How Many Mobile Chat Agents do I need?An Easy way to use Erlang C

David LoiaThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

How Many Chat Agents Do I Need?• Mobile Chat is ubiquitous – EVERYONE USES IT!!

YOU MUST HAVE IT TOO!• The question I get most often: How many Mobile

Chat Agents do I need?

Erlang C provides a statistically valid Answer

Here’s an EASY way to apply it…

• Download this simple spreadsheet in xls format: https://www.box.com/s/c0sa0ju0uni1dbbtu6vx

• Follow the instructions to fill in assumptions and use Erlang C calculators to make your calculations. A simple,free Erlang C Calculator I use often: http://www.erlang.com/calculator/erlc/

• You are DONE!

Example: B2C (ecommerce) or B2B (HR/Helpdesk)

• Assumptions to consider:– Availability: # of pages for products, services, carts,

support, ‘questions’, misc.– Volume: Unique users per page, accept rates, Hours of

Operation, Follow-the-Sun– Quality of Service: Acceptable Delay, Concurrent Chats per

agent, Ave. Duration of Chat

The spreadsheet has reasonable starting points for many inputs, use these or change them to ‘actuals’ if you have them for you operation

Example: Using the Spreadsheet

Example: Using the Calculator

Questions?

Contact David Loia on Twitter: @davidloia

Some common questions:• Follow-the-sun operations• Ramp up rate for new agents• Concurrent and blended multi-channel operations• Burn-out rates vs. email/phone