Telephone Call Centers: Tutorial, Review, and Research Prospects

TLDR

Telephone call centers are essential, economically significant, and sociotechnical systems where customer and employee interactions tightly link to performance, yet traditional operational models are valuable but limited. The paper reviews current research on call centers, highlights unresolved problems, and proposes promising future research directions. The authors provide a tutorial on call center operations and survey academic studies on their operational management.

Abstract

Telephone call centers are an integral part of many businesses, and their economic role is significant and growing. They are also fascinating sociotechnical systems in which the behavior of customers and employees is closely intertwined with physical performance measures. In these environments traditional operational models are of great value—and at the same time fundamentally limited—in their ability to characterize system performance. We review the state of research on telephone call centers. We begin with a tutorial on how call centers function and proceed to survey academic research devoted to the management of their operations. We then outline important problems that have not been addressed and identify promising directions for future research.