Title: Modelling service levels in a call centre with an agent-based model

Authors: Bruce G. Lewis, Ric D. Herbert, William J. Chivers

Addresses: School of Design, Communication and Information Technology, University of Newcastle, Australia. ' School of Design, Communication and Information Technology, University of Newcastle, Australia. ' School of Design, Communication and Information Technology, University of Newcastle, Australia

Abstract: Emergency services call centres rely on rapid call processing time to provide assistance to the community. The role of the call centre is to gain sufficient and accurate information in a timely manner to pass to the despatch operators to facilitate such a response. This paper is one step in building an agent-based model of a multi-queue emergency services call centre to generate practices that lead to better customer service level performance at reduced costs through more efficient resource allocation. In this paper, the authors model the operation of a single queue call centre and examine the service level performance parameter. The authors| results show the sensitivity of service level as call and agent parameters are varied and that different methods of calculating the service level can lead to differing results.

Keywords: agent-based modelling; multi-queue call centres; emergency services; Police Assistance Line; information technology; information management; agent-based systems; multi-agent systems; MAS; resource allocation; service levels.

DOI: 10.1504/WRSTSD.2010.032339

World Review of Science, Technology and Sustainable Development, 2010 Vol.7 No.1/2, pp.2 - 12

Published online: 31 Mar 2010 *

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