Planning guides
How each number is calculated, with a worked example and the calculator embedded so you can follow along with your own figures.
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How much cross-training is enough?
One second skill for everyone captures most of what full flexibility offers, but only if the skills join the queues into a chain. Simulated, not guessed.
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How to forecast with no history: a new centre, product or campaign
When there is no data to extrapolate: forecast from a driver, a contact rate, a shape and a handle time, staff the range not the point, and replace it fast.
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How to staff for a spike, a campaign or a product launch
A known uplift on an existing line: size it in contacts, give it a shape, see what it does to the requirement, and choose between overtime, borrowing and delay.
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Is your call target reasonable? The maths behind calls per day and occupancy
For agents and team leaders: what a daily call target, an occupancy figure and time between calls mean, and how to check whether yours is achievable at your handle time.
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Staffing a service desk or back office to an SLA in hours or days
Tickets and cases do not queue like calls. How to staff work with a turnaround SLA: throughput first, then the backlog the deadline allows, then the peak that breaks it.
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WFM analyst interview questions, with worked answers
Twelve questions a workforce planning interview actually asks, from Erlang C to intraday, each with the answer, the number, and the calculator that proves it.
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Where to put breaks and lunches so the curve stays covered
Breaks are shrinkage inside the interval. How to see what they do to the requirement, stagger them into the troughs, and check a break plan with the fit calculator.
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How to calculate Erlang C staffing for a contact centre
A step-by-step worked example of the Erlang C calculation: from contact volume and handle time to the agents you need for an 80/20 service level.
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How to calculate occupancy in a contact centre
The occupancy formula with a worked example, how occupancy differs from utilisation and adherence, and why a queue cannot be planned to 100 per cent.
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How to calculate contact centre shrinkage
The shrinkage formula, a worked example split into external and internal shrinkage, how to measure it from your own data, and how to use it to gross up a requirement.
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How to calculate service level and average speed of answer
How service level and ASA are defined and measured, a worked Erlang C example predicting both from a staffing level, and why the two numbers disagree.
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How to calculate a contact centre staffing requirement
From forecast to roster: the chain from contact volume and handle time through Erlang C, an occupancy ceiling and shrinkage to agents per interval, and from there to FTE.
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Erlang A: staffing when customers hang up
What Erlang A adds to Erlang C, how average patience changes the answer, and why impatient callers cost abandonment while patient ones cost agents.
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How to build a staffing model in a spreadsheet, and where it breaks
The formulas for a working contact centre staffing model in Excel or Sheets: Erlang C without overflow, occupancy, shrinkage and FTE, and where the sheet lets you down.
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How to calculate FTE from contact volume
From a monthly, weekly or daily contact volume to a staffing curve, agent-hours and FTE, with a worked example and why the answer is nearly double the naive one.
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How to measure schedule efficiency
Coverage says whether the roster is big enough; fit says whether it is in the right place. How to calculate both from a requirement and a roster, with an example.
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How to staff an email queue with a turnaround time
Email is a workload problem, not a queueing one. How to staff to throughput, what the turnaround target does to the answer, and a worked example with 500 emails a day.
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When a spreadsheet stops being enough for workforce planning
A spreadsheet is the right planning tool for a small contact centre, until it is not. The signs you have outgrown it, what breaks first, and what to move first.
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How to staff live chat with concurrency
Why voice Erlang gives the wrong answer for chat, how to model an agent handling several chats at once as slots, and where the common handle-time shortcut goes wrong.
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What a ten per cent cut in handle time is worth
Handle time multiplies every interval's workload. What a 10% reduction does to agents required, occupancy and FTE, and why it beats most forecast improvements.
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Which reporting interval to plan in: 15, 30 or 60 minutes
Shorter intervals see the peak; longer ones avoid overhang. The rule for choosing, what overhang does to an Erlang calculation, and what changes when you switch.