Seems like a pretty straight forward question, right? It would be, if service were free. But service is not free.
At each service level goal, there is an implied cost. And lowering cost is another of those goals. So our two goals are: lower costs and provide service. But those aren’t the only two goals! We also don’t want to burn out our agents with too high an occupancy, we want to provide training and professional growth for our employees, we want to sell product (for sales or collections centers), and so on…
A simple trade-off sensitivity curve, cost versus service level is below.
How we answer questions with competing objectives can be tricky, but what is certain is that the analyses required to make such trade-offs explicit is a longer term model of the contact enter network. The analyst needs to be able to determine cost, service, occupancy, training, overtime, and a bunch of other important metrics associated with any planning scenario. If you know the value of these metrics for a scenario, you can determine the trade-offs associated with competing scenarios.
By using your strategic planning system, you can find the answers to our multi-objective operation.