ESTABLISHING TELEPHONE-AGENT STAFFING LEVELS THROUGH ECONOMIC OPTIMIZATION

We developed and implemented an economic-optimization model for teleph one-agent staffing at L. L. Bean, a large telemarketer and mail-order catalog house for quality outdoor sporting goods and apparel. The staf fing levels we obtained with economic optimization were very different from those used by the company in the past, when staff size was deter mined by service-level criteria. For L. L. Bean, the resultant savings were estimated to amount to more than $500,000 per year. In the model , we used queuing theory, devised an expected total-cost objective fun ction, and accounted for retrials and potential caller abandonments th rough a regression model that related the abandonment rates to the tel ephone-service factor (percentage of calls answered within a predeterm ined time interval).