A Comparative Analysis of Waiting Time Routing Rule for Queue Reduction in Call Center

Abstract

Satisfying customers need has become an inevitable phenomenon for businesses to survive in this high competitive era. The persistent complaints of waiting queue by customers have continuously posed a threat to call centres globally. Call centres are an important function of most companies’ day to day business activities. They are often the link between a company and its customers and hugely impact the customer’s perspective or point of view of a company. The queue experienced by customers at call centres is increasingly becoming alarming as many customers are irritated by the long time spent on the queue before their calls are been answered. It is imperative that an investigation be carried out into what criteria are been used to route calls to any particular call centre agent at any given time and how average handling time influences waiting queues at call centres. It is important to conduct a comparative analysis to evaluate existing routing rules for waiting time rules to determine the optimal among the waiting time rule. This study used a collection of java programs to simulate existing rule for waiting time routing rules. The JAVA program evaluator evaluates each of the waiting time routing rules using the call canter’s raw data, collected from the data logging system of Global  Communications, one of the biggest telecommunication company in Nigeria.  The study simulated four rules, Java program were developed for each of the four routing rules since their procedure varies from one another. The result from our simulation was able to determine the optimal rule among the existing waiting time routing rules.

Keywords: Call center, Queuing system, Routing rules, Average Speed of Answer