A manager-friendly platform for simulation modeling and analysis of call center queueing systems

Call center operational performance is measured largely through queue times and customer abandonment rates, and thus managers have an acute need to understand how both management policies and stochastic factors affect these performance statistics. Simulation is an excellent vehicle for examining these relationships, but a lack of programming ability can be a barrier that prevents call center managers from making use of such models. To address this problem, we have developed a user-friendly Excel interface for a dynamic discrete event simulation model. The underlying model is a general queuing system for which analytical results are often unavailable, and the Excel interface enables managers to interactively specify a wide range of system parameters and analyze results, all without exposing them to the simulation model's components. Based on input from call center operations managers, we have also been able to utilize this framework to ask, and answer, some important empirical questions.