Abstract
This paper shows how to model and solve an important application of the well-known assignment problem that emerges as part of workforce management, particularly in cloud based customer service center optimization. The problem consists of matching a set of highly skilled agents to a number of incoming requests with specialized requirements. The problem manifests itself in a fast-paced online setting, where the complete set of incoming requests is not known apriori, turning this into a challenging problem where rapid response time and quality of assignments are crucial for success and customer satisfaction. The key contribution of this paper lies in the combination of a high-level constraint model with customizable search that can take into account various objective criteria. The result is an efficient and flexible solution that excels in dynamic environments with complex, conflicting and often changing requirements. The constraint programming approach handles hundreds of incoming requests in real-time while ensuring high-quality agent assignments.
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Kadioglu, S., Colena, M., Huberman, S., Bagley, C. (2015). Optimizing the Cloud Service Experience Using Constraint Programming. In: Pesant, G. (eds) Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming. CP 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9255. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23219-5_43
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23219-5_43
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