Addressing Arrival Rate Uncertainty in Call Center Workforce Management

Workforce management is a critical component of call center operations. Since labor costs are a major component of the total cost of operation efficient staff scheduling is critical. But because of uncertainty in arrival rates, efficient scheduling is very difficult. While there are many models in the literature that address call center scheduling, the majority of these models ignore the issue of arrival rate uncertainty and focus only on the stochastic variability of interarrival times given a known arrival rate. In this paper I summarize my research into the issue of arrival rate uncertainty and its impact on scheduling. I review empirical data from outsourced call centers that demonstrates the level of uncertainty present in many applications, and propose scheduling and staffing models that consider arrival rate uncertainty.