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Call Center Calculator

Call Center Staffing Calculator at ExpertCallers

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12 years

Call Center Staffing Calculator at ExpertCallers

ExpertCallers has over 12 years of experience in providing outsourced call center services. We specialize in providing reliable and scalable call center services at reduced costs.

Before we move onto the details of the costs of outsourcing call centers, let’s look at the various types of call centers:

  • An in-house call center which is hired by the company itself and operates within the organization itself
  • An outsourced call center where the operations are handled by a service provider hired by the company
  • A virtual call center where the agents work from remotely from various locations around the world and respond to calls on cloud

To help prospects figure out how much they need to invest in availing call center services from us, we have devised a call center staffing calculator or a call calculator. This calculator would provide you with the accurate estimation of:

The number of call center agents required to be hired

The total cost incurred for carrying out the desired services

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The prime fields/components of ExpertCallers call center calculator:

You can leverage our ExpertCallers call center staff calculator to know the accurate estimates of the following types of projects:

  • Inbound Calling
  • Chat Support
  • Email Support
  • Ongoing Outbound Calling Requirement
  • One-time Outbound Calling Requirement

Our users can get accurate estimates by using our call center staff calculator for a range of services. These services include:

  • Technical Service
  • Customer Service
  • Tele sales
  • Order Taking Services
  • Tech Support
  • Answering Support
  • Up-selling and Cross-selling Services
  • Appointment Setting
  • Lead Generation
  • Order Taking Services
  • Mail-Follow Up Services
  • Survey Report
  • Customer Support Service
  • Others

By using our call center calculations, you can select the countries where you are planning to expand your business. Countries included in the list are:

  • USA
  • Canada
  • Middle East
  • Switzerland
  • Australia
  • Singapore
  • UK
  • Germany

We offer you the option to choose the number of hours and days you want to leverage our call center services. The options we provide are as follows:

  • 10/7 Shift - 10 hours of services, 7days a week
  • 10/5 Shift - 10 hours of services, 5 days a week
  • 24/5 Shift - 24 hours of services, 5 days a week
  • 24/7 Shift - 24 hours of services, 7 days a week

The user would have to provide the precise number of calls made to the customer per week.

The user would have to provide the exact numeric value of the minimum amount of time spent by the call center agent or the average speed of answer to cater to customer needs.

Basic Comparison Chart for Calculating Call Center Outsourcing Costs

# In-House Call Center Outsourced Call Center
Productive Agent Time 100% 100%
Non-Productive Agent Time:
  • Breaks
  • Coaching
  • Wait time
100% 0%
Supervisor/Manager for Customer Service Agents 100% Included in agent hourly rate
Quality Assurance 100% Included in agent hourly rate
Infrastructure:
  • Workstations/IT support
  • Telephony
  • Facilities
100% Included in agent hourly rate
HR Support including:
  • Recruiting
  • Payroll
  • Benefits Management
100% Included in agent hourly rate
Comparison Chart for Calculating Call Center Outsourcing Costs

As can be seen above, an in-house call center can be an expensive way of handling your sales and customer service requirements. Some of the overheads that exist in case of an in-house call center are:

  • Salaries and benefits
  • Hiring costs
  • Office space
  • Software and hardware
  • Training and quality assurance
  • Office supplies

When it comes to outsourcing your call center needs, there are many factors that come into play. These are:

  • Expected call volume
  • Duration of calls
  • Degree of support
  • Languages - Multilingual or English
  • Schedules - 24/7 availability or office timings
  • Channels - phone or multichannel

If you're trying to weigh the advantage of outsourcing call center services over maintaining an in-house call center, then there are some terms which you should keep in mind:

The major difference between the costs in an in-house call center and an outsourced one lies in the concept of agent hour. In the case of inhouse, you pay for 100% of an agent hour whereas, in the case of outsourcing, you only pay for the productive agent hour. This means that all the non-productive time such as coffee breaks or training time is not included in the cost. Generally, the productive time for an agent is considered to be 85% of an hour. For example, if an in-house call center agent costs $10 per hour, an outsourced call center agent will cost around $8.50 per hour, saving your business 15% of employee costs.

One of the direct benefits of outsourcing is efficient forecasting, staffing, and managing to reach maximum productivity and efficiency. Once you outsource your call center services, the agents will help you in

  • Utilizing the latest call center infrastructure for efficient call distribution
  • Managing flexible tasks for optimum efficiency
  • Offering training for efficient staffing during peak and valley periods
  • Operate a group of agents to reduce hours of operation

All these will help ensure a reduction in FTE while maintaining the same service quality. It’s generally found that outsourcing leads to a 5% reduction in FTE.

It's important to know that the hourly rate per agent includes other associated management costs as well. This includes various heads such as on-going technology, human resources, and technology platform costs.

The ExpertCallers call center calculator derives a lot from the Erlang calculator and follows the Erlang model of calculation. It can help you determine the number of call center agents you may need in the call center and how much you may need to spend to outsource your call center activities.

To ensure that you get the accurate calculation and estimate the exact number of agents required and amount spent, some of the factors you need to consider are:

  • Average Handling Time (in seconds) - This is the average length of time that’s required to handle or complete calls. It’s measured in seconds.
  • Minimum Service Level (in %) - This is the minimum amount of calls that need to be answered within a predetermined time limit.
  • Service Level Interval (in seconds) - This is the amount of time dedicated to service calls. It’s measured in seconds.
  • Average Patience Time (in seconds)- This is the average amount of time that is spent before a call is abandoned. It’s measured in seconds.
  • Maximum Abandonment Rate (in %) - This is the maximum amount of calls that can be abandoned by the caller. It’s measured in percentage.
  • Maximum Average Speed of Answer (in seconds) - This is the average amount of time that a call can lie waiting in a service queue before being answered. It’s measured in seconds.

All you need to know about the call center calculator

As companies grow and set new ambitions to achieve with their customer service and limited resources, staffing professionals for call center operations can be a tricky task. So, how can one business go about it?

Is there a magic number that tells you how many call center agents will be specifically needed for a team who will be enough to handle customer requests and demands? At ExpertCallers, we are well aware that calculating call center staffing levels isn’t easy.

Call centers handle many complex tasks, and it's obvious that you need to include several factors into account to get the number right. That’s where the need for a call center calculator arises.

call center staffing calculator

Once you have the required data, you can just input them into the right formula to find out the required manpower. With ExpertCallers’ call center staffing calculator, you can build the right team from the start and prevent backfilling vacancies in the middle of a project.

Our call center calculator is free, and you can easily calculate the required estimates of the number of agents to be hired and the costs incurred. The user must All you need to do is provide the information about their service, call count, project, target country, shift coverage bias, and average handling type to get accurate estimates. In addition to helping you determine your staffing needs realistically to back your expansion plans, ExpertCallers’ staffing calculator can also help to calculate the cost required to achieve your service level goals.

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Every smart business is focused on finding ways and means to eliminate costs. Considering the present scenario of customer service, most businesses end up spending a huge amount in that department. An effective way to make smarter investments in customer service as well as reduce costs is through outsourcing call centers. A better understanding of the costs and processes will help you to make the right decision for your business.

Benefits of a call center calculator

If you're planning to make the switch to an outsourced call center and planning to do some market research to analyse your gains and losses, a call center staffing calculator can come to your rescue.

Some of the benefits of figuring out your call center costs with the help of a calculator are:

One of the most obvious points is of course getting to know the cost benefits upfront. You can find out exactly what you’re paying for as well as the costs that you can avoid once you outsource. For example, in an inhouse setup, while you have to pay for non-productive hours of your agents such as coffee breaks and coaching sessions, in the case of an outsourced setup, you can only pay for the hours when the agents are working. Apart from that, you can save a lot of operating costs as well.

Another one of the benefits of a call center agent calculator is that you get to easily understand your bottom lines. You get to analyse both the profits and productivity that your business can earn from outsourcing its services.

When trying to reduce your inhouse staff strength and get an equivalent or more productive and cost effective alternative, you can take the help of a call center calculator. It can help you estimate exactly how much of resources you can save, how much of fresh resources you need to invest in and still keep a profit margin for your business.

Industries We Serve

ExpertCallers has extensive experience in providing proficient call center services to a wide variety to industries including:

Our Call Centers are Spread Across Five Countries

We let you pick one or multiple delivery centers according to your preference and requirement.

ExpertCallers global delivery centers (India, Philippines, Bolivia, Colombia & Argentina)

Types of Outbound Calling requirements

Prospect number

In a chosen time-frame, the user would have to enter the total number of prospective leads.

Maximum number of attempts

If the prospective leads don’t respond on the first call, the agent is allowed to follow-up with the unresponsive leads for a maximum of 5 attempts.

Allotment of deadlines

The user would have to allot a maximum number of days as the deadline for the agents to make the outbound calls to the prospective leads.

Predictive/ Manual Dialing

You have the option of choosing whether you want your method of calling to be predictive or manual. If unsure, you could choose the option “Do not know” to gain both the rates.

Requirement of head count

You need to have an estimate and enter the number of agents working or the call center occupancy for the outbound call center project.

Compute your costs and contact us to know more.

Frequently Asked Questions

You can calculate the number of agents with the help of an online Erlang calculator. Online Erlang Calculator works on probabilities, so may appear to overstate the number of agents needed at low levels. You simply need to input the number of phone calls received by your agents along with the average duration of the calls and your preferred service level. The tool will automatically suggest the optimum number of agents required to handle that volume.

FTE stands for full-time equivalent and represents the total number of hours that 1 full-time employee completes during a fixed amount of time, like a month or a year.

To calculate the FTE, you must first add up the hours worked by part-time employees and the hours worked by full-time employees. You then divide the total hours worked by these employees by 2080 (or 8 hours a day x 5 days a week x 52 weeks a year). This will give you the FTE of the company for a year. Alternatively, you can use an online FTE calculator to calculate for shorter periods.

The call center calculator offered by ExpertCallers is free and gives you a fair insight into the number of agents you need to hire in your call center and the cost it will incur. The call center agent calculator helps you create the right team from the beginning and prevent backfilling vacancies in the middle of an ongoing project.

To find the right figure, you simply need to provide us the following information:

  • Call count
  • Project
  • Target country
  • Shift coverage bias
  • Average handling time [AHT]

Apart from calculating your staffing needs, the call center agent calculator also helps you find the cost required to achieve your service level goals.

The required call center workload can be calculated using the below formula:
Expected number of forecasted calls per hour X AHT of a call

The Average Speed of Answer (ASA) can be calculated by dividing the total amount of waiting time by the number of calls received in a certain time period by your agents. For example, if there is a total of 100 minutes waiting time for 10 calls, then the ASA is 100/10 = 10 minutes.

Call Center Talk Time is calculated using the following formula:

Total Talk Time + Total Hold Time + Total After Call Tasks
Total Number of Calls Handled

An abandon rate of 5% to 8% is industry-standard. However, recent studies have shown that in the case of mobile, call abandonment rate can be as high as 20%.

Erlang is a mathematical calculator that can help you calculate the number of staff you require to attend a given number of calls to meet a fixed service level. (Service level indicates the % of incoming calls answered by an agent within a stipulated time frame).

ExpertCallers call center agent calculators can come to your rescue in circumstances wherein you’re switching to an outsourced call center and are trying to analyze your gains and losses.

The benefits include:

  • It can help you manage your finances well and let you know the expenses upfront
  • It helps you analyze if a certain in-house activity can be profitable to outsource

On average, a call center executive can handle 50 calls in a day. A setup with 30 executives can approximately handle 1500 calls.