Specialized versus Multi-skilled Workforce: A Newsboy Approach for Call Centre Resource Planning

In call centres, the advantage of recruiting multi-skilled workforce over specialized workforce is considered to be a useful strategy to cope with call volume uncertainty. Many researchers have developed models to identify optimal resource requirement, using queuing theory. In this article, we address the issue by exploring the resource planning problem as a variant of the classical newsboy problem. We consider a call centre with two service lines, where call volume in each line follows independent and normally distributed (IND) demand. The call centre can consider either proactive or reactive resource allocation policy. The optimal resource requirement is shown as a function of a critical ratio, similar to the classical newsboy critical ratio. Furthermore, this critical ratio determines whether optimal resource will increase or decrease with the increase in the variance in call volume. In case of multi-skilled resource, optimal resource depends on the critical ratio of less contributing service line. As the profit expression for multi-skilled resource is analytically intractable, sample based optimization is used to find the optimal expected profit. Finally, we compare the results from sample based optimization with analytical results.