example: optimal staffing of helpdesk

Analyse
After you significantly expanded the number of helpdesk employees, the queues – and with them customer complaints – have virtually disappeared. However, personnel costs have risen sharply and at times employees have little to do. Some of the staff would also like to work part-time or at other times. How do you get a grip on this situation?

Optimal control
The number of requests to the helpdesk appears to be strongly related to the day of the week, the time of the day and the release of new versions of your main product. Your customers indicate that they find a waiting time of up to 2 minutes acceptable. With the help of these insights, you can flexibly adapt the staffing to the aforementioned circumstances, while also taking into account the desired working hours of your staff. By experimenting with a mix of telephone, email and chat, you may be able to improve the occupancy rate even further, while the service level remains the same.

Predict
In the longer term, the number of requests to the helpdesk of course also depends on the number of sold products (and therefore customers) that you have. After predicting these numbers as accurately as possible, the helpdesk staffing can be brought to the right level in time by means of hiring and training.