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Forecasting Hourly Peak Call Volume for a Rural Electric Cooperative Call Center
Author(s) -
Kim Taeyoon,
Kenkel Phil,
Brorsen B. Wade
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
journal of forecasting
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.543
H-Index - 59
eISSN - 1099-131X
pISSN - 0277-6693
DOI - 10.1002/for.1226
Subject(s) - staffing , center (category theory) , call management , copula (linguistics) , call control , econometrics , statistics , computer science , business , telecommunications , economics , mathematics , management , chemistry , crystallography
ABSTRACT This research forecasts peak call volume of a centralized after‐hours call center for rural electric cooperatives to help the call center determine staffing levels. A Gaussian copula is used to capture the dependence among non‐normal distributions. Using a centralized call center reduces costs by approximately 75% compared to having individual call centers at each cooperative. Adding cooperatives to the centralized call center is projected to further decrease costs per member. An out‐of‐sample forecasting exercise after the call center expanded validated the model's forecast that additional cooperatives could be added without a proportional increase in the peak number of calls. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.