Quantifying The Tradeoffs Between Cost And Quality For Systems Service Support

Abstract

Rapidly increasing computer systems complexity has caused many companies to increase awareness of customer services. Many firms in the computer hardware and/or software industries have devoted increased effort towards customer service through the development of help desk support systems. Help desk support systems development currently face a number of problems, including escalating growth in customer usage, high staff turn-over, maintaining service quality and controlling costs. Industry has responded by providing additional staff training, increasing systems automation, and introducing knowledge based tools. These actions have increased help desk efficiency, but fail to provide a quantitative means for optimizing help desk operations. This paper addresses this problem through the development of a mathematical model which minimizes expected help desk costs by considering both operational costs and social costs. This model provides a basic framework through which policy makers may analyze the effectiveness of capacity decisions as they apply to help desk support systems in a multi-echelon, networked service station.