Article ID Journal Published Year Pages File Type
5109683 Journal of Business Research 2016 9 Pages PDF
Abstract
Research into time series forecasting for call center management suggests that a forecast based on the simple Seasonal Moving Average (SMA) method outperforms more sophisticated approaches at long horizons where capacity planning decisions are made. However in the short to medium term where decisions concerning the scheduling of agents are required, the SMA method is usually outperformed. This study is the first systematic evaluation of the SMA method across averages of different lengths using call arrival data sampled at different frequencies from 5 min to 1 h. A hybrid method which combines the strengths of the SMA method and nonlinear data-driven artificial neural networks (ANNs) is proposed to improve short-term accuracy without deteriorating long-term performance. Results of forecasting the intraday call arrivals to banks in the US, UK and Israel indicate that the proposed method outperforms standard benchmarks, and leads to improvements in forecasting accuracy across all horizons.
Related Topics
Social Sciences and Humanities Business, Management and Accounting Business and International Management
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