Service Engineering of Human Tele-Queues: Empirically Based Stochastic Analysis of Telephone Call Centers

人工电话队列服务工程：基于经验的电话呼叫中心随机分析

• 批准号: 0223304
• 负责人: Lawrence Brown
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Pennsylvania
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2002
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2002-07-15 至 2003-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0223304&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Service; Engineering; Human; Tele; Queues

AbstractPI: Lawrence Brown (Proposal ID: 0223304)Title: Service Engineering of Human Tele-Queues: Empirically Based Stochastic Analysis of Telephone Call CentersA call center is a service network in which agents provide tele-services, here to be interpreted as either telephone-based services or, more generally, any online-service with customers and servers being remote from each other. Sound scientific principles are prerequisites for sustaining the complex socio-technical enterprise of the call center. The overall goal is to contribute to the theory that supports these principles and to the creation of new ones.The proposed research builds from an analysis of two unique records of call center operations. These contain complete call-by-call data for the operation over approximately one year of two call centers of different size and operational character. This data will be analyzed in order to understand the mathematical queueing and network characteristics of such centers as they actually operate. Special attention will be given to developing an understanding of the role of scale and efficiency in relation to such operations. The operational features of these two call centers will then be adapted into realistic mathematical models for their operations. On the basis of preliminary work already done, it is expected that these mathematical models will differ in important respects from those in current use for analyzing and predicting performance of such large-scale service operations. In particular, it is expected that new theory will be specifically developed to model the queueing characteristics of centers that operate in the high-volume high-efficiency domain.Call centers can be viewed naturally and usefully as queueing systems. The most widely used queueing model for a call center is the Erlang-C model, also denoted the M/M/S queue. The Erlang-C model is deficient as an accurate model of a call center in several respects. One of these is that it does not accommodate customers' impatience while waiting. The Erlang-C model also involves other assumptions such as Poisson arrival times and exponential service times. These will be tested against the data, and modified theory will be developed as needed. The statistical analysis will be derived according to the primitive elements of a call-center: system arrivals, queueing behavior, and services. The interactions of these primitives will then be analyzed, and alternate queueing models will be examined.

文章摘要PI：Lawrence Brown(提案ID：0223304)标题：人工远程排队的服务工程：电话呼叫中心的基于经验的随机分析呼叫中心是一个服务网络，其中代理提供远程服务，这里被解释为基于电话的服务，或者更一般地，客户和服务器彼此远离的任何在线服务。健全的科学原则是维持呼叫中心复杂的社会技术企业的先决条件。总体目标是为支持这些原则的理论做出贡献，并创造新的原则。拟议的研究建立在对呼叫中心运营的两个独特记录的分析基础上。这些数据包含两个不同规模和运营特征的呼叫中心在大约一年的时间内逐个呼叫的完整数据。将对这些数据进行分析，以便了解这些中心在实际运行时的数学排队和网络特征。将特别注意发展对规模和效率在这类行动中的作用的理解。然后，这两个呼叫中心的运营特征将被调整为现实的数学模型，以供其运营。在已经完成的初步工作的基础上，预计这些数学模型将在重要方面与目前用于分析和预测这种大规模服务操作的性能的数学模型有所不同。特别是，预计将专门开发新的理论来模拟在高容量高效领域中运营的中心的排队特性。呼叫中心可以被自然地和有用地视为排队系统。呼叫中心最广泛使用的排队模型是Erlang-C模型，也称为M/M/S排队。作为呼叫中心的准确模型，Erlang-C模型在几个方面都存在缺陷。其中之一是，它没有考虑到顾客在等待时的不耐烦。Erlang-C模型还包括其他假设，如泊松到达时间和指数服务时间。这些将根据数据进行测试，并将根据需要开发修改后的理论。统计分析将根据呼叫中心的基本要素得出：系统到达量、排队行为和服务。然后将分析这些原语的交互作用，并检查备用排队模型。