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Title: Call Center Arrivals: When to Jointly Forecast Multiple Streams?

Journal Article · · Production and Operations Management
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1111/poms.12888· OSTI ID:2251521
 [1];  [2];  [3]
  1. Gies College of Business, University of Illinois at Urbana‐Champaign, Champaign, Illinois, 61820, USA
  2. Industrial and Systems Engineering, University of Wisconsin‐Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, 53706, USA
  3. Innovation and Information Management, Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
+ Show Author Affiliations

We consider call centers that have multiple (potentially inter‐dependent) demand arrival streams. Workforce management of such labor intensive service systems starts with forecasting future arrival demand. We investigate the question of whether and when to jointly forecast future arrivals of the multiple streams. We first develop a general statistical model to simultaneously forecast multi‐stream arrival rates. The model takes into account three types of inter‐stream dependence. We then show with analytical and simulation studies how the forecasting benefits of the multi‐stream forecasting model vary by the type, direction, and strength of inter‐stream dependence. In particular, we find that it is beneficial to simultaneously forecast multi‐stream arrivals (instead of separately forecasting each stream), when there exists inter‐stream lag dependence among daily arrival rates. Empirical studies, using two real call center datasets further demonstrate our findings, and provide operational insights into how one chooses forecasting models for multi‐stream arrivals.

Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
Grant/Contract Number:
DMS‐1106912
OSTI ID:
2251521
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1440365
Journal Information:
Production and Operations Management, Journal Name: Production and Operations Management Vol. 28 Journal Issue: 1; ISSN 1059-1478
Publisher:
SAGE PublicationsCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
Country unknown/Code not available
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 3 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

References (15)

Short interval forecasting of emergency phone call (911) work loads journal May 1985
Statistical Analysis of a Telephone Call Center: A Queueing-Science Perspective journal March 2005
Modeling and forecasting call center arrivals: A literature survey and a case study journal July 2016
A Comparison of Univariate Time Series Methods for Forecasting Intraday Arrivals at a Call Center journal February 2008
The root–unroot algorithm for density estimation as implemented via wavelet block thresholding journal January 2009
Parametric Forecasting and Stochastic Programming Models for Call-Center Workforce Scheduling journal October 2015
Modeling Daily Arrivals to a Telephone Call Center journal July 2004
Interday Forecasting and Intraday Updating of Call Center Arrivals journal July 2008
Are Call Center and Hospital Arrivals Well Modeled by Nonhomogeneous Poisson Processes? journal July 2014
On the estimation of the true demand in call centers with redials and reconnects journal October 2015
Forecasting Call Center Arrivals: Fixed-Effects, Mixed-Effects, and Bivariate Models journal February 2013
Telephone Call Centers: Tutorial, Review, and Research Prospects journal April 2003
The Modern Call Center: A Multi-Disciplinary Perspective on Operations Management Research journal November 2007
Density Forecasting of Intraday Call Center Arrivals Using Models Based on Exponential Smoothing journal March 2012
Bayesian Forecasting of an Inhomogeneous Poisson Process With Applications to Call Center Data journal December 2007

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