FTE Calculations

[Chris]

Hello Everyone,

I have a quick call center staffing question to ask

I am working on my budget for this call center and am projecting my FTE needs per month, week and day. I have used a few automated FTE calculators which have helped for my hour interval schedule but not for my day, monthly, weekly needs.

The monthly requirement formula that I think is correct is

FTE = Total Calls predicted divided by 222(manned hours fte monthly) divided by 6.55 (typical fte work day) multiplied by TSF expected

If you have anything that works can you flip it over to me as I am pretty much at a loss going forward

Thanks for everything
Chris

[mikael]

Chris,

How are you allocating for training time? If you hire a new person, how long does it take them to become competent? (Competent = feeling confident of being able to handle 80% of the issues they encounter, knowing where to go to get the answers, etc.) Average is 6-9 months, and while they're learning, they will cause a productivity loss in the 2-3 people around them.

How many hours per day are you scheduling folks to be on deck? With what effect on your turnover?

What allocation are you making for ongoing training & meetings, etc.?

Are you tying your fte projections to a service level for the centre?

[Chris]

Hello,

I am scheduling my group to be available working for 6.55 hours in an 8 hour shift

ie---> (8 hr shift - 45 min lunch - 10 min break - 10 min break x 95% schedule adherance)

I am attempting to find out how many agent I need to reach 80/20 SLA based on my projected call volume

-Chris

This is my present formula

FTE REQUIREMENTS

50000 PROJECTED CALL VOLUME
divided by
151.16 MONTHLY MANNED HOURS
divided by
6.95 TOTAL MANNED HOURS PER DAY
multiplied by
80% SERVICE LEVEL
equals
38.07 FTE REQUIRED

[mikael]

Chris,

I think you may want to take another look at your approach.

If you know your target service level, the average handle time for the calls, and the number of calls you expect at a given hour, an Erlang calcuator will tell you how many people you need on deck at that time to meet that service level.

If you plot your busiest hours across the week, and the headcount required during those hours to meet the S/L, you'll get a better basis for your overall staffing requirements.

Having only three possible states for your group, logged into the phone queue / at break / at lunch, and a 7-hour per day PIE (phone in ear) expectation will, I think, tend to result in a pretty high turnover rate. I think that a planned 95% occupancy rate is a bit ambitious.

[thetuan]

Hi Chris,

I normally don't respond in this forum but I hate to see you get the wrong info regarding the basics of WFM. What others have suggested with the busy hours will get you your seat requirement. In order for you to get the overall FTE count, you will need to do a scheduling run against your call forecast and your shrinkages - if you are lucky enough to have TCS, then simply do a scheduling run with all your assumptions in there and the overall FTE count will be calculated for you. It will give you all the schedules that you will need and how many CSRs and FTEs that should be.

With regards to your 95% productivity for the CSR, that is definitely the right number. As you have illustrated, your CSR is scheduled to be on the phone for 6.95 hours out of an 8 hours shift. To get a 95 productivity percentage, the CSR should be logged into the switch for 6.60 hours. What that means is that the CSR still have 20 minutes of free time that he/she does not have to account for and still be OK. In fact, we have a 96% productivity percentage in our operation and we have reps that exceed that. 20 minutes of free time for an 8 hour shift is quite generous in my opinion.

Good luck

[JoeB]

Chris,

In your post of June 20 you say “I am attempting to find out how many agent I need to reach 80/20 SLA based on my projected call volume”. This, indeed, will give you the staffing required for this specific call volume (presumably the peak daily volume). A good WFM tool will also give you the occupancy rate so you can find out how aggressive you can be in need for breaks etc.

If you profile the call volume on a daily and weekly basis (and annually of you have seasonal effect oh call volume) you should be able to forecast your long term FTE requirements, after factoring in hours of coverage, training, vacation, sick days etc.

Two questions about the FTE formula you propose:

I fail to follow the logic in dividing call volume by manned hours. Maybe you mean call load, which takes into consideration both volume and ASA?

Also, 80% SL doesnÂ’t mean that you have to answer only 80% of the calls as your formula implies. Your formula essentially reduced manpower requirement by 20%, which can have catastrophic impact on your service level.

Discussing formulae on the web forum is difficultÂ… feel free to contact me directly to discuss the details of the calculations.

Joe
Diagnostic Strategies
www.DiagnosticStrategies.com
jbarkai@DiagnosticStrategies.com

[ronald_jon]

Instead of calls projected, you would probably need to consider Calls times Average handle time. This would be how many minutes that would need to be handled.