Scenario Analysis within a Call Center Using Simulation

• Autor(a) principal: Bouzada, Marco Aurélio Carino
• Data de Publicação: 2009
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: JOSCM. Journal of Operations and Supply Chain Management
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.fgv.br/joscm/article/view/13936
• topic: Call center; Dimensioning; Simulation; Queue Theory.

This paper works on and presents the results of several analyses - scenario and sensitivity - made with the help of Simulation and focused on dimensioning questions of handling capacity in a large Brazilian call center. The objective is to measure the sensitivity of the call center's performance to potential modifications of critical variables. The bibliography related to the application of such tool in call centers is reviewed, and the way by which the problem is treated nowadays is described in detail. The methodology used to achieve this article objective involved a simulation model in the Arena Contact Center software, which worked as base case upon where the scenario and sensitivity analyses could be performed. This paper comes to the conclusion that Simulation is a tool perfectly adequate to its purpose as long as it could be able to show, for the studied call center, mainly that: (i) it is possible to reduce the operator contingent; (ii) fair variations on the demand pattern can impact too much the performance indicators; and (iii) it is possible to improve the service level if an aggregated handling format is adopted.