Author(s)

Xiangyun Kong, Xiuli Wang, Yue Xu

Corresponding Author

Xiuli Wang

Abstract

Staffing is the basis for scheduling in call center. The commonly used Erlang A model assumes that service time follows an exponential distribution, while the actual service time of some call centers is closer to a lognormal distribution. In order to determine more reasonable staffing when service time is fitted to a lognormal distribution, in this paper, discrete event simulation is used to solve the problem of the minimum number of agents under a certain service level constraint. Then, through the case application, the minimum number of agents per hour from 8:00 to 22:00 in a day is obtained. The change trend of the minimum number of agents with the number of calls is analyzed. This is of great reference value to the staffing of the call center.

Keywords

Call Center, Staffing, Discrete Event Simulation