A call center is a service network in which agents provide telephone-based services. Customers who seek these services are delayed in tele-queues. This article summarizes an analysis of a unique record of call center operations. The data comprise a complete operational history of a small banking call center, call by call, over a full year. Taking the perspective of queueing theory, we decompose the service process into three fundamental components: arrivals, customer patience, and service durations. Each component involves different basic mathematical structures and requires a different style of statistical analysis. Some of the key empirical results are sketched, along with descriptions of the varied techniques required. Several statistical techniques are developed for analysis of the basic components. One of these techniques is a test that a point process is a Poisson process. Another involves estimation of the mean function in a nonparametric regression with lognormal errors. A new graphical technique is introduced for nonparametric hazard rate estimation with censored data. Models are developed and implemented for forecasting of Poisson arrival rates. Finally, the article surveys how the characteristics deduced from the statistical analyses form the building blocks for theoretically interesting and practically useful mathematical models for call center operations.

Our note 1 is dedicated to the Palm/Erlang-A Queue. This is the simplest practiceworthy queueing model, that accounts for customers ’ impatience while waiting. The model is gaining importance in support of the staffing of call centers, which is a central step in their Service-Engineering. We discuss computations of performance measures, both theoretical and software-based (via the 4CallCenter software). Then several examples of Palm/Erlang-A applications are presented, mostly motivated by and based on real call center data. Acknowledgements. The research of both authors was supported by ISF (Israeli Science Foundation) grants 388/99, 126/02 and 1046/04, by the Niderzaksen Fund and by the Technion funds for the promotion of research and sponsored research. 1 Parts of the text are adapted from [8], [15], [17] and [22]