Scheduling of agents from forecasted future callarrivals at Hydro-Quebec’s call centers

The call center managers at Hydro-Quebec (HQ) need to deliver both low operating costs and high
service quality. Their task is made especially difficult because they need to handle a large-size
workforce (more than 1000 employees) while meeting an incoming demand which is typically both
time-varying and uncertain. The current techniques of determining the schedules of each employee
according to the forecasted future call volumes at HQ are often unreliable, and there is a need for new
and more accurate methods.
In this project, we propose addressing the concerns of the call center managers at HQ by developing
new methods for multi-activity shift scheduling that consider the very specific union regulations of HQ
(variable schedules) and are validated by mathematically simulating the main event that rule the callcenter
(arrival calls, processing time, abandonment, etc.). Our method will exploit the strong
properties of language-based model to efficiently consider complex regulations, as well as the
accuracy of mathematical simulation to reproduce in…TOBECONT’D…

Faculty Supervisor:

Pierre L’Ecuyer

Student:

Partner:

Institut de Recherche Hydro-Québec

Discipline:

Computer science

Sector:

Professional, scientific and technical services; Utilities

University:

Université de Montréal

Program: