Cost Management: A Strategic Emphasis 5th Edition by David Stout, Edward Blocher, Gary Cokins

Exercise 38

Productivity Measures for Call Centers Our examples in the chapter have focused on manufacturing, where the output is units of product and the inputs are manufacturing activities or costs. The concept of productivity can be applied in a variety of settings, wherever there are inputs and outputs. For example, consider the call center for a cell phone company. Suppose the call center operates 24 hours a day every day of the week to respond to user problems and questions. To calculate productivity for the call center, we could divide the total number of calls over a period of time by the number of hours or the number of employees in the call center during that period.

Required Evaluate the productivity measure identified above for the call center. Identify some alternative measures of productivity for the call center and explain your choices.