General discussion on WFM - Agents required

[mac_see]

Hi!

I am learning the WFM concept and require help. There are lots of online calculators available on the Internet and also few tools like Erlang which gives an estimate on how many agents are required after provinding few parameters and SLA goals.

My question is, if we do not use such online calculators or other tools and decide to calculate only on excel then what are the different parameters one can check to arrive into a decision?

For example:
1. If I have to answer 9000 calls at an SLA of 80% ASA 20 sec and AHT of 3 mins then how many agents will I require for a 24/7 pattern?

[Charles Alvear]

It's going to be difficult pulling this off with just basic Excel functions. You could come up with some ballpark numbers, but it would be better to utilize Erlang (poisson) formulas to get more accurate results.

I found a tool online that incorporates Erlang formulas into Excel (for free) with no plug-ins required.
http://www.mitan.co.uk/mainerlg_spsh.htm

You'll want to have an idea of your incoming call patterns in order to use and adapt this tool. How are those 9000 calls distributed during the course of a 24 hour period. You should be able to pull that data from your ACD system and plot the distribution by 1-hour, 30-min, or 15-min intervals and apply these values to the sample spreadsheet provided on the web page.

You can also plug in your targets 80% SL at 20 seconds.

I have adapted the Excel for my small contact center (less than 25 agents) and it works well enough for us.

My assumption is that you are operating in a large call center. I would highly recommend using an enterprise tool like Blue Pumpkin for your scheduling and planning since those tools are far more robust and consider other variables that are not available in the Excel sample.

You'll also want to monitor schedule adherence. That is a major shortcoming of my adapted Excel tool. We can come up with a fantastic schedule that helps us reach our target SL, but it's won't amount to hill of beans if the agents don't follow the schedule.

Hope this helps.