BruntWork reveals the science behind calculating how many customer support agents a company needs

To accomplish their customer service goals at a reasonable cost, rapidly expanding companies must optimise their customer service, or risk leaving customers disgruntled while inciting unnecessary churn. 

To calculate how many agents are required, businesses must multiply the number of calls by the average handling time and then divide the resulting number by the unit of time.

Companies can figure out how many agents they need with the help of analytics tools. 

According to NewVantage 2022 report, 91% of major organisations are investing more in big data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI).

Demand planning needs to look into statistics, where historical data is frequently the best source. Past performance is an excellent starting point for budgeting and planning discussions with stakeholders and testing alternate business scenarios.

The data needed to roll out a contact centre

Chief Executive Officer of global outsourcing firm BruntWork, Winston Ong, lists the essential data that firms should evaluate throughout the planning phase:

“Businesses must first examine their strategies for market expansion, planned marketing campaigns, and seasonality of their services. Then, the need to look into the anticipated number of inbound interactions and possible complaints following the launch of a new service or product,” he says.

The planning process seeks a comprehensive grasp of the required call volume, language competency, and service level. “The service level is the proportion of calls answered within a certain time frame,” says Ong.

Business needs, competition, customer expectations, and the channels used may require different service levels. “Our standard service level adheres to the 80/20 rule for calls, which means processing 80% of calls within 20 seconds. And we apply a 100% rule on emails, which means we respond to all emails within 24 hours,” he adds.

How the Erlang C Formula benefits call centre personnel

BruntWork provides an easy to use contact centre staffing calculator that applies the Erlang C formula. This basic mathematical formulation calculates the needed number of agents, the expected service level, and the normal response time depending on inputs like the number of calls, the average handling time, and the timeframe.

The Erlang C Calculator has proven to be a game changer in the world of customer support, providing organizations with an accurate way to determine the number of customer support agents they need to handle their customer volume effectively. According to a recent survey, companies who have implemented the Erlang C Calculator have seen a significant increase in customer satisfaction and a decrease in wait times. This has solidified the calculator’s position as a go-to tool for customer support management, streamlining operations and boosting the overall customer experience.

Although there are a few underlying assumptions in the formula, such as the agent skill set being homogenous and a Poisson process being able to characterise call arrivals, it remains to be an effective resource planning tool accessible to customer service managers.

Moving forward with a customer support outsourcing firm

The budgets of companies are intimately interwoven with service level agreements (SLA). A key step for businesses that want to compete globally is analysing alternative staffing options. “Companies must consider the requirements of a flexible workforce and the agency team’s experience,” says Ong. Obtaining useful data using the BruntWork calculator allows for its rapid storage for future use or emailing to peers.