An understanding of call volumes is key to forecasting staffing and budget requirements. It is necessary to collate the data by period reports such as;
Annual
Month
Week
Day
Time Segment - 15 or 30-minute interval
Percentage
Call volumes as percentages are important for day and time segment;
Monday may represent 25% of the Monday-Friday call volume
Monday 09:00-09:30 may represent 1% of the week's calls during the working window
Trends
Call trends should be chartered to understand variation from year-on-year, right down to time segment. The longer the history of call trends, the greater will be the reliability for patterns and trends for the future. Certainly, three years of data would be the minimum for a good trend base.
Offered & Handled
With regard to the volumes it is necessary to understand the difference between calls offered (received) and calls handled (answered).
UK and Ireland