Staff rostering in call centers providing employee transportation

• We model a staff rostering problem for a call center that provides the transportation of its employees.
• The model aims to balance operating costs, customer service and employee satisfaction objectives according to management priorities.
• We analyze model solutions for a banking call center under various parameter settings.
• Results demonstrate that the model effectively finds solutions with minimal transportation costs without compromising from the other objectives.

We address the staff rostering problem in call centers with the goal of balancing operational cost, agent satisfaction and customer service objectives. In metropolitan cities such as Istanbul and Mumbai, call centers provide the transportation of their staff so that shuttle costs constitute a significant part of the operational costs. We develop a mixed integer programming model that incorporates the shuttle requirements at the beginning and end of the shifts into the agent-shift assignment decisions, while considering the skill sets of the agents, and other constraints due to workforce regulations and agent preferences. We analyze model solutions for a banking call center under various management priorities to understand the interactions among the conflicting objectives. We show that considering transportation costs as well as agent preferences in agent-shift assignments provides significant benefits in terms of both cost savings and employee satisfaction.