Hi

Have read a few blogs on here now so hopefully I will get an easy to undertsand answer to the following three questions.

Can any one provide me an excel spreadsheet with a erlang formula set up that will just give me how many staff I have by changing the inputs.

Can they tell me how to change between 60 minutes to 30 minutes to 15 minutes.

Also if I do one say 30 minute period how can I be confident of the next 30 minute period if it does not take in to account that there might be calls in queue already at the start of the next period.

Some help here would be great.

Thanks

Hi Kevin:

In a seperate post, I'll provide detailed anwers
Here are the short easy to understand answers:

1) http://www.callcentrehelper.com/erlang-c-calculator-2473.htm#comment-7842

2) 100 Calls in 30 Minutes = 200 Calls in 60 Minutes
100 Calls in 15 Minutes = 400 Calls in 60 Minutes

3) You can be confident that all carry over effects of both callers in queue and callers still talking to agents beyond the boundary of the interval will be ignored. These distortions can really mess-up the timing of agents so beware of simplistic approaches that carry forward a percent of calls. If you want your planning to accurately interpret carryover effects then this can be done with High Definition Planning methods that interpret transaction details instead of course call counts.

On the subject of Excel Based Forecasting you may like to check out the following thread.

http://www.callcentervoice.com/vtopicf_11_7232.htm


Paul Kasanda

A1. You can get an Erlang for Excel add-in... then you can create as many models as you like...

http://www.erlang.co.uk/excel.htm

A2. Paul is spot-on

A3. You are right in you theorising, but remember that the same assumption could be applied to every interval, so every interval has a carry-over, and therefor is staffed to be able to take the previous intervals roll-over...

Hope this helps

Having had a look at some of the erlang calculators out there I thought I would put one of my own together.
Its here... http://www.2planconsulting.com/downloads.html... if you want to give it a go.

Hi Kevin,

Erlang C calculates the staff requirement based on an hourly call volumes. You can convert 15 mins or 30 mins interval to fit it in the Erlang C formulae

Erlang C also takes assumptions such as SL,ASA,AHT and max delay in consideration while calculating agent requirement. any spill over from previous interval should get neautralised during the course of the day.

If you already have calls in queue during the start of new interval then ideally either your forecasted volume or your forecasted AHT is inaccurate or offcourse you do not have enuff staff available as required.

I personally feel, staffing on excel using Erlang gives much better results than tools like IEX and Bluepumpkin. however i wouldn't want to use excel for scheduling in multiskilled environment.