Optimal Balanced Control for Call Centers

Tinbergen Institute Discussion Paper 10-013/4

36 Pages Posted: 20 Jan 2010

See all articles by Sandjai Bhulai

Sandjai Bhulai

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, School of Business and Economics

Taoying Farenhorst-Yuan

affiliation not provided to SSRN

Bernd Heidergott

affiliation not provided to SSRN

Dinard Van der Laan

Tinbergen Institute; VU University Amsterdam - Department of Econometrics and Operations Research

Date Written: January 19, 2010

Abstract

In this paper we study a challenging call center operation problem. The goal of our analysis is to identify an optimal policy for allocating tasks to agents. As a first step, we discuss promising randomized policies and use stochastic approximation for finding the optimal randomized policy when implemented via a Bernoulli scheme. As we will show in this paper, the performance of the call center can be improved if the randomized policy is implemented by a deterministic sequence satisfying some regularity conditions. Such sequences are called balanced and we will show that implementing randomized policies by balanced sequences provide an additional step in optimization and control. This motivates our new approach where we avoid the intermediate step of first finding an optimal randomized control and directly find the optimal balanced sequence for control of the call center via stochastic approximation.

Keywords: Call Center, Measure-Valued Differentiation, Balanced Sequence, Optimization

JEL Classification: C61, C63

Suggested Citation

Bhulai, Sandjai and Farenhorst-Yuan, Taoying and Heidergott, Bernd and Van der Laan, Dinard and Van der Laan, Dinard, Optimal Balanced Control for Call Centers (January 19, 2010). Tinbergen Institute Discussion Paper 10-013/4, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1539385 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1539385

Sandjai Bhulai (Contact Author)

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, School of Business and Economics ( email )

De Boelelaan 1105
Amsterdam, 1081HV
Netherlands

Taoying Farenhorst-Yuan

affiliation not provided to SSRN ( email )

Bernd Heidergott

affiliation not provided to SSRN

Dinard Van der Laan

VU University Amsterdam - Department of Econometrics and Operations Research ( email )

De Boelelaan 1105
1081 HV Amsterdam
Netherlands

Tinbergen Institute ( email )

Gustav Mahlerplein 117
Amsterdam, 1082 MS
Netherlands

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