Introduction

The inbound call center is a system where customer calls arrive to be served by the agents immediately, or have to wait in queue.
The fundamental challenge for the inbound call center is to find the right number of agents to use at the right time to handle calls that arrive
randomly. Call center managers must, at the same time, make effort to:
- maximize utilization of agents
- minimize callers' waiting time.
One of the main issues in traffic engineering is that call arrivals in the real world are not distributed one right after another, but randomly:
- some will come in at the same time,
- some will come in when another is being served,
- no calls arrive during some period of service hour
These random distributions are determined by the laws of probability. The probabilty that is widely used to predict the arrivals of next calls
follows a well known distribution called Poisson distribution.

Poisson Distribution
12.00
Probability of arrivals

10.00

8.00

6.00

4.00

2.00

0.00
Probability of having "n" arrivals
The most popular method used for call center staffing and trunking is the famous Erlang formula with all its variants (Erlang B, Extended
Erlang B and Erlang C)
 Decision Tree

Traffic
Source

Random Non-
random

Blocking Queueing

No retrials Retrials Infinite Q Finite Q Finite

Finite sources
sources Peaked

Erlang B Extended Erlang C Equivalent Q Engset Equivalent

Erlang B EEB Random
Theory
Theory

Erlang B and Extended Erlang B are very good at sizing trunk groups when the following assumptions are valid:
- infinite sources
- Poisson arrival rate
- block calls are cleared (Erlang B)
- recall (Extended Erlang B)

Erlang C is used primarily for Automatic Call Distribution(ACD) and PBX, with the following assumptions:
- infinite sources
- Poisson arrival rate
- exponential service time
- a single server queue in which calls are directed to the first avaiable server, no calls leave the queue and the waiting area (queue) is sufficiently large
s sufficiently large
 Variables

Agent utilization percentage of agent's time spent on the telephone

Average speed to answer the average time to connect to an agent
Block probability the percentage of calls that cannot be answered (Erlang B)
Call duration duration of a call including call work
Erlang a unit of traffic intensity. Traffic intensity = number of calls x call duration. Example: if the number of calls in
1 hour is 30 and average call duration = 5 minutes, then traffic intensity = 30 x 5 / 60 = 2.5 Erlangs.
Number of agents the number of agents required to achieve a target (service level etc)
Number of calls number of calls that arrive during a certain period of time
Recall factor the percentage of callers who try to call again (immediately) after hearing a busy signal (Extended Erlang B)
Queue time the average waiting time for those calls that are not answered immediately
Service level the percentage of calls to be answered within the Service Time
Service time the time within which a certain percentage of calls will be answered
 Number of Lines Required
Erlang B

Average
Number of call Traffic Number of
calls per duration intensity Block lines
hour (seconds) (erlangs) probability required

100 180 5.00 7.05% 8

 Number of Lines Required
Extended Erlang B

Average
Number of call Traffic Number of
calls per duration intensity Block Recall lines
hour (seconds) (erlangs) probability factor required

120 150 5 3.50% 70.00% 11

 Number of Agents Required & Other Indicators
Erlang C

Average Average
Number of call Service Number of speed to
calls per duration Service time agents answer Queue time Agent
Shift hour (seconds) level (seconds) required (seconds) (seconds) Utilization

0- 4 100 180 85.0% 15 Err:511 Err:511 Err:511 Err:511

4- 8 105 150 85.0% 20 Err:511 Err:511 Err:511 Err:511
8 - 12 110 160 90.0% 20 Err:511 Err:511 Err:511 Err:511
12 - 16 115 180 97.0% 30 Err:511 Err:511 Err:511 Err:511
16 - 20 120 150 89.0% 25 Err:511 Err:511 Err:511 Err:511
20 - 24 125 120 88.0% 20 Err:511 Err:511 Err:511 Err:511