Using Business Intelligence for Operational Decision-Making in Call Centers

This paper proposes an operational business intelligence system for call centers. Using data collected from a large U.S. insurance company, the authors demonstrate a decision tree based solution to help the company achieve excellence through improved service levels. The initial results from this study provide insight into the factors affecting this firm’s call center service levels, and the solution developed in this paper provides two distinct advantages to managers. First, it enables them to identify key factors and the role they play in determining service levels. Second, a sliding window approach is proposed which allows managers to see the effects of resource reallocation on service levels on an on-going basis.