Understanding Contact Center Agents’ Preferences for Selecting Calls to Work

A discussion of call center agent work selection preferences is presented in the context of what is referred to herein as the accept–avoid decision. In call centers where agents are given autonomy to select calls from a shared queue for work without a standard routing mechanism, it is likely that each agent uses a different set of criteria and has different preferences which influence their decision to accept a call or avoid it. In order to understand such preferences, simple heuristics are developed and implemented into an additive linear model as an example to estimate the derived utility an agent may receive from the decision to accept a call. The game theoretic implications of such decision making by a group or team of agents are also discussed to illustrate the dilemma of the universally avoided call, and how agents may compete for acceptance or avoidance of particular calls.