1. An apparatus for predicting a prospective response time of a service provider to a current service request, the apparatus comprising: a memory for storing historical data, including previous response times to corresponding previous service requests; a neural network having a plurality of processing elements, each processing element including memory means for storing a respective weight, said neural network trained by a plurality of test data to modify the weights, said neural network being responsive to a plurality of inputs, including the current month of the current service request and historical data input from the memory for a plurality of months of the previous year for generating a plurality of tentative response time predictions; and means for classifying the current month of the current service request as similar according to predetermined rules to a first month of the plurality of months of the previous year for generating the prospective response time from a weighting of the plurality of tentative response time predictions in a mapping determined from the current month and the first month.