Computers in Industry 55 (2004) 5371

From the customer to the rm: evaluating generic service process designs for incoming customer requests
Michael Zapf*
Department of Information Systems 1, University of Mannheim, Schloss, D-68131 Mannheim, Germany Received 12 March 2003; received in revised form 25 October 2003; accepted 25 October 2003 Available online 4 June 2004

Abstract In this paper, generic service process designs are presented for handling customer requests within a communication center. The process characteristics which are relevant in this domain are the level of difculty (standard versus special requests) and the communication channel (synchronous versus a-synchronous requests). The design dimensions are task allocation to generalists and specialists, front-ofce and back-ofce role and degree of integration of synchronous and a-synchronous requests. The process designs are evaluated within an experimental simulation study with empirical data from a car rental company. The analysis shows strengths and weaknesses of the process designs under different conditions. Based on these results a model of competing effects is developed which helps to understand the complex dependencies within service process designs. # 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Business process design; Service processes; Customer interaction; Inbound communication center; Business process simulation

1. Introduction The direct contact between customer and rm is more and more critical for business success. A successful interaction helps to establish and strengthen a close relationship to the customer whereas poor performance often leads to the loss of customers (e.g. [1,2]). Therefore it is important to design appropriate interaction processes which allow an effective and efcient handling of customer requests. The objective of this paper is to derive and evaluate generic service process designs within communication centers. This analysis helps to understand the relevant
* Present address: Ottmannsreuth 23, D-95473 Creussen, Germany. Tel.: 49-929-918718; fax: 49-929-918719. E-mail addresses: michael.zapf@rehau.com, zapf@bwl.uni-mannheim.de (M. Zapf).

design dimensions and the characteristics of generic process designs which are used in practice. First relevant process characteristics for handling incoming customer requests are identied. The characteristics which are relevant in this domain are the level of difculty (standard versus special requests) and the communication channel (synchronous versus a-synchronous requests). The design dimensions are task allocation to generalists and specialists, frontofce and back-ofce role and degree of integration of synchronous and a-synchronous requests. Based on these dimensions generic service process designs are derived and evaluated within a simulation study. For the experiments empirical data from a car rental company is used and strengths and weaknesses of the process designs are shown under different conditions. Based on these results a model of competing effects is nally developed which helps to understand

0166-3615/$ see front matter # 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.compind.2003.10.009

54

M. Zapf / Computers in Industry 55 (2004) 5371

the complex dependencies within service process designs.

2. A brief literature survey The following section gives a brief survey of the relevant literature. Especially those sources are included which deal with the evaluation of generic business processes designs but also other contributions which give normative statements about how business processes should be designed. Many approaches which deal with the design of business processes trace back to Hammer et al. [3], who presented some general business process designs and describe design guidelines but did not give evidence for their recommendations. Refs. [46] evaluate some of these designs with queuing theory respectively linear programming. Because of the limitation of these methods concerning the modeling complexity, only simple designs have been analyzed under strong restrictions. Our approach uses discrete event simulation to overcome these restrictions and allows therefore the evaluation of process designs close to reality. In this context also some interesting contributions should be mentioned which present methods to reengineer business processes on an analytical base like [710] or [11]. But these approaches do not address the specic requirements for customer interaction processes within communication centers. The coordination theory from Thompson [12] is an important source for the deduction of design guidelines for business processes. Thompson differentiates between (1) reciprocal, (2) sequential and (3) pooled interdependencies within an organization and recommends to build organizational units according to interdependencies (1) and (2). Refs. [1315] use coordination theory as basis for deriving business process typologies and design methods. In this paper, coordination theory is used to interpret some of the experimental results. Basic knowledge to understand the efciency of process designs comes also from queueing theory. Here especially the pooling effect has to be mentioned which states that bigger resource groups lead to smaller waiting times and therefore to a better process performance (e.g. [1618]). This general statement

reects the enhancement of resource groups which are assigned to one task each. Within service processes multiple resource groups are assigned to multiple tasks. This complex dependencies will be analyzed for generic service process designs in the following.

3. The conceptual framework: generic service process designs Within a communication center two basic activities have to be performed in order to handle incoming customer requests successfully.  Classify incoming request: accept request and if necessary forward it to a suitable qualified employee.  Handle request: give required information or make the necessary arrangements dependent on the customer needs. The classifying activity is used to partition the overall request volume and provide separate process versions and resources for each partition (e.g., [19,20]). In practice the request volume is often partitioned according to specialization and communication reasons. Therefore we distinguish between the design dimensions qualication-mixture and communication-mixture [21].1 Since incoming customer requests deal with varying topics and have different levels of difculty they can be divided up into different request types. Each request type has its own qualication requirements. Our generic designs for the qualication-mixture dimension distinguish between two types: standard and special requests [20,22]. Standard requests deal for example with the processing of simple transactions, the modication of customer data or general enterprise or product information. They are normally handled by employees (agents) with basic knowledge. These agents will be called generalists. Some other requests refer to difcult technical problems, extensive consultations or complaints. They are called special requests and can only be handled by specialists who have specic, in-depth knowledge or special
The dimensions and generic designs have been discussed in interviews with communication center professionals who have several years of experience in this domain.
1

M. Zapf / Computers in Industry 55 (2004) 5371 Table 1 Activities and agent groups Group Activity Two-level Back-office One-level Generalist group Classify All standard All special Syn. Standard Syn. Special All standard All special Handle All standard All special Syn. standard All standard Asyn. standard Asyn. special All standard All special Specialist group Classify Handle

55

Asyn. Standard All special All standard All special

syn.: Synchronous; asyn.: a-synchronous.

skills. The main design question for the qualicationmixture is: what is the appropriate mixture of generalists and specialists for handling a given volume of standard and special requests? The deployment of different communication channels like phone, e-mail, fax or chat lead to another type of process partitioning according to the channel which is used by the customer. In this area we distinguish between synchronous and a-synchronous channels which can both be used for standard and special requests. Synchronous communication takes place if all parties are communicating with each other at the same time (e.g., phone or chat). E-mail and fax are examples for a-synchronous communication channels, where the communication partners do not need to get in contact at the same time and longer time intervals pass by between single communication steps. The assignment of requests from a particular channel to the suitable agent is the main design question in the communication-mixture dimension where an (a) integration or (b) separation of different communication channels is possible. Integration means that agents handle both synchronous and a-synchronous requests. Within the separation of channels different agent groups will be established for synchronous and asynchronous media. 3.1. Qualication-mixtures with integrated communication channels The generic service designs with integrated communication channels are characterized by the assignment of process activities (classify, handle) to agent groups (generalists, specialists) for each request type. Three different assignments are presented in Table 1 and

named as two-level, back-ofce and one-level design. The details of each design is presented below. In every design agents handle both synchronous and a-synchronous requests according to their arrival time. If more requests are in the queue synchronous request will be prioritized but incoming synchronous requests do not interrupt the processing of a-synchronous requests. Within the classical two-level design which is often used in practice the internal communication structure is divided up into a rst and a second level (Fig. 1).2 Generalists accept all incoming requests. Standard requests are directly handled by the accepting generalist in the rst level. Special requests are forwarded to a specialist agent in the second level. In the case of complex tasks this design will be expanded with further levels in practice. The back-ofce design contrasts with a stronger distinction between synchronous and a-synchronous communication. Generalists handle only synchronous requests in the front ofce whereas specialists classify and handle all a-synchronous requests additional to their normal workload of special requests in the backofce (Fig. 2). The strongest integration of qualication groups is realized within the one-level design. In this design rst and second level (or front ofce and back-ofce) will
The service process designs have been modeled as Petri nets [30] with additional communication center specific symbols. The telephone symbol next to a place means that this place may contain synchronous requests. The letter symbol next to a place means that this place may contain a-synchronous requests. Some places may contain bot synchronous and a-synchronous requests. In this section we focus on the process structure and do not present specific markings. The markings for our case study are discussed in Section 5.
2

56

M. Zapf / Computers in Industry 55 (2004) 5371

Fig. 1. Two-level design.

Fig. 2. Back-ofce design.

not be distinguished. Generalists and specialists are both able to classify and handle all types of requests (Fig. 3). Since most specialists are more expensive than generalists, requests are primarily assigned to a free generalist (priority 1). Only if no generalist is available the request will be assigned to a specialist (priority 2). 3.2. Qualication-mixtures with separated communication channels In the preceding section the process designs twolevel, back-ofce and one-level have been presented with integrated communication channels. In order to achieve separated channels additional agent groups have to be built. In the two-level design two groups generalists 1 and specialists 1 will be established for synchro-

nous requests and two additional groups generalists 2 and specialists 2 will be entrusted with asynchronous requests (Fig. 4). The routing remains the same as shown in Fig. 1. Since in the back-ofce design generalists handle only synchronous requests there is no difference between integrated and separated channels in the front ofce (Fig. 2). In the back-ofce an additional group has to be dened for separated communication channels, so that synchronous requests are handled by the group specialists 1 and a-synchronous requests by the group specialists 2.3

The back-office design and the 1-level design can be easily derived from Figs. 2 and 3. These designs are not presented as figures for reasons of space.

M. Zapf / Computers in Industry 55 (2004) 5371

57

Fig. 3. One-level design.

Fig. 4. Two-level design with separated communication channels.

58

M. Zapf / Computers in Industry 55 (2004) 5371

For the separated version of the one-level design four groups (generalists 1, generalists 2, specialists 1, specialists 2) have to be built similar to the two-level pattern. The basic routing strategy remains the same as shown in Fig. 3.

or letter are used by customers. It is expected that especially e-mail communication gets even more important for Car Rental Inc. in the future.

5. Constructing the simulation models 4. The research site: Car Rental Inc. Our research site was an organization which we call Car Rental Inc. in order to protect its anonymity. The business of Car Rental Inc. is renting automobiles and trucks to both business and private customers. For incoming customer requests the company has established a communication center which offers different types of services for the phases pre-sales, sales and after-sales. We identied the relevant tasks and classied them regarding the level of difculty into standard and special requests (Table 2). Standard requests comprise the tasks information, consulting and reservation during the pre-sales and sales phase. These tasks require general knowledge about the car eet and the current price list and can be performed by generalists. During the after-sales phase customers need contact persons for service tasks, emergency help and complaint handling. These requests represent pressing problems and do require special professional and social skills on the agent side. Therefore these tasks are classied as special requests which have to be handled by specialists. Incoming requests arrive from the customer through different communication channels. Most of the requests are phone calls (synchronous communication), but also a-synchronous channels like fax, e-mail Since the communication center domain is extremely dynamic most of the parameters are non-deterministic with random distributions. Therefore for every generic process design from Section 3 a stochastic discrete event simulation model has been created with the high-level simulator ARENA which is based on the SIMAN simulation language [23]. Some model parts have been created with the call center specic extension Call$im [24], other parts have been implemented through individual routines. With these tools it was possible (a) to build the computer models in relative short time and (b) to obtain a good simulation performance by using a fast simulation language. Since the basic process logic has already been discussed in Section 3 we describe in the following specic details of the implemented service process designs. The single subjects of this section are modeling incoming requests, request classication and handling, performance measures and the assignment of agent resources to agent groups. 5.1. Incoming requests and waiting tolerance Customer requests arrive with non-deterministic intervals at Car Rental Inc., so the arrival rate is modeled as stochastic Poisson-distribution which is often suggested in literature for comparable processes (e.g. [4,6,23,25,26]). The average volume of synchronous requests, which is required as input parameter for this distribution, has been derived empirically from the output of the ACD (automatic call distribution) system from Car Rental Inc. Based on one typical week without extreme work loads an average request volume of 3023 requests per day has been determined. This volume contains 2579 standard calls and 444 special calls. The request volume of a-synchronous requests has been derived from the overall request volume per month which leads to 100 standard and 90 special requests per day.

Table 2 Task classication for ABC (Car Rental Inc.) Phases Pre-sales Pre-sales Sales After-sales After-sales After-sales Tasks Information Consulting Reservation Service Emergency help Handle complaints Level of difficulty Low Low Low High High High Task classification Standard request Standard request Standard request Special request Special request Special request

M. Zapf / Computers in Industry 55 (2004) 5371

59

Fig. 5. Call abandonment process for synchronous requests.

In the case of synchronous requests customers do not wait for an agent as long as you like but only for a particular time period. If calls are in the waiting queue for a longer time the customer hangs up (Fig. 5). We call this period the waiting tolerance which is determined by the customers preferences and his current situation. Since the ACD system does not log the waiting tolerance we use an estimate from Car Rental Inc. experts which results in an average waiting tolerance of 1:00 min per customer request. The variation of the waiting tolerance between single requests is reected by using the exponential distribution for this parameter. After hanging up some customers re-dial in order to get a free agent. The part of re-dialers is represented by the percentage of re-dialing. The parameter time between dial attempts denes the time interval between hanging up and re-dialing and is also supposed as exponential distributed. Commu-

nication center experts estimated 75% percentage of re-dialing and an average time between dial attempts of 0:06 min. The waiting tolerance and re-dial process has also modeled for calls which have been classied by a generalist and have been transferred in a waiting queue of a specialist agent. 5.2. Request classication and handling The handling of a synchronous request is not nished with the completed call. Additional after-call work has to be done afterwards by the agent (Fig. 6). This work comprises administrative tasks like data entry and necessary internal communication. In our model only this part of the after-call work is included which is done immediately by the agent who has handled the call. After nishing this work the agent is available for accepting further requests.

Fig. 6. Request classication and handling for synchronous requests without forwarding.

60 Table 3 Classication and handling times Request type

M. Zapf / Computers in Industry 55 (2004) 5371

Classify, average classification time (min)

Handle Average call time/handling time (min) 3:10 2:12 3:00 15:00 Average after-call time (min) 0:12 0:21

Standard synchronous Special synchronous Standard a-synchronous Special a-synchronous

0:45 0:45 1:00 1:00

Since the handling times are not constant in reality they are modeled with stochastic distributions. In order to determine the appropriate stochastic distribution and average values one typical week of Car Rental Inc. has been statistically analyzed based on empirical data from the ACD system. A sample of real call times has been compared with data from Exponential distributions. The w2-test delivered a P-value of 0.467 and the test of Kolmogorov/Smimov resulted in a lower bound for the P-value of 0.15. A P-value of more than 0.10 stands for a good correspondence between the distribution and the sample data [23]. Based on these results the Exponential distribution has been used for modeling the relevant handling times: classication time, call time and after-call time. The average values for the call time and after-call time have been derived from the ACD system, the average classication time has been estimated by experts from Car Rental Inc. (Table 3). For a-synchronous requests no distinction between call handling and after-call work is necessary, therefore only one handling activity has been modeled for each process design. The average values for the corresponding handling time have been estimated by experts (Table 3). 5.3. Performance measures In the communication center domain many measures are used to evaluate the process performance [20]. Since the goal of a communication center is to handle customer requests efciently a customer has to get in contact with an agents rst. Therefore the accessibility of the agents is used as one important performance criterion for synchronous requests. It is often measured as percentage of lost calls which is dened as quotient of hung up calls and total calls. A

high percentage stands for many dissatised customers who have not reached an agent in time and with that for a poor process performance. A-synchronous requests reach the communication center anyway but are processed with different speed. From the customer point of view a short throughput time is desirable. So the overall throughput and waiting time is used as measure for a-synchronous requests where a long throughput and waiting time indicates a poor performance. 5.4. Validation and verication The suitability of the simulation model has been checked according to [27], in the following validation and verication steps.  Conceptual model validation: determine that the conceptual model is reasonable and correct for the intended application.  Computerized model verification: ensure that the computer programming and implementation of the model is correct.  Data validity: ensure that data is appropriate, accurate and sufficient.  Operational validity: determine that the results are sufficient accurate for the intended purpose over the application domain. For the conceptual model validation the face validity technique has been used. The generic service process designs (see Section 3) and the model details (see Sections 5.1 and 5.2) have been developed and discussed with communication center experts in order to ensure that the models are reasonable. For building the conceptual model also different real communication centers of the domains bank, book trade, car rental and energy industry have been analyzed [21]. Note

M. Zapf / Computers in Industry 55 (2004) 5371

61

that the main objective of our simulation study is to identify the differences between general service process designs based on empirical data and not to improve the specic process designs of one company. Therefore specic details of Car Rental Inc. like forwarding requests to an outsourcing partner have been left out of the model and the simulation model has not been validated against real performance values of Car Rental Inc. After face validation which was mainly based on graphical process models and verbal process descriptions the process logic has been checked through trace technique. The different request types have been tracked through every submodel to determine whether the logic is correct and the necessary accuracy is maintained. Different dynamic testing techniques have been applied for computerized model verication and the simulation models have been executed under various conditions (Sargent, 1988). 1. Fixed values: xed values (constant factors) have been dened for selected input variables (e.g. classication time, handling times, arrival rates) and the performance values have been checked against hand calculated values. 2. Comparison to other models: sub-models have been compared to analytical M/M/l and M/M/n queueing models (Kleinrock, 1976). 3. Sensitivity analysis: selected input parameters (e.g. after-call time, percentage of re-dialing) have been modied and the effect upon the results has been determined.
Table 4 Simulation parameters and data gathering Parameter group Request volume Parameter

To ensure data validity we used real data which has been collected automatically by the ACD system (Automatic call distribution) of Car Rental Inc. for the average request volume and average handling times of synchronous request (Table 4). The stochastic distribution for the handling times has been derived from the empirical data and statistically validated with the w2-test and the test of Kolmogorov/Smirnov (see Section 5.2.). The other data has not been logged by the ACD system and was therefore provided by experts from Car Rental Inc. Within the computerized model verication we used sensitivity analysis to ensure that small changes of these parameters are not critically for the performance measurement. Regarding the operational validity 95% condence intervals have been calculated for every performance measure. In order to reect the nature of a communication center the single experiments have been performed in the form of multiple terminating simulation runs. For every experiment 30 independent replications have been made according to the general rule of [28]. At the end of each replication it has been checked that sufcient data has been collected and that the output data is not correlated [23]. 5.5. Resource assignment to agent groups Before performing the simulation experiments, the different models have to be initialized with the number of agents per agent group. Hereby it has to be kept in mind that even the worst service design is able to obtain a given efciency if enough agents are available

Data gathering Real data of Car Rental Inc., based on a typical week, collected by ACD system Real data of Car Rental Inc., based on monthly values, collected by experts Estimated values, provided by experts

Average volume of synchronous standard and special requests Average volume of a-synchronous standard and special requests Average waiting tolerance Percentage of re-dialing Average time between dial attempts Average classification time Average handling times for a-synchronous requests Average call time and after-call time for synchronous requests

Waiting tolerance

Request classification and handling

Estimated values, provided by experts

Real data of Car Rental Inc., based on a typical week, collected by ACD system

62

M. Zapf / Computers in Industry 55 (2004) 5371

Table 5 Resource capacities by service process design and agent group Service process design Agent group Resource capacity for integrated channels 16 7 15 8 15 8 Resource capacity for separated channels Synchronous 15 4 15 5 14 5 A-synchronous 1 3 3 1 3

Two-level Back-office One-level

Generalists Specialists Generalists Specialists Generalists Specialists

and in the same way the best design obtains a poor performance if not enough agents are available. In order to make a fair initialization we performed the following initialization steps.  Step 1: define performance targets For all designs the same performance targets have been dened based on interviews with communication center specialists: For synchronous requests the average lost call rate has to be lower than 10%, for a-synchronous requests the average waiting time has to be lower than 15 min and as an additional constraint the agent utilization has to be less than 80% within all agent groups.  Step 2: determine the minimal amount of agents for every process design Some initialization experiments have been performed in order to determine the minimum amount of agents per group which is necessary to achieve the performance targets for every design. The following algorithm describes this procedure using the interval bisection method (see [29]) for every service process design Pi with integrated communication channels (see Section 3.1). 1. Set aGen 1, bGen 99. 2. Set mGen dbGen aGen =2e. 3. Perform initialization experiment for design Pi with mGen generalists and 0 specialists and obtain performance values. 4. If performance targets have been met set bGen mGen else set aGen mGen. 5. If bGen aGen 1 set kGen,i bGen and go to step 6; else continue with step 2.

6. Set aSpec 1, bSpec 99. 7. Set mSpec dbSpec aSpec =2e. 8. Perform initialization experiment for design Pi with mSpec specialists and kGen generalists and obtain performance values. 9. If performance targets have been met set bSpec mSpec; else set aSpec mSpec. 10. If bSpec aSpec 1 set kSpec,i bSpec and stop; else continue with step 7.  Step 3: determine the agent group capacities The agent group capacities kGen and kSpec can nally be calculated as maximum over all process designs: kGen maxi (kGen,i) and kSpec maxi(kSpec,i). Designs with a minimum group capacity which is lower than kGen or kSpec get additional resources. The resulting group capacities are summarized in Table 5. The listed capacities for separated channels have been obtained after enhancing steps 2 and 3 by additional agent groups exclusive for a-synchronous requests (see Section 3.2).

6. Numerical analysis 6.1. Different qualication-mixtures with integrated communication channels In the rst series of experiments we use integrated communication channels and compare the qualication-mixtures two-level design, one-level-design and back-ofce design. Herewith the characteristics of the process designs will be evaluated under different worst case

M. Zapf / Computers in Industry 55 (2004) 5371 Table 6 Scenarios for evaluating qualication-mixtures with integrated communication channels Scenario S0 normal S1 overload Modified parameters None Average Average Average Average volume volume volume volume of of of of standard syn. requests per day special syn. requests per day standard asyn. requests per day standard asyn. requests per day Original value(s) See Section 5 2579 444 100 90 Exp(3:10) Exp(0:12) Exp(2:12) Exp(0:21) Exp(3:00) Exp(15:00) 16/15/15 7/8/8 1:00 75 6 5158 888 200 180

63

New value(s)

S2 long handling

Call time for standard synchronous requests (min) After-call time for standard syn. requests (min) Call time for special syn. Requests (min) After-call time for special syn. requests (min) Handling time for standard asyn. requests (min) Handling time for special asyn. requests (min) Number of generalists (two-level/back-office/l-level) Number of specialists (two-level/back-office/l-level) Average waiting tolerance (min) Percentage of re-dialing Average time between dial attempts (s)

Const(6:20) Const(0:24) Const(4:24) Const(0:42) Const(6:00) Const(30:00) 13/12/12 6/7/7 0:06 85 0,06

S3 agent absence S4 low tolerance S5 increase recalling S6 short recall period

syn.: Synchronous; asyn.: a-synchronous; min: minutes; s: seconds, Const(x): constant x, Exp(x): exponential distribution with average value x.

scenarios. The scenarios represent (S1) overload situations with an increasing request volume, (S2) the extension of call and handling times, (S3) the reduction of agent availability e.g. on account of sudden illness, (S4) the reduction of waiting tolerance by the customer, (S5) the increase of recall percentage and (S6) the reduction of time between dial attempts. Table 6 lists all scenarios together with the modied parameters and worst case values. 6.1.1. Results for synchronous standard requests For synchronous standard requests the one-level design dominates the other designs in all scenarios (Fig. 7). The two-level design takes the second place and the back-ofce design is the last one with the highest lost call percentage. The results may be explained by two effects. 1. The coordination effect: consolidation of sequential dependencies leads to a lower coordination effort and to a better performance (e.g. [46,12,13]). In the one-level design the activities classify and handle are not only consolidated for

standard requests but also for all special requests which are directly accepted by specialists (Table 7). In the back-ofce design this consolidation has not been realized for synchronous special requests but for all a-synchronous special request. Within the two-level design consolidation is realized for none of the special requests. With that the advantages of the one-level design compared to the two-level design may be explained but not the differences between twolevel and back-ofce design and also not the clear differences between one-level and back-ofce design. 2. The pooling effect: bigger resource groups lead to smaller waiting times and to a better performance (e.g. [1618]). In the one-level design all 23 agents are able to accept synchronous requests whereas in the twolevel design 16 generalists and in the back-ofce design only 15 generalists may accept synchronous requests. The connection between agent capacity and lost call rate are directly reected in the experimental results: the one-level design has the lowest and the back-ofce design the highest lost call rate.

64

M. Zapf / Computers in Industry 55 (2004) 5371

Fig. 7. Percentage of lost standard calls with integrated channels for one-level, two-level and back-ofce design (indicator shows 95% condence interval).

6.1.2. Results for synchronous special requests For synchronous special requests the results are not so homogeneous as for synchronous standard requests. The one-level design dominates the other designs in scenario S1 and S4S6 but it does not cope with the extreme high workloads in scenario S1 and S2 (Fig. 8). Between the two-level and back-ofce only little performance differences can be stated for all scenarios. In order to explain these results we have to bear in mind that synchronous special requests may get lost at two different places in the process: (1) in the rst waiting queue before any contact with an agent has
Table 7 Activity consolidation Process design One-level Back-office Two-level Syn. standard Consolidated Consolidated Consolidated Asyn. standard Consolidated Consolidated Consolidated

taken place and (2) in the forwarding queue after having classied and forwarded by the accepting generalist. The isolated pooling effect for the rst waiting queue would lead to a similar performance sequence as described above for synchronous standard requests: one-level before two-level and twolevel before back-ofce design. But these sequence can not be observed in our experimental results because of a specialist occupation with standard requests in the one-level design. Specialists help out if not enough generalists are available to accept incoming calls which leads to a lower agent capacity for the second waiting queue and affects

Syn. special Partial consolidated

Asyn. special Partial consolidated Consolidated

syn.: synchronous; asyn.: a-synchronous.

M. Zapf / Computers in Industry 55 (2004) 5371

65

Fig. 8. Percentage of lost special calls with integrated channels for one-level, two-level and back-ofce design (indicator shows 95% condence interval).

the performance especially in high work load situations. 6.1.3. Results for a-synchronous standard requests The results for a-synchronous standard requests show only little differences between the one-level and back-ofce design (Fig. 9). The two-level design leads to longer average throughput times in scenarios S1 (overload), S2 (long handling) and S3 (agent absence). The drawback of the two-level design results from the fact that in high load situations accepting agents are busy with high priority synchronous requests and put aside a-synchronous requests for later handling. Compared with this in the back-ofce design a-synchronous requests are handled by specialists who are not involved in accepting calls and therefore can focus themselves on handling a-synchronous requests. The high agent exibility in the one-level design where all agents are able to accept all request types results also in a higher agent capacity for a-synchronous standard requests than in the two-level design.

6.1.4. Results for a-synchronous special requests In the two-level and back-ofce design the results for a-synchronous special requests are similar to the previous results for a-synchronous standard requests (Fig. 10). Only the one-level design has longer average throughput times than for a-synchronous standard requests which can be explained by the specialist occupation with standard requests as described in the previous paragraph for synchronous special requests. 6.2. Integrated versus separated communication channels The second series of experiments compares integrated and separated communication channels for the process designs one-level, two-level and back-ofce. The input data for these experiments comes from scenario S0 which is described in Section 5. Before performing the experiments it has been expected that integrated channels lead always to less lost calls than separated channels, because bigger agent groups

66

M. Zapf / Computers in Industry 55 (2004) 5371

Fig. 9. Average throughput time for a-synchronous standard requests with integrated channels for one-level, two-level and back-ofce design (indicator shows 95% condence interval).

reduce the average waiting time according to the pooling effect described above. But this presumption did not hold in true in every case. 6.2.1. Results for synchronous requests The comparison of separated and integrated communication channels in Fig. 11 is based on the difference between the accompanying lost call rates which is presented on the primary axis. A positive value means that separated channels lead to more lost calls than integrated channels. On the secondary axis the difference between agent capacities is represented. For standard synchronous requests the results are intuitive accessible. The reduction of one generalist in the one and two-levels design leads to more lost calls. The capacity reduction can be compensated better in the one-level design, because in this design also specialists are available for accepting incoming calls. Since no reduction of generalists takes place in the back-ofce design the lost call rates hardly differ from each other. In the case of special synchronous requests the agent capacity is reduced by three specialists in every

design. This reduction leads to more lost calls both in the one- and two-levels design. Surprising is the fact that the lost call difference is bigger in the one-level design than in the two-level design. This observation may be explained by the additional specialist occupation with standard requests which has already been discussed in Section 6.1. Unexpected is also the result for the back-ofce design where separated channels result in less lost calls than integrated channels. This may be explained with a competition effect which operates contrarily to the pooling effect. In the case of integrated communication channels an agent handles a-synchronous requests as soon as no synchronous request exists in the queue. During the processing time the agent is occupied and cannot accept a new synchronous request. Therefore synchronous and a-synchronous requests compete for the same agents and disadvantages arise for accepting synchronous requests. 6.2.2. Results for a-synchronous requests Fig. 12 shows the differences between average waiting times of separated and integrated communi-

M. Zapf / Computers in Industry 55 (2004) 5371

67

Fig. 10. Average throughput time for a-synchronous special requests with integrated channels for one-level, two-level and back-ofce design (indicator shows 95% condence interval).

cation channels on the primary axis. Differences in agent capacities are represented on the secondary axis. For handling a-synchronous standard requests with separated channels only one generalist is available in the one- and two-levels design. This fact is reected by a higher average waiting time in the two-level design whereas in the one-level design the capacity reduction can be compensated by specialists. In the back-ofce design the reduction of specialists leads to longer average waiting times for standard and special requests. The differences are similar to the values for special requests in the two-level design since theagentcapacitiesarealsosimilar.Onlyintheone-level design the drawbacks of separated channels can be better reduced by exible utilization of specialists.

7. Discussion 7.1. Competing effects Within our experiments we identied three competing effects: (1) agent pooling, (2) task consolidation

and (3) task competition. Fig. 13 shows one example where these effects are presented. Through agent pooling (1) the number of resources for one task is increased. In our case specialists are used for classifying and handling standard requests (dotted line) additional to the already available generalists. Agent pooling leads to bigger resource groups and therefore to a better performance for standard requests. Since the total number of agents remains the same, less resources are available for special requests. The tasks classify handle standard requests and handle special requests compete for the same resource specialists. This task competition (3) leads to a worse performance for special requests. Task consolidation (2) means that two tasks which have been performed by different agent groups before are consolidated and handled by one agent group afterwards. In our example the tasks classify and handle are consolidated for special requests and handled by specialist agents (dotted lines). This consolidation leads to less handling time and therefore to a better performance for special requests. Contrary to this acceleration the specialists have an additional

68

M. Zapf / Computers in Industry 55 (2004) 5371

Fig. 11. Differences between separated and integrated communication channels for different qualication-mixtures and synchronous request types.

work load through the classication and have less capacity for handling special requests. The tasks classify and handle compete for the same resources which reduces the number of handled tasks and therefore the overall performance for special requests. 7.2. Strengths and weaknesses per qualication-mixture Table 8 gives a rough summary of the identied strengths and weaknesses per qualication-mixture (see Section 6.1). The one-level design is very good for handling standard requests because of pooling generalists and specialists. The design has weaknesses for synchronous special requests in overload situations and for special a-synchronous requests since specialists are additional occupied with standard requests. The back-ofce design has strengths in handling asynchronous requests since specialists are reserved for these requests. Classify synchronous requests is the

weakness of the back-ofce design because of a small generalist group. The two-level design does badly for synchronous and a-synchronous requests. 7.3. Strengths and weaknesses per communication-mixture The integration of communication channels is in most cases more efcient than the separation (Table 9). Only in the back-ofce design the integration of communication channels leads to worse performance for special synchronous requests which can be explained through task competition between handling synchronous and a-synchronous requests. 7.4. Feedback from practice The simulation study has been presented and discussed with communication center professionals in order to get feedback from practice concerning the applied method and the obtained results.

M. Zapf / Computers in Industry 55 (2004) 5371

69

Fig. 12. Differences between separated and integrated communication channels for different qualication-mixtures and a-synchronous request types.

Regarding the methodology the simulation approach has been seen as very useful for this domain which gets more and more complex. So far process design and capacity planning is mainly done by computer tools based on simple queueing formulas

in combination with rough hand calculations and the try-and-error approach which often leads to wrong results and is not longer suitable for analyzing and controlling the complexity of modern communication centers. As substantial drawbacks of simulation have

Fig. 13. Competing effects.

70

M. Zapf / Computers in Industry 55 (2004) 5371

Table 8 Strengths and weaknesses per qualication-mixture Qualification-mixture One-level Back-office Two-level () Strength; () weakness. Standard synchronous Pooling Pooling Pooling Standard a-synchronous Pooling Pooling Competition Special synchronous Pooling consolidation competition Pooling Pooling Special a-synchronous Competition Pooling Competition

Table 9 Strengths and weaknesses per communication-mixture Communicationmixture Integrated Separated One-level Back-office Special synchronous A-synchronous Special synchronous A-synchronous Two-level

() Strength; () weakness.

been mentioned the high effort (model building, data gathering and performing the experiments), the lack of automatic optimization and the focus on quantitative measures. The discussion of the results showed that the performance relations between multiple request types sharing the same resources have been underrated by most of the experts. Therefore the competition effect has not been expected before. Also the clear disadvantages of the two-level design regarding standard requests have been surprising. Altogether a strong need for more knowledge about generic process designs in communication centers came to light and the request for the extension regarding skill based routing concepts and overow strategies.

and degree of integration of synchronous and a-synchronous requests. The generic process designs have been evaluated in a case study with empirical data from a car rental company. Simulation models have been built for every design and scenarios have been dened for a experimental performance analysis. The analysis showed strengths and weaknesses of the process designs under different conditions. Based on these results we developed a model of competing effects which helps us to understand the complex dependencies within the different service process designs. Our experimental approach is a starting point for a systematic analysis of service processes within the communication center. We identied important design dimensions for this domain and derived assumptions about the cause and effect relationship for generic process designs. These ndings show the way for further research activities. 1. Since our simulation results reect the characteristics of generic designs for one company under specic conditions it is necessary to analyze other domains and other scenarios in the future in order to examine and enhance the results. The described evaluation procedure can be used for this purpose. 2. The presented analysis is focused on quantitative performance measures and disregards qualitative measures. Qualitative measures like conversation quality or customer satisfaction are very import for the overall performance but if no agent is accessible no conversation takes place and the customer could not be satised at all. So quantitative measures are the basis but not sufcient for an overall evaluation of organizational designs. Qualitative measures have to be included in further extensions of the approach.

8. Summary and conclusions In this paper, we presented generic service process designs for handling customer requests within a communication center. The process characteristics which are relevant in this domain are the level of difculty (standard versus special requests) and the communication channel (synchronous versus a-synchronous). The design dimensions are task allocation to generalists and specialists, front-ofce and back-ofce role

M. Zapf / Computers in Industry 55 (2004) 5371

71

3. The evaluated generic process designs reects basic characteristics of communication center processes. In the future the analysis should be enhanced by further important design characteristics, like sophisticated skill based routing concepts, overow strategies, call routing between different locations, integration of outbound activities and integration of outsourcing provider. References
[1] A. Topfer, G. Greff, Marketingdirekt zum Zielkunden: Eine fortschrittliche Ruckbesinnung auf individuelle Kun denkontakte, in: G. Greff, A. Topfer (Eds.), Direktmarketing mit neuen Medien, Landsberg/Lech, 1993, pp. 324. [2] C. Homburg, A. Giering, F. Hentschel, Der Zusammenhang zwischen Kundenzufriedenheit und Kundenbindung, in: M. Bruhn, C. Homburg (Eds.), Handbuch Kundenbindungsmanagement, Wiesbaden, 1999, pp. 81112. [3] M. Hammer, J. Champy, Reengineering work: dont automate, obliterate, Harvard Business Review, JulyAugust (1990) 104112. [4] J.A. Buzacott, Commonalities in reengineered business processes: models and issues, Management Science 42 (5) (1996) 768782. [5] R. Dewan, A. Seidmann, Z. Walter, Workow redesign through consolidation in information-intensive business processes, in: Proceedings of the ICIS, 1997, pp. 285295. [6] A. Seidmann, A. Sundararajan, The effects of task and information asymmetry on business process redesign, International Journal of Production Economics 50 (23) (1997) 117128. [7] L.V. Orman, A model management approach to business process reengineering, Journal of Management Information Systems 15 (1) (1998) 187212. [8] T.A. Aldowaisan, L.K. Gaafar, Business process reengineering: an approach for process mapping, Omega 27 (5) (1999) 515524. [9] W.M.P. Van der Aalst, Reengineering knock-out processes, Decision Support Systems 30 (4) (2001) 451468. [10] I. Hofacker, R. Vetschera, Algorithmical approaches to business process design, Computers & Operations Research 28 (13) (2001) 12531275. [11] H.A. Reijers, Design and control of workow processes, PhD thesis, University of Eindhoven, 2002. [12] J.D. Thompson, Organizations in Action: Social Science Bases of Administrative Theory, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1967. [13] R.H. Kilman, Beyond the Quick Fix: Managing Five Tracks to Organizational Success, second ed., Jossey-Bass, London, 1985. [14] K. Crowston, A coordination theory approach to organizational process design, Organization Science 8 (2) (1997) 157175. [15] T.W. Malone, K. Crowston, J. Lee, B. Pentland, C. Dellarocas, G. Wyner, J. Quimby, C. Osborn, A. Bernstein,

[16] [17] [18] [19] [20]

[21] [22]

[23] [24] [25] [26]

[27]

[28] [29] [30]

G. Herman, M. Klein, Tool for inventing organisations: toward a handbook of organizational process, Management Science 45 (3) (1999) 425443. H. Bierman, C.P. Bonini, W.H. Hausman, Quantitative Analysis for Business Decisions, Boston, 1991. W.L. Winston, Operations Research Applications and Algorithms, Delmont, 1994. L. Kleinrock, Queueing Systems, Wiley-Interscience, New York, 1976. M. Hammer, J. Champy, Reengineering the Corporation, New York, 1993. M. Zapf, A. Heinzl, Evaluation of generic process design patterns: an experimental study, in: W.M.P. van der Aalst, J. Desel, A. Oberweis (Eds.), Business Process Management: Models, Techniques, and Empirical Studies, LNCS 1806, Berlin, 2000. M. Zapf, Flexible Kundeninteraktionsprozesse im Communication Center, Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main, 2003. M. Zapf, K. Storch, Making simulation work for the organizational design of communication centers: challenges and practical experience, in: Proceedings of the 2001 Summer Computer Simulation Conference, Orlando, 2001. W.D. Kelton, R.P. Sadowski, D.A. Sadowski, Simulation with ARENA, McGraw-Hill, Boston, 1998. Systems Modeling Corp., Call$im Template Users Guide, Sewickley, 1996. F. Liebl, Simulation, Oldenbourg, Miinchen, 1995. C. Sheu, S. Babbar, A managerial assessment of the waitingtime performance for alternative service process designs, Omega 24 (6) (1996) 689703. R.G. Sargent, A tutorial on validation and verication of simulation models, in: M. Abrams, P. Haigh, J. Comfort (Eds.), Proceedings of the 1988 Winter Simulation Conference, 1988. W.G. Bulgren, Discrete System Simulation. Englewood Cliffs, 1982. H. Heuser, Lehrbuch der Analysis, Band 1, Stuttgart, 1982. W.M.P. Van der Aalst, The application of petri nets to workow management, Journal of Circuits, Systems and Computers 8 (1) (1998) 2166.

Michael Zapf studied business administration and mathematics. After his diploma he worked as a research and teaching assistant in information systems at the Universities of Bayreuth and Mannheim. He focused his research work on the analysis of business processes especially for communication centers and conducted simulation studies in cooperation with different German companies. In 2001 he received his PhD in information systems from the University of Bayreuth. As senior consultant he continued his career path with national and international projects in the eld of business process design and CRM software. At present Michael Zapf is responsible for business process management at a world-wide operating industrial enterprise.