Understaffing has a much more negative impact for callers. Average Hold Time = Total # of seconds customers spend on hold/Total # of Calls 2. Imagine youre forecasting for the next three months.
Year | On the other hand, with incoming calls, the work arrives randomly. Table 1. Defining a speed of answer or service objective is an important part of the workforce management process as it has a direct influence on how many staff will be needed each half-hour. When you factor public holidays into your forecast for the first time, try to look at all 3 weeks to determine which days are actually affected. First Call Resolution Rate = (Number of Resolved Calls on First Contact / Total Number of Calls) * 100. But in order to determine the number of staff needed for each month, which is our ultimate goal, well also need to forecast average handle time (AHT). Remember, business intelligence comprises all information about future events that might influence your forecast.If your short-term weekly and daily forecasts are simply a mathematical breakout of the monthly long-term forecast, youre likely missing the opportunity to increase accuracy by using more up-to-date business intelligence. The main purpose of the monthly forecast is to drive hiring and staffing plans. How many more than 20 will depend on how fast the calls should be answered. A different number of staff would be required to handle 20 hours of paperwork in one hour versus 20 hours of incoming call center work. Weekly and daily forecasts are typically created 3-6 weeks in advance.
Pro tip: New planners often ask if short-term forecasts (weekly or daily) need to precisely match the monthly forecasts from long-term planning. At three months in advance, it would make sense for both forecasts to match. FTE: A staffing arrangement equivalent to one person working full time. Volume | Calculating Resource Requirements and Understanding Staff and Service Tradeoffs. The last step is to adjust for public holidays. and any peripheral work done in support of those contacts. The fewer the staff, the longer the caller will wait. Tracking call center agent productivity can seem like an extremely challenging task. Caller Captivity. To quickly generate a monthly call volume forecast that will provide high-level direction to your operations: In the previous article on Forecasting Fundamentals, we explained the process of forecasting calls taking historical data and analyzing trends and seasonal patterns to arrive at monthly estimates, then using day-of-week and time-of-day patterns to break down the numbers into hourly or half-hourly forecasts. Integrate with a range of workplace software like. 2018 | 5.6% | Nashville, TN 37205 If thats the case, you only need to adjust that weeks data. With thanks to noah.
The main purpose of the monthly forecast is to drive hiring and staffing plans. But if your agents only focus on call quantity and not how much quality they provide, your customers can end up being frustrated due to the negative customer experience. Based on the average annual volume and the average volume per month, determine what percentage of the years contacts come in each month, on average. The wrap up time can include almost anything filling out a form, updating the customer database, etc. Lets take one more look at our staffing table and review the impact on service as staff numbers change. For example, in the United States, a full-time employee typically works 40 hours per week. There are proven call center forecasting methods for this.
The AHT forecast is essentially created in the same way as the call volume forecast: To determine how many FTEs are required, the first step is to forecast the workload. There are several call center forecasting methods to learn. Using the full year forecast of 56,106 calls, the monthly volumes would appear as follows: In this example, the average is 3.9%, which is then applied to the forecast for the year 2021. Staffing calculation is outside the scope of this post but you can read more on the What is WFM page on our website. 10 Important Call Center KPIs to Track | Sprinklr This part of the process requires a lot of number-crunching, and this is impractical without software. These numbers assume that all agents are always available to handle call workload. If an agent is focused and motivated towards their job, theyll perform better and deliver quality customer service. This group is looking out for the bottom-line financial picture of the center. The call center utilization rate represents, for all the hours that agents get paid, the percent of that time they interact or are available to interact with callers. Average handle time: The average time needed for a call, including hold times and after-call work. Forecasts for volume and handle time should be built separately, however they should both begin with the historical data collected by your contact center over the past months or years. Successful call center operations depends on getting the right number of people for each period of the day to answer incoming contacts while accomplishing two objectives meeting desirable service levels and minimizing personnel costs. Staffing calculation is outside the scope of this post but you can read more on the What is WFM page on our website. Then divide that total by the number of calls that time accounts for. Use the contact center metrics to devise ways to improve your employee performance. Multiply the percentage of each day by the call volume of the current year that you already calculated. Pro tips: I have 2 questions: 1. However, as you get closer and approach 3-6 weeks in advance, the weekly forecast should be adjusted since it was originally based on long-term data. Weekly and daily forecasts are typically created 3-6 weeks in advance.Pro tip: New planners often ask if short-term forecasts (weekly or daily) need to precisely match the monthly forecasts from long-term planning. Imagine you are planning in 15-minute intervals and on a typical Monday, 2% of calls arrive between 08:00 and 08:15. Average Speed of Answer = Total Wait Time / Total Number of Calls. Track what your call center agents are working on during work hours. 6508 Grayson Court Unfortunately, we cant handle the calls with only 20 people. Calls that arrive in a smooth pattern (one right behind the other like paperwork) will require fewer staff than Erlang C might suggest. Sep | You can collect answers from several customers and measure the overall satisfaction rate using this equation: Satisfaction Rate = (Number of Satisfied Customers / Number of Customers Who Rated) * 100. 54,000 | 1. This statistic represents the average delay of all calls for the period, including those calls that experience no queue at all. Service level is a KPI defined as the percentage of calls answered within a given time threshold. Our original call center calculator, powered by the Erlang B and Erlang C traffic models, helps you work out how many agents you need in your call center and how many trunks (lines) it needs to handle those calls.
If your short-term weekly and daily forecasts are simply a mathematical breakout of the monthly long-term forecast, youre likely missing the opportunity to increase accuracy by using more up-to-date business intelligence. Summer 2021 Essentials of Contact Center Staffing: Calculations and Staffing Models for Workforce Planning By Penny Reynolds Workforce management plays a critical role in every contact center. 5,795 | 7.5% | You can analyse up to five hours. 10.3% | These definitions are service level and average speed of answer (ASA). These mathematical models are based on the arrival rates and usage patterns in telephone calling and there are variations of the Erlang formulae to equate with different types of telephone situations. Oct | 6.6% | Customers placing calls to the center are directly impacted by the number of frontline staff in place. Help you see if employees are being productive or wasting time. Workload is defined as the call volume multiplied by the average handle time or AHT. info@swpp.org | vicki.herrell@swpp.org, Society of Workforce Planning Professionals, Fundamentals of Workforce Management Web Seminar Series. The call load and FTE figures are examples only. The workload forecast is then used to calculate the required staff per time period. A best practice to stay in the loop is to schedule recurring monthly and weekly meetings with departments that impact call volume. Modeling the inbound call activity The inbound call activity can be modeled with a few variables: The average call duration noted t is known. Once in line, the customer can see progress moving forward. Dont forget to save the change percentages for all affected days for future use. It may be appropriate to have faster speed of answer goals for some customers than for others rather than having one goal that applies to all calls. The calculator works out number of call center agents using Erlang C formula for given call load and service level. Intraday forecasting and staffing calculation So we have random workload instead of sequential work. How to Calculate Productivity in the Contact Center May | However, its important to remember that most of your team members could be answering calls at a reasonable speed while one or two agents take a long time to answer calls. Heres a detailed guide on call center service level. While there may be 20 calls at some point in the hour, there may be more than 20 or fewer than 20 calls at another point in the hour. Customer Perceptions. The most common scenario for which we forecast is simply normal, day-to-day operations. Abandonment Rate = (Number of Abandoned Calls / Total Number of Incoming Calls) * 100. Customer experience metrics. BrightPattern Workforce Calculator Input Parameters Handling Time Average Handling Time: 180 seconds Service Level Min Service Level: 80% of calls in 20 seconds Call Abandonment Average Patience Time: 180 seconds Max Abandonment Rate: 5% Average Speed of Answer Max Average Speed of Answer: N/A Change Input Parameters Summary Max Number of Calls: 0 For this call center, the trunk handle time of 306 seconds is higher than the staff handle time of 270 seconds. Most of these use an Erlang traffic model as a foundation. Easter) resulting in different dates each year. Essentials of Contact Center Staffing: - Society of Workforce Planning The fourth column represents service level. I hope these insights will help turn you into a forecasting wizard! To adjust for public holidays, start by finding the day of week distribution for the week before, during, and after the specific public holiday in the previous year. 10.3% | volume As some of the calculations are time-consuming, a spreadsheet tool like Excel can help automate many steps and reduce the likelihood of calculation errors. The occupancy rate is a key performance indicator that shows how much time your agents spend occupied with callers. A common call center service goal is 80% of the calls handled in 20 seconds or less. On the other hand, understaffing has a more negative impact. Start by selecting a staff group and gather as much historical data as you can for that group. 4,125 | 6 common staffing issues that every BPO faces (and how to solve Impact sourcing: What is it and how can it benefit your business?
Its common to focus entirely on the short-term forecasting that forms an input to the scheduling process. 3.9% | Nashville, TN 37205 ExampleLets apply a simple growth factor to a sample data set: Since the growth rate was 4% in 2019 and 3.8% in 2020, the simplest approach would be to create the forecast using the average growth rate. Types of workloads and their tasks can be categorized by how often they are done. There are several call center forecasting methods to learn. When you reward an employee for a job well done, not only do you boost employee satisfaction, but you also give out the message that other employees can be rewarded for performing well. While frustration levels may be low upon entering the queue, the longer the wait time, the higher a callers frustration level. Multiply the percentage of each day by the call volume of the current year that you already calculated. While this could occur due to unproductivity, it can also happen if your call or contact center: However, remember that a 100% agent occupancy rate isnt healthy; it could overwork and stress out your call center agents, causing burnout. Determining Call Center Staff Requirements.
For the 2021 forecast, simply multiply the percentage for each month by the total volume for the year. The queue is an invisible queue where the caller cannot tell what is happening. On the flip side, a low cost per call means your worker productivity is high, your labor expenses are low, and your agents can easily turn a profit for the business. She serves as an Educational Advisor to SWPP, continuing to provide thought leadership and training to the workforce management community. Each blocked call represents a dissatisfied customer you miss out on serving, which decreases your customer retention rates. Workload is typically expressed as the hours of work in a one-hour period.
5,500 | This could be a professional WFM application or a spreadsheet app such as Excel. It is a tool for measuring your customers' loyalty and serves as a barometer for your brand's popularity. Jan | Its purpose is to determine when staff should be scheduled in the upcoming weeks. Taking a look at your call centers ACD reports and looking at when callers begin to abandon calls will give you some idea about a worst case delay scenario. Just remember to focus on improving quality while reducing the time spent on handling calls. These gestures can help cultivate a culture of healthy competition in your workplace, which will benefit your business. The customer can see the queue and perhaps make a decision about whether its worth waiting or not. Originally published on May 29, 2018, updated on Oct 19, 2022. As with the yearly method, the result is call volume for each day that you wish to forecast.
Of course, you need to adjust for holidays as you did in the yearly method. You can measure the percentage of calls answered within a threshold using this formula: Service Level = (Total Calls Answered Within Threshold / Total Calls) * 100. Society of Workforce Planning Professionals, LLC 4,741 | Workforce management software You can use general productivity analytics or KPIs specifically designed for call centers, like the ones weve mentioned above. Sending customer surveys regularly can help you better understand and assess the quality of your customer support. For example, if you thought the extra billing calls would drive an added 5% in volume and validate that against what actually happened, you can inflate call volume properly next time theres a billing change.Now lets take a look at two common methods to calculate short-term, daily forecasts. Since workload is expressed as hours of work to do, if AHT is listed in minutes, divide by 60 to get hours or if AHT is in seconds, divide by 3600 to get hours of workload. Divide the call volume of each day by the average annual call volume to determine the. Good WFM applications also have built-in public holiday calendars. Some public holidays occur on the same date(s) each year (e.g. 52,000 | The goal is to understand if anything similar is planned for the future and in order to be prepared for similar impacts on volume. You will also hear about the unique characteristics of inbound call center staffing and how it impacts staffing requirements. If you use the KPIs to compare high-performing employees with those whore struggling to perform, you run the risk of demotivating your already unproductive employees and increasing agent turnover rates. Erlang Calculator for Call Centre Staffing Calculate Call Center Staffing with Excel - Lokad Additionally, this powerful tool offers tons of other features like work schedules, distraction alerts, and screenshots. | If you use spreadsheets, you will definitely find the Ultimate Guide to Forecasting with Excel helpful. For example, take time to recap the expected impacts from the monthly meeting and check if anything has changed from your previous assumptions. Nov | This would be 52,000 calls in the sample data above. The easiest way to start is to identify the year-over-year growth to establish what your volume should be for the current year. So if your agents work 9 hours shifts and spend 7.2 hours on their daily tasks, call center productivity would be: Clearly, the above formula can provide an overall understanding of your agents productivity. In many cases, call volume might only be impacted during the actual week of the public holiday. We also have a more flexible Microsoft Excel based version of this calculator. Feb | Ok, this isnt the tough math part yet. Each call centers service goal should be based on many different factors, including the following: Corporate Objectives. Call center staffing involves the use of detailed mathematical models that replicate the unique staffing issues of the call center. Part 2: Contact Center Forecasting Fundamentals: How to Master Workforce Forecasting , Then, add up all averages from all months to find the. In order to prepare for scheduling, the next step is to forecast volume and AHT in intervals of 15 or 30 minutes for each day on which you want to produce schedules. Now that you know how to measure the productivity of your call center agents lets check out a few effective tips to boost it. 4,500 | PDF Calculating and Budgeting Contact Center FTE Requirements - ICMI The Harris County Commissioner's Office approved TeleDeputy, a program for deputies to work at emergency call centers for non-emergency cases. How do you calculate FTEs? Service level represents X% of callers that are handled in a specified Y seconds of delay time. With 20 hours of paperwork, the work is stacked up and each task can be completed in a back-to-back fashion. If delays become too long, callers may give up and abandon the queue. Once workload has been calculated and service goals defined, staffing requirements can be calculated. For example, if full-time is defined as 40 hours per week, two employees each working 20 hours per week contribute one FTE towards the number of required staff. The industry standard is around 70-75%. Why are you call center people spending so little time - 40 percent of aggregate paid 4,000 | Youll need to do some research. A 2021 global benchmarking Report from Talkdesk found an average abandonment rate of 5.91%. Its simply the number of forecast calls for an hour multiplied by the average handle time of a call. The weekly meeting should be more tactical. Spreadsheets After all, call centers are always abuzz with tons of customer calls. I hope these insights will help turn you into a forecasting wizard! You will also learn to identify various traffic engineering and staffing models that apply to inbound call centers. | 3,161 | The call arrival rate, noted is known. There are several telephone traffic engineering models available and one of these in particular is well-suited to the world of incoming call centers. As some of the calculations are time-consuming, a spreadsheet tool like Excel can help automate many steps and reduce the likelihood of calculation errors. How To Calculate Cost Per Call In A Call Center - Magellan Solutions If there is a very long queue, the caller may be very frustrated by the time he reaches a live agent. After creating call volume forecasts, the next step is to create the forecast for average handle time. Based on the average annual volume and the average volume per month, determine what percentage of the years contacts come in each month, on average. The first option is essentially to use the same method as for long-term planning. Note: Agent occupancy rate is not the same as agent utilization. So, with 24 staff in place, the Erlang C model predicts that 30% of callers would be delayed and that they would wait an average of 45 seconds in queue. The objective of workforce management is to get the exact right number of people every period of the day. 4,000 | However, if customers call during overstaffed times and experience shorter than normal delays, it might set an unrealistic expectation of service for future calls. Workload management is closely related to workforce management. Adding staff results in diminishing returns, with less and less impact as the staff numbers get higher. The second column shows the portion of calls that would find no agent available and go into queue and the third column shows how long those delayed callers would wait on average. Once both forecasts are built, multiply the call volume by the handle time to derive your workload forecast. In Example 2, assume 300 calls per half-hour and an AHT of 2.5 minutes. Its purpose is to determine when staff should be scheduled in the upcoming weeks. More and more callers are basing their expectations and judging your service on their last, best service experience. You can download the free Excel Erlang Calculator For this group, overstaffing can mean spending needless dollars on staffing and lower productivity than expected. | 2021 Monthly forecast | The stress of the increased pace of calls can be worsened by the fact that callers have been waiting in queue longer and may be frustrated as the call begins. Pro tip: Prepare your own list of potential impact areas to ensure youre not just relying on what others think might impact volume. We often find that call center management marches toward the same service goal year after year without ever considering if the goal should be higher or lower based on the business environment or customer demands. That's led Live Reps to its best year ever, with the company on pace to make $3 million in revenue this year. % of full year | Forecasting Fundamentals The Art and Science of Predicting Call Center Workload The basis of any good staffing plan is an accurate workload forecast. She can be reached at pennyreynolds00@gmail.com or at 615-812-8410. 56,106 | How Do I Calculate Workload? | Bizfluent First, determine the annual AHT growth rate and calculate the AHT for the upcoming year. super advanced level of forecast in contact centers. Finally, based on the rate of progress and the number of people in front of him, the customer can make an estimate of how much longer the wait will be. The number of staff required depends on the type of work and arrival rate or pattern of 4,250 | However, to get an accurate measure, you need to categorize agent productivity into specific goals using the right call center productivity metrics. In this article, well cover what call center productivity is and highlight 10 vital call center metrics you can use to measure productivity. 8.0% | If your center handles contacts from different markets, keep in mind that your callers may live in a country (or state) that has different public holidays than your native ones. Between 8:00 and 9:00am, the clerical staff has 400 pieces of mail to process and each piece takes 3 minutes to handle. For an organization known for speedy service, the service goal may be ambitious while other centers are willing to live with longer delays. Short-term forecasting is the input to the scheduling process. She can be reached at 615-812-8410 or by email at:penny.reynolds@thecallcenterschool.com. 7.5% | Get your high performers to share their routines and experiences with those who are struggling. 5,500 | In this case, you would want to make sure this additional contact volume is added to your short-term forecast. That is why an important rule of call center staffing is that the staff hours will always be greater than workload hours. The first step in this staffing process is to calculate the call workload for which to staff. There are no available customer support agents and all call queues are full. The answer is no, they do not.The reason for this is that monthly forecasts are created further in advance with less accurate information.
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