Minimizing average handling time in contact centers by introducing a new process: Rowan Support Desk case study

Quality of a call center performance is an important factor in insuring customer satisfaction. Customers, the "callers", want their requests solved quickly, permanently and to their satisfaction. Often, there are staff constraints, budget or cost limitation, and the Service Level Agreement (SLA) which is resource availability to accomplish a task within a deadline. The purpose of this research is to analyze feasible approaches to minimize the long-lasting open requests and enhance a call center's performance. Multiple challenges that a call center often faces in handling requests are studied to identify key bottlenecks in the process of handling requests. Rowan University support desk is used as a case study. The focus of this study is on over-extended unsolved requests under set of specific constraints. The following two alternative solutions were investigated and compared. One involves reorganizing the routing procedure, which would allow a ticket to be rerouted to the specialists. The other scenario investigates an increase in staff and efficiencies that would come with it. The research will show that with minimal effort in rerouting the unsolved tickets, we can decrease average handling time which simultaneously increases the total number of resolved tickets and minimize total processing time.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S. Engineering Management

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Year dc:date.available

2015

Author dc:creator

• Jafari, Niusha

Contributors dc:contributor

• Lalovic-Hand, Mira

• Call centers--Management; Customer services--Management
• Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering

Repository record dc:identifier

https://rdw.rowan.edu/etd/499

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:rdw.rowan.edu:etd-1498