Reduce or extend opening hours?

Should you open an extra hour — or close one? This tool staffs the marginal hour with Erlang C, then weighs the labour cost against the value of the contacts in it. Enter the hour you’re considering and it tells you whether the move pays.

What are you considering?

Forecast contacts in that hour

Volume offered in the marginal hour.

Average handle time (seconds)

Service-level target (%)

… answered within (seconds)

Loaded cost per agent-hour (£)

Wage + on-costs + overhead.

Value per contact (£)

Revenue, retention or cost-of-not-serving.

Displacement (%)

Share of these contacts that would simply shift to other open hours, not be gained or lost.

A guide, not gospel. The big lever is displacement: contacts that simply move to another open hour aren’t truly gained or lost. Set it from your own data. Service, customer expectation and contractual hours can outweigh the pure economics — treat this as the cost side of that decision.

How it works

Opening hours look like a service question but they’re a marginal-economics one: the last hour costs a near-fixed lump of labour (you still need enough agents to hit service even for a thin hour) and earns only the value of the genuinely incremental contacts in it. This tool sizes that hour with Erlang C — so the cost reflects the real minimum staffing, not a tidy “contacts × AHT” — then nets it against the contact value, discounting the contacts that would just shift to a neighbouring open hour. A thin late hour often fails this test; a hour that captures genuine new demand often passes it.