Call Center Outsourcing: Coordinating Staffing Level and Service Quality
Call Center Outsourcing: Coordinating Staffing Level and Service Quality
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DOI：
10.1287/mnsc.1070.0820
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发表时间：
2008-02
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Z. Justin Ren;Yong-Pin Zhou
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Z. Justin Ren;Yong-Pin Zhou
在本文中，我们研究了外包供应链中的合同问题，该供应链由一个用户公司和一个为用户公司做外包工作的呼叫中心组成。我们将呼叫中心建模为一个带有客户放弃的G/G/s排队模型。每个呼叫都有潜在的收入，我们通过解决呼叫的百分比（实现的收入）来模拟呼叫中心的服务质量。呼叫中心做出两个战略决策：有多少代理人和付出多少努力来实现服务质量。我们感兴趣的是用户公司可以使用的合同，以诱导呼叫中心的工作人员和发挥努力的水平，是最佳的外包供应链（即，链协调）。首先分析了两种常用的合同：分段合同和按呼叫付费解决合同。我们发现，虽然他们可以协调的人员配备水平，由此产生的服务质量低于系统最优。然后，根据呼叫中心的工作的可观察性和可收缩性，我们提出了两个合同，可以协调人员配置和工作。这些契约表明，管理者在寻求呼叫中心外包时密切关注服务质量及其可收缩性。
In this paper, we study the contracting issues in an outsourcing supply chain consisting of a user company and a call center that does outsourcing work for the user company. We model the call center as a G/G/s queue with customer abandonment. Each call has a revenue potential, and we model the call center's service quality by the percentage of calls resolved (revenue realized). The call center makes two strategic decisions: how many agents to have and how much effort to exert to achieve service quality. We are interested in the contracts the user company can use to induce the call center to both staff and exert effort at levels that are optimal for the outsourcing supply chain (i.e., chain coordination). Two commonly used contracts are analyzed first: piecemeal and pay-per-call-resolved contracts. We show that although they can coordinate the staffing level, the resulting service quality is below system optimum. Then, depending on the observability and contractibility of the call center's effort, we propose two contracts that can coordinate both staffing and effort. These contracts suggest that managers pay close attention to service quality and its contractibility in seeking call center outsourcing.