Systematic controller design to drive high-load call centers

Directory assistance services play an important role in the establishment of telephone calls, particularly business calls, today and will play an even more important role in the future. The majority of these services is provided by specialized call centers, namely DA call centers. Due to severe availability requirements and often due to very specific wishes on the part of the call center operators, the coordination of such a system is complex. This paper describes a new approach to synthesize coordination controllers using formal methods introduced by Ramadge and Wonham. The goal is on the one hand to significantly reduce the development effort, and further-through the exclusion of many potential error sources-to improve the quality and availability of the systems. The results achieved using this new approach are discussed on the basis of a prototypic implementation.