A novel agent scheduling approach for multi-skill call center

To now, agent scheduling for a multi-skill call center is still a unsolved problem. The deployment of multi-skill agents and the evaluation of service level are the most critical and difficult issues. Some related studies try to solve the problem utilizing heuristic algorithm supported by simulation analysis. However, since the simulation analysis is required for each round of heuristic calculation, the computing efficiency is too low to be useful in real practices. In this paper, a novel agent scheduling framework is proposed which consists of two interactive modules: (1) simulation module is used to derive the evaluation function that describes the relationship between the service performance and the key parameters, e.g. arrival rate and service rate. (2) A scheduling algorithm module is used to search out the optimal solution accordingly. This approach does not need the interaction between simulation and heuristic searching. As a result, the computing efficiency can be improved significantly.