Staffing Question

[hoffmannick]

Hello, I'm currently helping with developing a Call Center. I've come across a couple different snags. I figured that this would be the place to turn.

Using Erlang C and different shrinkage formulas, I've figured out that at any given time I'll need 8 employees on the line. The employees will be students, so they may only be working 1 or 2 hour shifts in between class. My question is, what is the expected employee base of the company? How many total employees would need to be hired to cover 8 peoples work, 9 hours a day, 5 days a week?

Thanks so much, your opinion will help me greatly.

[larryboy0637]

Lots of factors need to go into this.

What is the SL goal?
What is the Occupancy goal?
What is the Shrinakge Factor..planned and unplanned?

Since you know your raw requirements you need to factor in some of the above to inflate your raw requirements and then you could figure out what you need.

[n_meghanath]

8 staff giving 8 hours (9-1 hrs of break) for 5 days would give us a workload of 320 Hrs/week.

If we have to bring in agents which could give only 2 hours shift with maybe 15 mins break and also assume that the maximum occupancy cap is at 80% (usually doesn’t go up beyond 80% when you have a 80/20 SVL) then each head would give approx. 1.75 net hours per day and with an occupancy of 80% would have 1.4 hrs as Handle time hours. This will further give 7 hours per week.

So total workload of 320/7 hours gives us 45 staff approx. Further you have to build in shrinkage on this. For instance, if the total shrinkage is 20% than we would need a gross staff of 56 approx.

This may not be as accurate as working out in an erlang c based model however it is fair enough for a ball park figure.