Intraday profile builder
A daily total tells you almost nothing about how many people to roster. This tool spreads a day’s contacts across a profile shape, then sizes each interval with Erlang — turning “4,000 contacts Tuesday” into a staffing requirement curve, net and gross of shrinkage.
(gross)
(the roster)
(on contacts)
interval
Required agents (gross) by interval — the staffing requirement curve you roster to.
| Interval | % of day | Contacts | Net agents | Gross agents |
|---|
How it works
The profile is the share of the day’s volume landing in each interval — a list of percentages that sum to 100%. Multiply the daily total by each interval’s percentage and you get interval-level volume, which Erlang turns into a net agent requirement; gross it up for shrinkage and you have the headcount to roster. The shapes here are illustrative starting points — in practice you build the profile from your own history, and you need a different one per day type (a Monday is not a Saturday). The key lesson the chart makes obvious: two days with the same total can need very different rosters, because the profile, not the total, decides where your people have to be.
Maths: Erlang C, the engine behind the Erlang C calculator. See the intraday profile lesson for the full method.