Proactive Chat Staffing Calculation

Tips/advice on how to calculate staffing for proactive chat

I am looking for any tips/advice on how to calculate staffing for proactive chat. We have run a quick trial to get a feel for numbers and AHT, we have decided on concurrency and service levels. Obviously the more staff (within reason) we through at this, the more potential chat forms will be presented to our customers. Have I considered everything? Or is there something obvious that I have missed?

Question asked by PJack

Supply based forecasting model

There has to be a demand as well as supply based forecasting model. The demand based staffing can be derived by trending visitor volume & acceptance ratio. The supply based model can be an extrapolation of what you derive from demand based pattern on your staffs available. A product of concurrency and AHT will give you chats per hour. You can convert this CPH into AHT again to factor concurrency. Use ASA, interval volume, SL (erlang c) to get the staffing spread.

Hope this helps.

With thanks to cruiser123

Invites should range within 90% to 95%

” Obviously the more staff (within reason) we through at this, the more potential chat forms will be presented to our customers.”

Holds true till the time your invitations are less than visitor volume. Generally the invites should range within 90% to 95% of visitor volume. The proactive chats will depend on how much of these invites have been accepted by customers. So, acceptance rate has a huge role to play.

With thanks to cruiser123

SLA Targets

Thanks for your help cruiser. Any advice on an SLA target to use in the staffing calc? I have completed a number of scenario’s calculating staffing required to achieve SLA’s of 99%, 95%, 90%, 80% in 20 seconds. Is there an industry standard?

With thanks to PJack

No Industry Standards

I have not seen any industry standards for this, but we will be asking this question in tomorrow’s webinar on Best Practices for Web Chat. It will be interesting to see the results.

With thanks to Jonty

Poll Results

The results of the poll of what service level time for web chat

1 – 10 seconds 22%

11 – 20 seconds 35%

21 – 30 seconds 20%

31 – 60 seconds 14%

60+ seconds 9%

This probably puts the average at 18 seconds.

Paul Weald indicated that it should be to 10 seconds.

You can view a replay of the webinar on the following link. Recorded Webinar: Best Practices for Using Web Chat

With thanks to Jonty

2 Questions

I have two questions about FTE calculations and call capacity

1. If your data is as such

FTE 740

FTE hours/month 168

Load factor: 25%

Expected occupancy 70%

expected AHT 350

How many calls can the above call centre take with those metrics?

what would be the proper calculations because i see more then one somtimes

second question

Call Volume/Month: 345,000

Abandon Rate: 5%

AHT: 348

Expected Occupancy: 55%

Load Factor: 30%

FTE Hours/Month: 170

How many FTE would you need to do the above job and what would be the proper calculation?

With thanks to noah

Load factor

Hi Noah

What do you mean by load factor?

With thanks to Jonty

Answer

Load factor from what I know is the total of all the below

Absence-Paid

Absence-Unpaid

Coaching

Tech

Meeting

Unproductive Time

Vacation-Paid

Vacation-UnPaid

Training

Paid Break

Special Projects

AUX Time

Thank you very much, appreciate your help in this Jonty

With thanks to noah

Shrinkage

That is also know as shrinkage

FTE 740

FTE hours/month 168

Load factor: 25% Shrinkage

Expected occupancy 70%

expected AHT 350 350 seconds

Hours per month for all FTEs 124,320 Hours

Less shrinkage 93,240 Hours

After occupancy 65,268 Hours

Calls per agent per hour 10.29

Total calls 671,328

With thanks to Jonty

FTE (full time equivalents)

thank you very much! just one more question in the list

second question

Call Volume/Month: 345,000

Abandon Rate: 5%

AHT: 348

Expected Occupancy: 55%

Load Factor: 30%

FTE Hours/Month: 170

How many FTE (full time equivalents) would you need to do the above job and what would be the proper calculation?

With thanks to noah

Calculation

Hi Noah

It’s the same calculation (just backwards), you just ignore the abandoned calls figure.

I put it all into a spreadsheet.

FTE 511

FTE hours/month 170

Load factor: 30% Shrinkage

Expected occupancy 55%

expected AHT 350 348 seconds

Hours per month for all FTEs 86,870

Less shrinkage 60,809

After occupancy 33,445

Calls per agent per hour 10.34

Total calls 345,982 (closest value I could get to 345,000)

With thanks to Jonty

Query

Hi Jonty,

can you please tell how you came up with 511 FTE? have the same case as above and need fully understanding.

Thank you

With thanks to sinnedennis

Answer

Dennis,

FTE Hrs: 170

After Occ: 93.5

Less Shrinkage: 65.45

This 65.45 Hrs is the productive time your agents will give in a month

Total Workload you have is:

345000*(348/3600) = 33350 Hrs

# Agents Req = 33350/65.45 = 509.46 (=510) That is what I have for you.

With thanks to sushil10s

Author: Jonty Pearce