What is the Formula for Concurrency In Chat Support?

We love to share the discussions held in our contact centre community, so when the interesting topic calculating concurrency in chat support, this seemed like a great one to put together for you.

Formula Required for Concurrency In Chat Support

Anybody can help me out to find out the formula for calculating Concurrency in Chat support?

Question asked by Charles

Concurrency in Live Chat – Definition

Concurrency in live chat refers to the ability of a chat system to handle multiple interactions simultaneously.

It involves managing multiple conversations or customer queries at the same time without compromising the quality or speed of responses.

Customer support agents or automated chatbots can engage in multiple conversations at once. For example, an agent might be assisting three different customers simultaneously, switching between chats as needed.

The Formula for Real Time Concurrency in Chat

The formula for concurrency in live chat can be expressed as:

Concurrency Ratio = Total Number of Concurrent Chats / Total Number of Agents 

• Total Number of Concurrent Chats – The sum of all live chat sessions that are being handled at the same time across all agents.
• Total Number of Agents – The total number of agents actively handling chats.

For example

If 15 live chats are being handled by 5 agents at the same time, the concurrency ratio would be:

Concurrency Ratio = 15 Concurrent Chats / 5 Agents = 3

This means on average each agent is handling 3 chats concurrently.

Thanks to Carl

Formula for Concurrency In Chat Support

Depending on the system you use and the figures it generates for you, you may have to tweak this formula; but this works.

Concurrency = Customer AHT/ Agent AHT

• Customer AHT = length of time on a chat from the point of view of the customer
• Agent AHT = length of time handling the exact chat + time in WRAP.

As you can appreciate, the two times will not be identical because as the agent is awaiting the customer to respond, the agent will service other chats (the timer for the first chat will stop, and the second chat will start – all while the original customers AHT increases whilst we wait for a response).

With thanks to Michael

Maximum Number of Chats

If you are looking for the maximum amount of chats an agent can handle, we have done some research on this which may interest you 

With thanks to Jonty

Alternate Formula for Chat Concurrency

This is how we get the actual concurrency…

Concurrency = Total Chat Time / Login Time

With thanks to Sowkath

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If you are looking for more formulas to calculate common contact centre stats, read these next:

• The Formula to Calculate Forecast Accuracy
• How to Measure Call Abandon Rate
• Erlang C Formula – Made Simple With an Easy Worked Example

Author: Jonty Pearce