Scheduling customer service representatives for the Workers’ Compensation Board of British Columbia

The Workers' Compensations Board of British Columbia (WCB) operates 4 call centers in the province devoted to compensation services. This thesis describes a review of operations at the call center in the head office, located in Richmond, B.C. We identified the need for a mathematical model to schedule telephone operators (called CSRs in WCB) in order to minimize the workforce required, while assuring minimal staffing levels to provide good customer service. We developed two integer programming models and built an interface that would enable the supervisors to use the model interactively. We compared the results from the model to one of their schedules and found that the model used 5 fewer CSRs than currently in their schedule. The potential savings derived from such a test convinced management that WCB needed to acquire and implement software to schedule staff.Business, Sauder School ofGraduat