Real-World Call Center Calculations
Many call center calculators tend to overestimate the number of
customer service agents needed to meet a target service level and the service level they
are able to deliver. This may result in over-staffing and lower utilization of the resources in the call center.
EasyErlang©
includes several features that simulate real-world call center situations, such as impatient callers that hang up the phone before receiving service, and those that redial immediately. Additionally, you can have the call center calculator plan extra capacity for training and unexpected sick days.
Abandon Time
One of the more critical goals of a call center is
to reduce the number of abandoned calls. The patience of different callers and how long
they are willing to wait for a response from a live agent depends on a number of factors, described in the article about
abandoned
calls. I you specify the wait time sensitivity EasyErlang calculates
the number of abandoned calls. You can change the target service levels
and the number of telephone agents to see how the number abandoned calls
changes.
Retries
Some callers, once placed on hold, hang up and
call back, believing, incorrectly, that this would place them in a
better place in the queue. You gauge the impact of this behavior on call
load by
indicating the percentage of callers that you expect to redial
instead of waiting in the queue. EasyErlang increases the call load and adjusts the calculations
to accommodate for the additional calls generated by those callers.
Shrinkage
Shrinkage is
a term used to describe time that is
"lost" due to breaks, vacation, sick days, and other unplanned
events. You can enter the estimated shrinkage as a percentage of
work time and have EasyErlang automatically adjust the staffing calculations to
account for it.
Fractional Agents
The mathematical model used by
EasyErlang to calculate the optimal headcount in the call center is very
precise. These calculations often yield a results that is a fraction and
not a whole number. For example, the required staffing is precisely
61.081 agents. Obviously, we cannot employ
a 0.081 person, so EasyErlang rounds the result up to the next integer
(whole number), 62 in this case. However, you may find it beneficial to
know the precise calculation; if the fraction is small enough, as it is
in this example, you may decide to reduce staffing by one full time CSR.
Microsoft Excel Support
EasyErlang is a self-contained calculator and is sufficient
for most day to day tasks. However, you may want to copy the data to Microsoft Excel
for further calculations, long-term calculations, reporting, charting, and
so forth. EasyErlang allows you to:
- Export results - the results table you see in EasyErlang is saved to an Excel file
- Save the result incrementally - every time you complete a calculation EasyErlang adds the most recent result to an Excel spreadsheet
