Concurrency and its Calculation in Call Center

A call center serves as a hub for handling a substantial volume of calls or chats daily. To make sure no calls or chats get abandoned, it’s important to have enough staff scheduled in advance. In a voice call center, however, an agent can handle only 1 call at a time but in a non-voice call center, they need to handle multiple chats at once.”

Concurrency in Call Center

This process of handling multiple chats at a time is known as “Concurrency”.

In the voice process the manpower calculation of required staffing is simple, whereas the calculation of concurrency for the nonvoice process can be a little complex.

So, today’s blog is about “Concurrency in Call Center” and we are going to cover below points:

1. What is Concurrency in Call Center

2. How to effectively manage Concurrency

3. How to calculate Concurrency in the Call Center.

We hope by the end of this blog you will gain a deeper understanding of “Concurrency and its calculation in call center”.

Without further ado, let’s start today’s topic :

“Concurrency and its Calculation in Call Center”

Before diving deep into the calculation, let’s understand “Concurrency” in detail.

What is Concurrency?

As mentioned above Concurrency can be termed as ” The number of live or active multiple (more than one) chats handled by an agent in a call center”.

For voice, the concurrency will be equal to the number of agents. but for nonvoice customer service agents concurrency can go up to 5 chats at a time, depending on the chat volume and client requirements.

Concurrency is directly proportional to chat volume ” Higher the chat volume, the concurrency will be higher.“

Now let’s understand, in case of high chat volume how a call center can effectively handle chat volume or “Concurrency”.

How to effectively manage Concurrency?

Concurrency, if not managed in an effective way can lead to low customer satisfaction and unhappy clients also it hampers other call center metrics such as NPS, Chat Quality, CES, etc.

In this blog, we are sharing 3 Proven Tips ( in brief ) that can help you to effectively manage Concurrency:

1. Rigorous RTM:

RTM is an abbreviation for ” Real Time Management “. Be it maintaining AHT and other metrics or controlling the metrics hygiene, RTM is an important exercise.

RTM In Call Center

Similarly, to effectively manage concurrency a call center must focus on real-time monitoring to scan agent’s activity during and post-chat and take prompt action in case of any unusual event.

2. Manpower Planning:

Proper manpower planning not only helps to control call center metrics but also to handle high chat volume and manage concurrency. 

During high chat volume if there is high shrinkage in a day then concurrency would be higher for every agent which may increase the chat quality and challenge agent fatigue.

3. Tenure Analysis:

One another way to effectively manage Concurrency is to route high concurrency to the tenured bucket and a single concurrency chat for newly hired agents.

This pattern will not only help to handle the chat concurrency in a soothing way but also maintain the call quality and keep the other call center metrics intact.

Now let’s discuss the main topic:

How to Calculate Concurrency?

One of the best ways to calculate the Concurrency is to analyze the historical trend of chat volume. Based on the history the Chat Concurrency can be calculated by using below formula :

Concurrency: (Total Chat Time + Wrap Time)/ Total Engaged Time

wherein:

Chat Time: Time Spent by an agent to handle the chat

Wrap Time or ACW: Time spent by the agent to wrap and finally dispose of the chat.

Engaged Time: Total hours the agent is engaged in the chat

Calculate Concurrency in Call Center

Now, let’s understand it with an example :

Problem: 

We have 5 agents and they took 15 chats in 1 hour with the ACHT ( Chat Time + Wrap Time) of 6800 secs. What is the Concurrency during that period?

Solution: 

As per the problem above let’s put the numeric numbers into the formula:

Chat Time: 6800 secs

Engaged Time :1 hour i.e. 3600 secs

Let’s calculate the concurrency:

Concurrency Formula: 

(Total Chat Time + Wrap Time)/ Total Engaged Time

= 6800 /3600 

= 1.9

Tip 💡 : While calculating the chat concurrency it is always advisable to analyze previous chat trends, staff attrition rate, and backup hiring.

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