/pdf/the-theory-of-industrial-organization-19bejph0ej.pdf

The Theory of Industrial Organization

Call centers are an increasingly important part of today's business world, employing millions of agents across the globe and serving as a primary customer-facing channel for firms in many different industries. Call centers have been a fertile area for operations management researchers in several domains, including forecasting, capacity planning, queueing, and personnel scheduling. In addition, as telecommunications and information technology have advanced over the past several years, the operational challenges faced by call center managers have become more complicated. Issues associated with human resources management, sales, and marketing have also become increasingly relevant to call center operations and associated academic research.

In this paper, we provide a survey of the recent literature on call center operations management. Along with traditional research areas, we pay special attention to new management challenges that have been caused by emerging technologies, to behavioral issues associated with both call center agents and customers, and to the interface between call center operations and sales and marketing. We identify a handful of broad themes for future investigation while also pointing out several very specific research opportunities.

/pdf/the-modern-call-center-a-multi-disciplinary-perspective-on-2kcrgkbqth.pdf

The Modern Call Center: A Multi-Disciplinary Perspective on Operations Management Research

The Theory of Incentives I: The Principal-Agent Model

The Art and Science of Negotiation

https://iridia.ulb.ac.be/IridiaTrSeries/rev/IridiaTr2006-002r001.pdf

An Iterated Greedy heuristic for the sequence dependent setup times flowshop problem with makespan and weighted tardiness objectives

This paper studies service systems with gatekeepers who diagnose a customer problem and then either refer the customer to an expert or attempt treatment. The probability of successful treatment by a gatekeeper decreases as the problem's complexity increases. We determine the optimal staffing levels and referral rates that minimize the system costs, where these costs include staffing, customer waiting, and mistreatment costs. We also compare the optimal gatekeeper system (a two-tier system) with a system staffed with only experts (a direct-access system). By drawing upon recent results showing the asymptotic optimality of square-root staffing rules for stand-alone queues, we show that the optimal design of a two-tier system can be reduced to determining an optimal referral rate. It is well known in the queueing literature that pooling resources can create economic benefits. However, in a two-tier system, it is not clear how to take advantage of pooling. We find that when waiting costs are high, having a direct-access system is preferred unless the gatekeepers have a high skill level. If the gatekeepers' skills are high enough, it is optimal to achieve pooling economies at the first tier for even very high values of the waiting costs. Finally, we use numerical experiments to demonstrate that an easily computed referral rate from a deterministic system is a reasonable approximation for the optimal referral rate whenever a two-tier system is preferred to a direct-access system.

Staffing and Routing in a Two-Tier Call Center

An operational mechanism design for fleet management coordination in humanitarian operations

Fleet Coordination in Decentralized Humanitarian Operations Funded by Earmarked Donations

This paper revisits the role of prospect theory in explaining the pull-to-center effect that has been consistently observed in laboratory experiments addressing the newsvendor decision problem. Our results contrast with the extant literature, most of which uses a zero-profit reference point in prospect theory models. We use that same literature to establish the salience of mean demand in newsvendor decisions and show that, when one uses the outcome associated with that decision as a reference point, prospect theory cannot be ruled out as an explanation for the pull-to-center effect.

/pdf/on-the-consistency-between-prospect-theory-and-the-1umfymwq95.pdf

On the Consistency between Prospect Theory and the Newsvendor Pull-to-Center Effect

Problem Definition: In theory, all coordinating contracts are equivalent, however, the minimum order quantity (MOQ) contract is observed to be more popular in practice. We seek to understand whether decision makers as suppliers can perform better with the MOQ contract and, if so, why? We also study whether MOQ is indeed the preferred contract when subjects are allowed to choose among coordinating contracts.
Academic/Practical Relevance: The behavioral operations management literature has established a tradeoff between complex coordinating and simple non-coordinating contracts. This paper fills a gap in the literature by studying whether and how the coordinating MOQ contract attenuates this tradeoff.
Methodology: First, we test whether subjects in the role of suppliers given only a single contract type
can optimize its parameters. Second, we introduce treatments where the coordinating contracts subject to demand risk are hedged such that risk is eliminated. Third, we repeat two of the initial set of treatments
with a cognitive load survey and introduce single-variable versions of those treatments to reduce cognitive burden. Fourth, we introduce a novel experimental design where, in each period, subjects choose both the type of contract to offer and the parameters of that contract.
Results: We find that (i) subjects perform significantly better with the MOQ contract compared to other
coordinating contracts; (ii) this can be attributed to the risk inherent in and cognitive burden induced by
those contracts; and, (iii) subjects choose the MOQ contract more frequently over theoretically equivalent coordinating contracts.
Managerial Implications: We show that the tradeoff between efficiency and complexity can be mitigated by simpler yet efficient contracts. Hence, there is considerable benefit to identifying contractual mechanisms that ameliorate the adverse effects of complexity. This explains the prevalence of MOQ terms in supply contracts.

Why are minimum order quantity contracts popular in practice?: a behavioral investigation

This paper compares two modes for outsourcing the development of information services projects: single-sourcing (where one vendor handles all outsourced activities) and multisourcing (where multiple vendors handle those activities). We assess the relative efficacy of these two outsourcing modes by identifying the effects of three factors: task modularity, the extent of alignment between a (verifiable) performance metric and project revenue, and the extent to which project revenue is itself verifiable. We find that if tasks are modular then multisourcing strictly dominates single-sourcing—provided the verifiable performance metric and project revenue are not completely aligned. Yet if tasks are integrated, then the choice of sourcing mode is more nuanced: the best choice depends on trade-offs among the alignment between performance metric and project revenue, the verifiability of project revenue, and moral hazard. If the verifiable performance metric and project revenue are perfectly aligned, or if project revenue is completely verifiable, then firms prefer single-sourcing because it entails less moral hazard than does multisourcing. Comparative statistics for the effects of task interdependence costs and vendors’ risk aversion reveal that multisourcing (single-sourcing) should be preferred when there are interdependence costs (/when vendors are strongly risk averse)

https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7398&context=lkcsb_research

Sameer Hasija

Papers

Staffing and Routing in a Two-Tier Call Center

Fleet Coordination in Decentralized Humanitarian Operations Funded by Earmarked Donations

On the Consistency between Prospect Theory and the Newsvendor Pull-to-Center Effect

Why are minimum order quantity contracts popular in practice?: a behavioral investigation

Single sourcing versus multisourcing: The roles of output verifiability on task modularity