Abstract: To compare the differences of human effectiveness between contact center and call center that were caused by the variety of communication channels, the models of single channel call center, two-channel contact center, and three-channel contact center were established with the Extendsim simulation software. Three indices, which are average waiting time, agent occupancy rate and the total number of customers, were selected to evaluate human effectiveness. The differences of the indices between different models were compared by changing agent numbers. The results show that compared with the single channel call center, the multi-channel contact center (especially the three-channel contact center) requires fewer agents. For the three-channel contact center, the average waiting time is reduced by 46.16%, the agent occupancy rate is reduced by 6.95% and the total number of customers is increased by 5.58% when the agent number is the same in the three-type contact centers. So the multi-channel contact center can increase human effectiveness, decrease the labor costs and improve the service level by adding reasonably communication channels.

Key words: contact center, human effectiveness, simulation