Good Day!

I represent a relatively small firm with approximately 5000 clients. This firm is currently running version 1.0 of a web-based product.

I'm looking for a method of adequately forecasting how the release of version 2.0 will effect call volumes for our call center. I can easily forecast the number of calls we may recieve in a given week, but am having some problems developing a formula which will calculate in any degree of accuracy, the number of people who will visit the sitejust to see the enhancements, and call us in the process.

Right now, I'm developing a foundation based on the average number of hits to the site per day. My hope is that someone here can provide me a reasonable markup to these numbers to represent the percent increase for the calls. I will be able to gather the number of calls vs the number of individual users logging into the site, the problem is forecasting how this may effect the company, in both the long and the short term.

Any help would be Greatly Appreciated!

-Drk

Kelly -
We've done a bit of work with web-based products and built forecasts to support their call centers. Here's a few statistics that I hope you'll find useful.

Average Increase in Web Hits after New Release:
*Light-Medium Marketing- week one 15%, week two 25%, weeks three-five 35%, weeks six and on 30%. Use the actual week one increase as your 'doubling week' for marketing purposes, plus 5%. The hits will trail of, usually sometime after week six, over a 3-4 week period. Week seven should tell the tale.

*Heavy Marketing - as above, but add 10 points to each percent mentioned above.

*Hits Related to Product Issues - this will likely follow this or a similar equations: (Customers on New Version per Week* 0.85)*Day of Week Distribution. Handling times must be factored in, as they will usually run ~25-30% higher.

You can drive these numbers down, of course, by ensuring that a)your web site has a strong FAQ and on-line help feature and b)your agents arewell-versed in the new product.

I'd love to hear how it goes.

Brent

Thanks Brent! This certainly does add some valuable insight as to how we may be impacted by our product rollout.

A few questions, if I may;

It's clear by your numbers that users of the product will generally call when they use it. While there may be a small percentage who will log in and use the product as a direct response to our communications, this wouldn't be the norm, Correct? Is it common for the numbers to peak out at week three?

Version 1.0 is completely un-intuitive, and quite cumbersome. It is the product of fix after fix after fix, and appears as such. Version 2.0 is much more intuitive, with Online in context help, "Yahoo Style" navigation, (where the user can see in a tree-style where they're going, and where they've been). It also include Web Based Training. Given that, how would the numbers be effected?

Is a general figure based on existing web-traffic even relavent? Will this figure give me a relatively accurate sense of how things will go?

Thanks millions for your feedback, I'll be happy to let you know how it goes!