Case Project

Game Shack Software develops and sells computer games and related products to end users. Donald Duck has recently been hired to manage Game Shack's help desk telephone operation. The management at Game Shack is concerned about the best way to schedule help desk agents. They want to employ enough help desk agents to respond to the calls they receive from users, but they cannot afford to have an excess of agents scheduled to work when relatively few calls are expected.

Donald wants your advice about the size of the help desk staff that Game Shack needs, as well as tips on the best way to schedule agents during the day. He has collected data for a couple of weeks on the number of phone calls the Game Shack help desk receives. The busiest time of the day is from 9 am to 4 pm, during which time the help desk receives an average of 155 calls. The calls average about 12 minutes, and a typical agent takes an average of 2 additional minutes to finish a database entry and terminate the call. The current help desk guidelines state that 85 percent of the calls should be answered in 30 second or less. (No more than 1 percent of the calls should be lost because of insufficient available phone lines.)

The 155 calls each day are distributed approximately, as shown in the following table.

________________________
  Hour                     Calls
________________________
    9 am                     10
   10 am                    25
   11 am                    25
   12 pm                   35
     1 pm                   20
     2 pm                   15
     3 pm                   15
     4 pm                   10
________________________

Use the Call Center Calculator at    www.erlang.com  to advise Donald about the following:

1. How many agents does Game Shack need to handle the volume of calls listed above?

2. How many telephone lines are required to meet the store's objectives?

3. When is the peak call volume? How long will an average caller wait during the peak hour?

4. What is the impact on staffing and number of lines needed if the policy guideline on the percentage of calls answered in 30 seconds or less is increased to 95 percent?