Patent ID: 8462933

Claim:
A method for calculating a workforce requirement for operators in a contact center, the method comprising: accepting, by a computing device, input parameters including at least a call volume in a particular period of time, an average handle time for a call by an operator, and a maximum queuing time before abandoning queuing of a call; initializing, by the computing device, a number of the operators; calculating, by the computing device, a probability of queuing of the call using an Erlang C formula based upon at least the call volume and the number of the operators; calculating, by the computing device, a call abandonment rate as a service objective by multiplying the probability of queuing of the call and a probability that a handle time of the operator is at least the maximum queuing time in an exponential distribution, wherein the exponential distribution includes the maximum queuing time multiplied by a result of the call volume minus the number of the operators and further divided by the average handle time; and calculating, by the computing device, the workforce requirement for operators in order to meet a predetermined service objective by recurrently repeating the calculating of the probability of queuing of the call and the calculating of the call abandonment rate, with respect to an increase and a decrease in the number of the operators.