Limited Agents Mix-Training in Operations ? A Call Center Case

The operations of an inbound call center are difficult to handle, there is important uncertainty in the arrival rates estimates, and the operation is usually depending on severe service level restrictions. This paper is inspired by the work with an outsourcing call center where projects involve an inbound help desk depending on a service level agreement (SLA). Services of support are very specialized and an important training investment is needed and this kind of investment cannot be transferred to other projects. In this work, it will be analyzed the possibility of cross training a group of agents in order to serve calls from two different projects. This process is called a partial merging. This paper looks for quantifying the advantages of partial merging and characterizing the circumstances under which merging is more profitable. It will be seen that low levels of cross training produce important profit.