Forecasting

Workforce Management Scheduling in a 90% + inbound call center. What is the best practice for both planned and unplanned shrinkage of your Workforce? I manage 5 departments: Retail Banking Support, Technical Support (85% traditional Helpdesk), Mortgage Servicing Support, Retail Bank Branch Support (also supports my Retail Banking Support team), Corporate Switchboard. I realize the best practice may very by customer focus so know that I have B2C (Business to Consumer) and B2E (Business to Employee) there is very little if any B2B (Business to Business). I look forward to any information you can provide. Regards, Raymond D. Banister, VP Customer Service Operations Manager Flagstar Bank

Hi, currently i'm running a call center serving 2 sites, very soon we will be serving a third site but with huge number of customers, I need to know the equation for calculating the number of subscribers to agents needed ratio?

We're doing the day-to-day forecast in WFM tool, but I build an Excel model for mid term and long term forecast. The granularity of the long term is weekly and I have based that on a workload calculation not Erlang because there isnt much use in Erlang for that granularity. My question is how should I account for SL (variation) in the long term forecast. The FTE requirement should go up when SL does, but a WL calculation does not allow for that. Any suggestions?

How do we calculate shrinkage in B.P.O? Can anyone tell me the formula ?

Is there any risk to using a basic calculation of forecasted volume multiplied by productivity (average closed per engineer) when looking for headcount needs at a quarterly or yearly level? An example being x number of cases per quarter / 100 cases per engineer = x number of engineers needed to cover the work. In the past I have always used a detailed formula of (((volume/ avg. days per quarter) x AHT ) / 60) / new work availability) x shrinkage %), which I actually picked up from the staffing book from ICMI. I am have seen the first method used more and more as it seems to be easier to digest. I am concerned that there is a risk of it being over simplified, however I am unable to really come up with why it might be a bad practice OR if it is actually ok when looking at things it from a high-level. This is not dealing with actual hourly staffing, as we do use Erlang for that.

I'm a reporting analyst and need all information about forecasting and staffing. Thanks.

Looking for where I can find information on "Best in Class" Forecasting Methods. Benchmark Accurancy levels for Short, Med and Long range forecasts. How do companies normalize for high abandon rates caused by staff levels that are below required.

How do you determine the number of agents you need for the whole year based on forecasted incoming calls? What should be taken in consideration for long-term staff forecasting?

Can somebody please provide me with a formula for calculating "shrinkage"?

How do we forecast our call volume if we have historical call trends from last month? Is there a formula for calculating this?