Blended / omnichannel staffing

Blended capacity isn’t the sum of the channels. Pooling demand together saves agents; context-switching between live and concurrent work costs some back. This tool sizes voice and chat as separate pools, then as one blended pool — with a switching tax you can set — so you see the honest number instead of the free-lunch one.

Your channels (per interval)

How it works

Chat handle time is divided by concurrency to get the effective time an agent spends per chat. Separate pools size voice and chat independently and add them up. The blended pool combines all contacts into one Erlang calculation using a volume-weighted effective handle time — which is why it needs fewer agents: one larger pool is more efficient than two small ones. The realistic blend then adds the switching tax back by inflating the effective handle time, because an agent juggling channels is slower at each. Plan to the realistic number, protect any deferrable channel with ring-fenced time, and keep a specialist core. See blended and omnichannel staffing.