What Is Occupancy?

Occupancy is the percentage of time that advisors take on call-related activity compared to the logged-in time. ‘Call-related activity’ covers talk time, hold and after-call work (ACW).

So, if the contact centre has an occupancy of 75%, it means that its advisors are spending three-quarters of their time doing “call-related activities”.

Occupancy is often referred to as “utilization”, yet the two terms vary slightly. Utilization considers total time at work (including training sessions, meetings etc.), while occupancy only considers the time when advisors are active on the contact centre floor.

The Occupancy Formula

To calculate occupancy, the contact centre first needs to total the amount of time each of its advisors spends on “call-related activity” – from the time that they sign in, to the time that they sign out, on a day-to-day basis. This is called the “total handling time”.

The contact centre would also need to tally the “total logged-in time” across the day. This is the total amount of time all advisors have spent “signed in” over the course of the day.

Once the contact centre or BPO has calculated these figures, it can then simply divide the number calculated for “total handling time” by the figure calculated for “total logged time” and multiply the result by 100, to find a percentage occupancy. The formula for this is highlighted below.