Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/45024

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Title
Modelling service levels in a call centre with an agent-based model
Author/Creator
Lewis, Bruce G.;  Herbert, Ric D.;  Chivers, William J.
Institution
The University of Newcastle. Faculty of Science & Information Technology, School of Design, Communication and Information Technology
Description
Emergency services call centres rely on rapid call processing time to provide assistance to the community. The role of the call centre is to gain sufficient and accurate information in a timely manner to pass to the despatch operators to facilitate such a response. In this paper we model the operation and performance of an emergency services call centre. Like all organisations, emergency services have limits to their budget and staffing. Call centre staff costs can be a significant proportion of the centre’s operating budget. So we focus on performance of the call centre through staff allocation and performance. We use the New South Wales Police Assistance Line (NSWPAL) as a case study for the emergency services segment of the call centre industry. This facility takes both urgent- and nonurgent calls from the community in different queues, each of which has a different service performance level objective. There are a number of metrics used to measure a call centre’s performance and many of these are related directly to the performance of those taking the calls. Overall, these individual performances emerge to metric such as the average speed of answer (ASA) and the service level. It is the latter which we model. Previously we created an agent based model of a single queue call centre [1]. In this paper we introduce a more complex model in the form of a single queue, multi-server model in which the individual processes and components of a call are modelled. Our model has an agent that manages the generation, allocation and recording of the calls and agents, Customer Service Representatives (CSR) to handle the calls, the call queue and the calls. The CSRs do not communicate with each other during the call taking process and are not directly involved in the staff allocation process. At this stage of modelling, all CSRs have the same performance characteristics and calls arrive at regular time intervals. Our results show the level of sensitivity of service level as the various times of a call’s components are varied and that different methods of calculating the service level can lead to inconsistent results.
Relation
5th International Conference on Information Technology and Applications (ICITA 2008). Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Information Technology and Applications (ICITA 2008) (Cairns, Qld 23-26 June, 2008) p. 426-430
Relation
http://icita2009.webs.com
Date
2008
Publisher
ICITA
Keyword(s)
agent-based model;  call centre;  emergency services;  Police Assistance Line
Resource Type
conference paper
Identifier
http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/45024
Identifier
ISBN:9780980326727
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"Modelling service levels in a call centre with an agent-based model"
 
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