Occupancy is a measure of how busy we are, how much time, often expressed as a percentage, we are occupied in a given period.  Essentially, we are busy in a call centre when we are talking and wrapping up a call.

Occupancy is made up of Work-load and Agent-load.

Work-load represents how much work we have in a given period, which is the volume of calls multiplied by the average handle time (AHT).

Agent-load represents how much agent-time we have in a given period, which is the number of agents multiplied by the time period.

Let us take a look at a worked example for a 30 minute period;

Occupancy  =  (Work-load / Agent-load)%

Work-load    =  Call Volume in 30 minutes x AHT (seconds)

                       200 calls x 150 seconds = 30,000 seconds

Agent-load   =  Number of Agents x 30 minutes (or 1,800 seconds)

                       21 Agents x 1,800 seconds = 37,800 seconds

Occupancy  =  (30,000 / 37,800)% = 79%

This means with 21 agents, handling 200 calls, with an AHT of 150(s), in a 30 minute period, will be 79% occupied.

From our occupancy calculator in Toolkits, you will note this reflects on an hourly basis, being occupied for 0:47:24secs and available for calls for 0:12:36 seconds.

Obviously the great dependency is service level, the higher the service level the lower the occupancy level.  We need to be less busier and more availabe to achieve higher service levels.