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Lu Y , Musalem A , Olivares M , Schilkrut A (2013) Measuring the effect of queues on customer purchases. Management Sci. 59(8):1743–1763.Link, Google Scholar
• Mandelbaum A , Zeltyn S (2007) Service engineering in action: The Palm/Erlang-a queue, with applications to call centers. Spath D, Fähnrich K-P, eds. Advances in Services Innovations (Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg), 17–45.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Mandelbaum A , Zeltyn S (2009) Staffing many-server queues with impatient customers: Constraint satisfaction in call centers. Oper. Res. 57(5):1189–1205.Link, Google Scholar
• Pang G , Perry O (2014) A logarithmic safety staffing rule for contact centers with call blending. Management Sci. 61(1):73–91.Link, Google Scholar
• Puterman M (1994) Markov Decision Processes (John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, NJ).Crossref, Google Scholar
• Ren Z , Zhou Y (2008) Call center outsourcing: Coordinating staffing level and service quality. Management Sci. 54(2):369–383.Link, Google Scholar
• Robbins T , Medeiros D , Harrison T (2010). Does the Erlang C model fit in real call centers? Proc. 2010 Winter Simulation Conf. (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Piscataway, NJ), 2853–2864.Google Scholar
• Schrieck J , Akşin Z , Chevalier P (2014) Peakedness-based staffing for call center outsourcing. Production Oper. Management 23(3):504–524.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Ülkü S , Hydock C , Cui S (2020) Making the wait worthwhile: Experiments on the effect of queueing on consumption. Management Sci. 66(3):1149–1171.Google Scholar
• Veeraraghavan S , Xiao L , Zhang H (2018) Impatience and learning in queues. Working paper, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.Google Scholar
• Whitt W (2004) Efficiency-driven heavy-traffic approximations for many-server queues with abandonments. Management Sci. 50(10):1449–1461.Link, Google Scholar
• Whitt W (2006) Staffing a call center with uncertain arrival rate and absenteeism. Production Oper. Management 15(1):88–102.Crossref, Google Scholar
• Yao J (2016) Asymptotic analysis of service systems with congestion-sensitive customers. PhD thesis, Columbia University, New York.Google Scholar
• Zeltyn S , Mandelbaum A (2005) Call centers with impatient customers: Many-server asymptotics of the M/M/n+ G queue. Queueing Systems 51(3–4):361–402.Crossref, Google Scholar