A new method for estimating the real number of callers for call centre staffing optimisation

This paper deals with functional organisation of a call centre by adjusting the amount of human and technical resources such that the quality of service is satisfied while the costs of the resources are significantly reduced. If the call centre is not well designed, a great number of repeated requests occur, particularly in periods of peak traffic intensity. In such circumstances, the recorded data statistics give an unreal number of callers. This paper proposes a new method for estimating the real number of callers and the offered traffic using the general probability theory. Additionally we developed the two-level dynamic programming (DP) method for call centre staffing optimisation. Proposed method enables optimal allocation of available human resources by shifts such that the operation costs are significantly reduced.