Forecasting Hourly Peak Call Volume for a Rural Electric Cooperative Call Center
✍ Scribed by Taeyoon Kim; Phil Kenkel; B. Wade Brorsen
- Book ID
- 102216230
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2011
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 354 KB
- Volume
- 31
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0277-6693
- DOI
- 10.1002/for.1226
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
ABSTRACT
This research forecasts peak call volume of a centralized after‐hours call center for rural electric cooperatives to help the call center determine staffing levels. A Gaussian copula is used to capture the dependence among non‐normal distributions. Using a centralized call center reduces costs by approximately 75% compared to having individual call centers at each cooperative. Adding cooperatives to the centralized call center is projected to further decrease costs per member. An out‐of‐sample forecasting exercise after the call center expanded validated the model's forecast that additional cooperatives could be added without a proportional increase in the peak number of calls. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.