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 of / Graduate

All organisations, including higher education institutions, are subjected to the demands and competition of the market in which they function. Over the past few years there has been a steady increase in the level of competitiveness of the higher education sector. The days when higher education institutions could dictate to learners are definitely something of the past, and quality service and customer care are becoming more important. In order to retain and expand market share, highquality service must be rendered. Due to the very nature of higher education institutions, the contribution and role of employees are quite significant. The nature of corporate culture and level of job satisfaction, as in the case of the private sector, have an impact on the delivery of customer service. The question, however, is: Do a positive corporate culture and high levels of job satisfaction contribute to the level of learner satisfaction in a higher education environment? In order to investigate this matter, empirical research was conducted by presenting two structured questionnaires (a culture survey and a job satisfaction survey) to employees, and a learner satisfaction questionnaire to learners. Based on the data obtained through the research, a rank-order correlation was done to establish whether or not there is a significant relationship between corporate culture, job satisfaction and learner satisfaction. The findings show that there is not a significant relationship between learner satisfaction and job satisfaction. However, a relationship was observed between corporate culture and learner satisfaction. From this observation it can be deduced that a positive corporate culture could contribute to learner satisfaction. / Dr. NR Barnes

Prof. F.J. Herbst

Changes in the global marketplace have led to an increased emphasis on high quality customer service. Highly committed and satisfied employees are integral to developing a loyal and consistent customer base. Principles of organizational communication and trust, the learning and teaching organization, and the Baldrige assessment are integrated into an organizational structure that is Built to Serve all customers, both internally and externally. The literature review aims to enhance the current literature by connecting the interrelated concepts of organizational change, customer service, learning, teaching, communication, trust, and assessment. This qualitative study examined an organization, NetWork, to determine its readiness level to become an organization that is Built to Serve all of its customers. NetWork is a governmental agency that manages employment issues in a county in California. The NetWork customers were categorized into six groups; unemployed job seekers, low income job seekers, employers, youth, service providers/trainers, and staff members. Eighteen focus groups were conducted to ascertain the perceptions and attitudes each customer group had ofNetWork and of relevant employment issues as well as to ascertain the relationship between the customer groups. An interview guide was developed for each of the customer groups to guide the discussions. The total sample size was 166 focus groups participants. The focus group transcripts were analyzed to determine strengths and weaknesses of the current organizational structure as well as to generate strategic development suggestions for the organization to become one that is Built to Serve all customers. The results from the analysis of the transcripts indicated several limitations in the current organizational structure as well as multiple incongruent perceptions that exist between the customer groups. Twelve research questions are examined and evidence is introduced to answer each question. The results are then interpreted in the discussion section. Recommendations for NetWork to become an organization that is Built to Serve are suggested.

Service systems such as call centers and hospital inpatient wards typically feature multiple classes of customers and multiple types of servers. Not all customer-server pairs are compatible, and some types of servers may be more efficient at serving some classes of customers than others. In the queueing literature, the problem of matching customers and servers is known as skills-based routing. This thesis consists of two works I have done in this area. The first work, which is done jointly with Jing Dong and Pengyi Shi, considers the routing problem in the face of a demand surge such as a pandemic. It shows how future arrival rate information, which is often available through demand forecast models, can be used to route near-optimally, even when there may be prediction errors. The methods used involve fluid approximations and optimal control theory, and the policies obtained are intuitive and easy to implement. The second work, which is done jointly with Jing Dong, incorporates a staffing element in addition to routing. Asymptotically optimal staffing and scheduling policies are derived for an M-model, both with and without demand uncertainty. The methods used involve diffusion approximations and stochastic-fluid approximations.

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This research specifically addresses the issue of construct validity as it applies to past research in the study of services. Existing empirical research efforts examining the services sector have largely produced mixed results and have consistently failed to support a theoretical framework from which a greater understanding of service organizations could be developed. This has been the case in spite of the seemingly correctness and strong theoretical support for existing models. Thus, this study did not undertake an attempt to develop a new model for understanding services, rather, the goal was to extend existing theory through operationalizing a construct valid definition of the service concept. / Ph. D.

No / Even after more than a decade of intensive research work in the area of electronic government (e-government) adoption and diffusion, no study has yet undertaken a theoretical evaluation of research related to ‘e-government satisfaction'. The purpose of this study is to undertake a comprehensive review of the literature related to e-government satisfaction and adoption with a particular focus on the most critical factors and their manifested variables that influence user satisfaction in e-government. Usable data relating to e-government research were collected from 147 papers identified from the Scopus database and by manually identifying relevant articles from journals dedicated to e-government research such as Electronic Government, an International Journal (EGIJ), International Journal of Electronic Government Research (IJEGR) and Transforming Government: People, Process, and Policy (TGPPP). A meta-analysis of existing e-government studies found that the majority of the construct relationships demonstrated a significant range of average summative correlation, and effect size, but the influence of perceived ease of use, effort expectancy on behavioural intention, behavioural intention on use behaviour, and perceived trust on risk were still found to be non-significant. A broader analysis of e-government satisfaction and adoption research seems to reflect that although a large number of theories and theoretical constructs were borrowed from reference disciplines such as Information Systems, e-commerce and public administration, their utilisation by e-government researchers appears to be largely random in approach.

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