Using simulation to evaluate and improve performance of the contact center at Bluecross Blueshield of Tennessee

BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee is a not-for-profit organization in health care financing with more than 4,300 employees and has a service area covering ninety five counties in Tennessee. The company now has three customer service divisions and the regional division is the biggest customer service division of the company.The objectives of this study are to evaluate the performance of the contact center of the regional division and improve its performance through the simulation while still maintaining the standard service level required by the BlueCross BlueShield Association. The simulation model was built by using Pro Model 2002 to represent the operation of the contact center.The two performance measures - the service level and percent agent utilizations-were evaluated through the simulation models.The results from the simulation model showed that the service level of the current contact center operation was 93.74% to 98.50%, which exceeded the required service level-80% of incoming calls answered in 30 seconds - while the average percent utilization of agents was low (48% to 63%).The improvement models were then created by reducing the number of customer service representatives (CSRs). Based on the output of simulation models,the contact center can reduce the number of customer service repr sentatives by 20% while still achieving the required standard service level of the Association.

Grantor dc:publisher

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Author dc:creator

• Siriphongvuttikorn, Charat

Contributors dc:contributor

• Alp, Neslihan
• Wigal, Cecelia; Sharp, Scott
• College of Engineering and Computer Science

• Health insurance--Customer services--Tennessee
• Call center agents--Evaluation
• Management--Simulation methods
• BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee

Licence

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language dc:language

English, eng

Identifier

LB2369.2 .S574 2002

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholar.utc.edu:theses-2121