Staffing Call Centers with Uncertain Demand Forecasts: A Chance-Constrained Optimization Approach

Itai Gurvich
Itai Gurvich
[email protected]
Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60208
Search for more papers by this author
,
James Luedtke
James Luedtke
[email protected]
Industrial and Systems Engineering, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, Wisconsin 53706
Search for more papers by this author
,
Tolga Tezcan
Tolga Tezcan
[email protected]
Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801
Search for more papers by this author

Itai Gurvich

[email protected]

Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60208

Search for more papers by this author

James Luedtke

[email protected]

Industrial and Systems Engineering, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, Wisconsin 53706

Search for more papers by this author

Tolga Tezcan

[email protected]

Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801

Search for more papers by this author

Published Online:17 May 2010https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.1100.1173

Supplemental Material

mnsc.1100.1173-sm-ec.pdf (145 KB)

Cited by
- When to implement AI-assisted policies at warehouse?
  Computers & Industrial Engineering, Vol. 217
- A Proximal Difference-of-Convex Algorithm for Sample Average Approximation of Chance Constrained Programming
  Peng Wang,
  Rujun Jiang,
  Qingyuan Kong,
  Laura Balzano
  7 April 2025 | INFORMS Journal on Computing, Vol. 38, No. 1
- Staff scheduling in operations management
- Dynamic and Probabilistic Forecasting of Multimode Metro Passenger Flows: A Functional Data Analysis Approach
  Kai Wang,
  Fugee Tsung
  10 October 2025 | Transportation Science, Vol. 59, No. 6
- How to Staff When Customers Arrive in Batches
  Andrew Daw,
  Robert C. Hampshire,
  Jamol J. Pender
  12 November 2024 | Management Science, Vol. 71, No. 8
- Machine learning-based agent staffing under uncertainty: The case of a relay call center
  Expert Systems with Applications, Vol. 281
- Universally optimal staffing for Erlang-A queues facing uncertain arrival rates: The case of constraint satisfaction
  Operations Research Letters, Vol. 60
- Optimal Routing Under Demand Surges: The Value of Future Arrival Rates
  Jinsheng Chen; ,
  Jing Dong; ,
  Pengyi Shi
  4 September 2023 | Operations Research, Vol. 73, No. 1
- Distributionally robust optimization for minimizing price fluctuations in quota system
  Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Vol. 193
- Managing flexibility: optimal sizing and scheduling of flexible servers
  21 September 2024 | Queueing Systems, Vol. 108, No. 3-4
- Examining firefighter and police officers’ trust and service quality: What resources matter?
  16 January 2024 | Journal of Management & Organization, Vol. 30, No. 6
- Universally optimal staffing of Erlang-A queues facing uncertain arrival rates
  Operations Research Letters, Vol. 52
- A Practice-Oriented Overview of Call Center Workforce Planning
  Ger M. Koole,
  Siqiao Li
  4 July 2023 | Stochastic Systems, Vol. 13, No. 4
- Physician scheduling for emergency telemedicine across multiple facilities
  27 April 2023 | IISE Transactions on Healthcare Systems Engineering, Vol. 13, No. 3
- Applications of fluid models in service operations management
  5 November 2022 | Queueing Systems, Vol. 103, No. 1-2
- Adapted water wave optimization for integrated bank customer service representative scheduling
  24 June 2021 | International Journal of Production Research, Vol. 61, No. 1
- Achieving High Individual Service Levels Without Safety Stock? Optimal Rationing Policy of Pooled Resources
  Jiashuo Jiang,
  Shixin Wang,
  Jiawei Zhang
  28 October 2022 | Operations Research, Vol. 71, No. 1
- Tele-medicine question response service: Analysis of benefits and costs
  Omega, Vol. 111
- Joint chance-constrained staffing optimization in multi-skill call centers
  8 January 2022 | Journal of Combinatorial Optimization, Vol. 44, No. 1
- Optimal override policy for chemotherapy scheduling template via mixed-integer linear programming
  8 September 2021 | Optimization Letters, Vol. 16, No. 5
- Estimation of staff use efficiency: Evidence from the hospitality industry
  Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Vol. 178
- Optimal call center forecasting and staffing
  16 February 2022 | Probability in the Engineering and Informational Sciences, Vol. 36, No. 2
- Staffing for many-server systems facing non-standard arrival processes
  European Journal of Operational Research, Vol. 296, No. 3
- Intraday Scheduling with Patient Re-entries and Variability in Behaviours
  Minglong Zhou,
  Gar Goei Loke,
  Chaithanya Bandi,
  Zi Qiang Glen Liau,
  Wilson Wang
  10 March 2021 | Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, Vol. 24, No. 1
- Chance-constrained optimization under limited distributional information: A review of reformulations based on sampling and distributional robustness
  EURO Journal on Computational Optimization, Vol. 10
- A behavioral perspective on service center routing: The role of inertia
  8 August 2021 | Journal of Operations Management, Vol. 67, No. 8
- On a multistage discrete stochastic optimization problem with stochastic constraints and nested sampling
  12 June 2020 | Mathematical Programming, Vol. 190, No. 1-2
- Call Centre Shift Schedule Optimisation using Local Search Heuristics
- A simulation-based decomposition approach for two-stage staffing optimization in call centers under arrival rate uncertainty
  European Journal of Operational Research, Vol. 293, No. 3
- Appointment scheduling with a quantile objective
  Computers & Operations Research, Vol. 132
- Decision making under uncertain and dependent system rates in service systems
  European Journal of Operational Research, Vol. 291, No. 1
- Robust Optimization for Electricity Generation
  Haoxiang Yang,
  David P. Morton,
  Chaithanya Bandi,
  Krishnamurthy Dvijotham
  14 July 2020 | INFORMS Journal on Computing, Vol. 33, No. 1
- Proactive Customer Service: Operational Benefits and Economic Frictions
  Kraig Delana,
  Nicos Savva,
  Tolga Tezcan
  24 February 2020 | Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, Vol. 23, No. 1
- Optimal Routing under Demand Surges: The Value of Future Arrival Rates
  SSRN Electronic Journal, Vol. 35
- A survey on skill-based routing with applications to service operations management
  4 October 2020 | Queueing Systems, Vol. 96, No. 1-2
- Hazard rate estimation for call center customer patience time
  14 January 2020 | IISE Transactions, Vol. 52, No. 8
- Preventing undesirable behavior of intelligent machines
  Science, Vol. 366, No. 6468
- A cutting plane method for risk-constrained traveling salesman problem with random arc costs
  29 September 2018 | Journal of Global Optimization, Vol. 74, No. 4
- Two-stage stochastic days-off scheduling of multi-skilled analysts with training options
  17 December 2018 | Journal of Combinatorial Optimization, Vol. 38, No. 1
- Service System Design Under Information Uncertainty: Insights from an M/G/1 Model
  Juan Ma,
  Ying Tat Leung,
  Manjunath Kamath
  1 April 2019 | Service Science, Vol. 11, No. 1
- Robust Multiclass Queuing Theory for Wait Time Estimation in Resource Allocation Systems
  Chaithanya Bandi,
  Nikolaos Trichakis,
  Phebe Vayanos
  14 May 2018 | Management Science, Vol. 65, No. 1
- A Framework for Delivering Service Differentiation Through Operating Segments: Research Opportunities and Implementation Challenges
  29 December 2018
- Economies-of-Scale in Many-Server Queueing Systems: Tutorial and Partial Review of the QED Halfin--Whitt Heavy-Traffic Regime
  SIAM Review, Vol. 61, No. 3
- Achieving High Individual Service-Levels without Safety Stock? Optimal Rationing Policy of Pooled Resources
  SSRN Electronic Journal, Vol. 48
- Intraday Scheduling with Patient Re-Entries and Variability in Behaviours
  SSRN Electronic Journal, Vol. 116
- Robust heavy-traffic approximations for service systems facing overdispersed demand
  11 May 2018 | Queueing Systems, Vol. 90, No. 3-4
- To Wait or Not to Wait: Two-Way Functional Hazards Model for Understanding Waiting in Call Centers
  28 June 2018 | Journal of the American Statistical Association, Vol. 113, No. 524
- A two-stage stochastic program for multi-shift, multi-analyst, workforce optimization with multiple on-call options
  22 December 2017 | Journal of Scheduling, Vol. 21, No. 5
- Bayesian modeling of abandonments in ticket queues
  13 December 2018 | Naval Research Logistics (NRL), Vol. 65, No. 6-7
- Service Differentiation and Operating Segments: A Framework and an Application to After-Sales Services
  Jose A. Guajardo,
  Morris A. Cohen
  17 April 2018 | Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, Vol. 20, No. 3
- Exploiting Hidden Convexity in Queueing Networks: A Novel Approach to Optimal Control of Flows
  SSRN Electronic Journal, Vol. 5
- Bayesian Modeling of Abandonments in Ticket Queues
  SSRN Electronic Journal, Vol. 59
- Integer Programming Approaches for Appointment Scheduling with Random No-Shows and Service Durations
  Ruiwei Jiang,
  Siqian Shen,
  Yiling Zhang
  9 October 2017 | Operations Research, Vol. 65, No. 6
- A sequential statistics approach to dynamic staffing under demand uncertainty
- Staffing large-scale service systems with distributional uncertainty
  9 May 2017 | Queueing Systems, Vol. 87, No. 1-2
- Staffing and scheduling flexible call centers by two-stage robust optimization
  Omega, Vol. 72
- Mixed-Integer Rounding Enhanced Benders Decomposition for Multiclass Service-System Staffing and Scheduling with Arrival Rate Uncertainty
  Merve Bodur,
  James R. Luedtke
  8 June 2016 | Management Science, Vol. 63, No. 7
- Ambiguous Joint Chance Constraints Under Mean and Dispersion Information
  Grani A. Hanasusanto,
  Vladimir Roitch,
  Daniel Kuhn,
  Wolfram Wiesemann
  30 March 2017 | Operations Research, Vol. 65, No. 3
- Emergency medical services and beyond: Addressing new challenges through a wide literature review
  Computers & Operations Research, Vol. 78
- Two-stage chance-constrained staffing with agent recourse for multi-skill call centers
- Stochastic call center staffing with uncertain arrival, service and abandonment rates: A Bayesian perspective
  10 November 2016 | Naval Research Logistics (NRL), Vol. 63, No. 6
- A joint chance-constrained programming approach for call center workforce scheduling under uncertain call arrival forecasts
  Computers & Industrial Engineering, Vol. 96
- Rate-Based Daily Arrival Process Models with Application to Call Centers
  Boris N. Oreshkin,
  Nazim Réegnard,
  Pierre L’Ecuyer
  22 March 2016 | Operations Research, Vol. 64, No. 2
- Staffing and scheduling under nonstationary demand for service: A literature review
  Omega, Vol. 58
- Beta-Guaranteed Joint Service Levels
  SSRN Electronic Journal, Vol. 48
- Chance-constrained scheduling with recourse for multi-skill call centers with arrival-rate and absenteeism uncertainty
- Parametric Forecasting and Stochastic Programming Models for Call-Center Workforce Scheduling
  Noah Gans,
  Haipeng Shen,
  Yong-Pin Zhou,
  Nikolay Korolev,
  Alan McCord,
  Herbert Ristock
  17 July 2015 | Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, Vol. 17, No. 4
- Staffing Call Centers with Uncertain Arrival Rates and Co‐sourcing
  1 July 2015 | Production and Operations Management, Vol. 24, No. 7
- Comparison of Stochastic Programming Approaches for Staffing and Scheduling Call Centers with Uncertain Demand Forecasts
  17 April 2015
- Distributionally Robust Optimization for Scheduling Problem in Call Centers with Uncertain Forecasts
  15 December 2015
- Asymptotically optimal staffing of service systems with joint QoS constraints
  17 April 2014 | Queueing Systems, Vol. 78, No. 4
- Scaling and modeling of call center arrivals
- Dynamic Call Center Routing Policies Using Call Waiting and Agent Idle Times
  Wyean Chan,
  Ger Koole,
  Pierre L'Ecuyer
  13 August 2014 | Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, Vol. 16, No. 4
- Optimal capacity management and planning in services delivery centers
  Performance Evaluation, Vol. 80
- A branch-and-cut decomposition algorithm for solving chance-constrained mathematical programs with finite support
  22 May 2013 | Mathematical Programming, Vol. 146, No. 1-2
- A Branch-and-Cut Method for Dynamic Decision Making Under Joint Chance Constraints
  Minjiao Zhang,
  Simge Küçükyavuz,
  Saumya Goel
  17 January 2014 | Management Science, Vol. 60, No. 5
- On the modeling and forecasting of call center arrivals
- Stochastic Decision Making in Information Technology Services Delivery
  25 July 2012
- Robust Design and Control of Call Centers with Flexible Interactive Voice Response Systems
  Tolga Tezcan,
  Banafsheh Behzad,
  4 May 2012 | Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, Vol. 14, No. 3
- Staffing a call center with uncertain non-stationary arrival rate and flexibility
  24 May 2011 | OR Spectrum, Vol. 34, No. 3
- Workforce management based on forecasted demand
- The Design and Implementation of Large-Scale Call Center Management System
- Robust Design and Control of Call Centers with Flexible IVR Systems
  SSRN Electronic Journal, Vol. 56
- Operations in Financial Services—An Overview
  1 November 2010 | Production and Operations Management, Vol. 19, No. 6
- An Integer Programming and Decomposition Approach to General Chance-Constrained Mathematical Programs

Volume 56, Issue 7

July 2010

Pages iv-1215

Article Information

Supplemental Material

Metrics

Information

Received:May 11, 2009
Accepted:March 08, 2010
Published Online:May 17, 2010

Cite as

Itai Gurvich, James Luedtke, Tolga Tezcan, (2010) Staffing Call Centers with Uncertain Demand Forecasts: A Chance-Constrained Optimization Approach. Management Science 56(7):1093-1115.

https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.1100.1173

Keywords

PDF download

Available Issues

Available Issues

Available Issues

Available Issues

Available Issues

Available Issues

Available Issues

Available Issues

Available Issues

Staffing Call Centers with Uncertain Demand Forecasts: A Chance-Constrained Optimization Approach

Supplemental Material

Volume 56, Issue 7

Article Information

Supplemental Material

Metrics

Information

Cite as

Keywords

Sign Up for INFORMS Publications Updates and News