How to Calculate Manpower in the Call Center
“How to calculate Manpower in the call center ” This question is one of the frequently asked questions of a leadership interview in a call center. A Call Center is a place (or hub) where thousands of calls land daily. While it’s a tough task to handle each and every single call that lands in the call center, it’s also important to know “How to calculate Manpower in the Call Center” to handle the call volume.
Less or inadequate staffing can increase the wait time, leading to customer dissatisfaction and negatively impacting the call center performance metrics like abandoned rate and Call Quality, etc. On the other hand, having more than required staffing can result in unnecessary expenses, leading to revenue loss to the company.
Hence in this blog today we will deep dive into the “manpower Calculation and will understand “How to Calculate Manpower in Call Center“.
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Now let’s get back to the topic .
How to calculate manpower in a call center?
Before understanding the calculation of manpower , let’s first understand the definition of manpower in call center.
What is Manpower in Call Center?
Manpower in a call center is nothing but the customer service representatives also known as call center agents.
As mentioned above scheduling adequate manpower is very important to handle the call or chat volume in a specific day/time interval.
Although , it is understandable that 100% accuracy in scheduling manpower is not expected, however analyzing the historical trend can give you the benefit to edge something.
How to Calculate Manpower in the Call Center
Often there are 2 ways to calculate the manpower in a call center.
- Tradition Method
- Erlang Method
1. Traditional Method to Calculate Manpower
The tradition method of calculating manpower is quite easy. To calculate the manpower in a traditional way you need below contents
- Call Volume – Shared by the client
- AHT- Threshold shared by client
- Occupancy: Process Occupancy
- Shrinkage : Call Center Shrinkage
Let’s understand step by step how to calculate the manpower
Step 1: Determine Call Volume:
The first step is to determine the call volume for your contact center . Irrespective of the type of call center (inbound or outbound) a call center should aware about the daily or weekly call volume for your center. Either client can share you the call volume or you can take the help of tools like ACD , CRM and other software that records the daily call volume to determine the call center call volume.
Step 2: Calculate the AHT
The next step is to determine the AHT for call center. As mentioned in the previous step , either client can share the AHT threshold or call center can take the threshold as per the historical trend.
Step 3: Occupancy Rate
After determining the call volume and AHT , the third step is to determine the occupancy rate. Although there may be a variance in occupancy rate as per the type of call center but the idle occupancy rate for most of the call centers hover between 85%-90%.
Step 4: Calculate Shrinkage
The next step is to calculate the shrinkage of the day or month. For a precise calculation of the required manpower a call center needs to consider both planned and unplanned shrinkage . The idle planned shrinkage for a call center ( 6 days working) is >25%.
Learn More : How to calculate the call center shrinkage
Now it’s time to calculate the manpower
For better explanation let’s take some numbers and we will put them in to the given metrics .
Let’s assume a call center has to plan manpower for a week and below are the numbers.
| Metrics | Numbers |
|---|---|
| Call Volume | 5000 |
| AHT | 5 Mins |
| Occupancy | 90% |
| Shrinkage | 25% |
Step 1:
The first thing we can do is to calculate the per hour and per day call of an agent. So as per the numbers given the AHT is 5 mins it means with the occupancy of 90% one agent can take ~ 11 chats/calls in one hour.
Below is the calculation :
AHT = 5 mins
1 hour =60 mins
Total calls taken in an hour = 60/5 =12 Calls
Occupancy = 90%
Total calls after occupancy per hour = 90% *12 = 10.8 ~ 11 Calls
So total calls in a day by one agent is = 11 * 8 (hours) = 88 Calls
Now, total agent required to handle the chat volume is =
“Total Number of Volume / Call taken by one agent in a day “
5000/88 = 56.81 ~ 57 agents
we are not done yet . We have not taken shrinkage on count yet.
Considering shrinkage while planning manpower is very crucial as it not only provides buffer manpower but also helps to avoid agent fatigue.
As per the example above our shrinkage is 25%. which means we need to take 25% buffer.
The total number of agents required to handle the given chat volume is :
57*125% = 71.25 ~ 72 Agents
So finally we have calculated the required manpower
Congrats .
The other way to calculate the manpower is to use the Erlang Calculator, which we can discuss in our next article.
Conclusion :
Manpower calculation is a crucial part in every call center or BPO. Often, a dedicated WFM team is hired to perform the manpower planning and scheduling but in few small call centers MIS or Ops department has to do the job of manpower planning and calculation.. Hence it is always good to know about he manpower calculation. irrespective of your department.
I am sure this blog will answer all your question related to How to Calculate Manpower in Call Center or BPO.
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I am sure this blog will answer all your question related to manpower calculation in call center or BPO.
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