Analysis of Two-Level Support Systems withTime-Dependent Overflow — A Banking Application

In this paper, we analyze the performance of call centers of financial serviceproviders with two levels of support and a time-dependent overflow mechanism.Waiting calls from the front-office queue flow over to the back office, if a waiting-timelimit is reached and at least one back-office agent is available. The analysis of sucha system with time-dependent overflow is reduced to the analysis of a continuoustimeMarkov chain with state-dependent overflow probabilities. To approximatethe system with time-dependent overflow, some waiting-based performance measuresare modified.[...]