A Simulation Study of Workforce Management for a Two-Stage Multi-Skill Customer Service Center

Abstract

This paper considers the parameter optimization of a two-stage multi-skill customer service center, which provides e-commerce services to customers and bears the major operating cost in hiring service agents. Based on the customer flow in the two-stage mixed queueing system, a simulation model is developed to determine the system performance of interest. We present a sensitivity analysis to achieve better savings in the staffing cost and waiting time at a guaranteed service level. A series of simulation experiments are conducted via an Arena simulation platform to figure out the optimal system configurations. The contribution of our works is to provide a decision-making tool for workforce managers to evaluate the performance of the studied customer service centers.

Keywords

• Workforce management
• Arena simulation
• queueing system
• customer service center
• sensitivity analysis