Capacity sizing in the presence of repeated customer behavior: Dimensioning an inbound call center

This research develops a behavioral queuing model with feedback for a call center in which managers determine capacity sizing to maximize profit. In this paper, we explicitly take into account repeated customer behavior, which implies that the satisfied customers might return and have an impact on the arrival rate. For this case, customer satisfaction as perceived in terms of waiting time changes according to the capacity sizing.Then this research defines the staffing optimality of the call center as the number of agents maximizing the profit, including the income from customers and the costs from agents.Using a numerical analysis, this paper makes certain comparisons with the traditional models that do not consider repeated customer behavior. Furthermore, the results indicate how managers allocate the optimal staffing with various customer behavior mechanisms.