The inbound contact center environment has unique characteristics that must be considered in effective planning and management.
Predicting call arrivals
Calls arrive randomly to contact centers. You cannot predict the minute-to-minute arrival of calls. This results in unanticipated increases in workload, and impacts staffing calculations and the load carried by system and network resources.
You can predict the pattern of call arrivals for 15-minute or longer intervals. For example, you can predict that next Monday between 1:00 P.M. and 1:30 P.M. you will receive 60 phone calls. However, you cannot predict how many calls will arrive in the first five minutes, the second five minutes, and so on.
Understanding caller tolerance