What is the Formula for Concurrency In Chat Support?

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Live chat has become a vital channel for customer support, offering real-time assistance while allowing agents to handle multiple conversations at once.

But how do we measure and optimise this multitasking ability without sacrificing service quality?

So when Charles asked our Community of industry professionals about this we wanted to share the responses we received:

“Anybody can help me out to find out the formula for calculating Concurrency in Chat support?”

Before we explore key formulas for calculating concurrency in chat support, lets take a quick look at what is meant by concurrency in live chat:

Concurrency in Live Chat – Definition

Concurrency in live chat refers to the ability of a chat system to handle multiple interactions simultaneously.

It involves managing multiple conversations or customer queries at the same time without compromising the quality or speed of responses.

Customer support agents or automated chatbots can engage in multiple conversations at once. For example, an agent might be assisting three different customers simultaneously, switching between chats as needed.

How to Calculate Concurrency In Chat Support

The Formula for Real Time Concurrency in Chat

The formula for concurrency in live chat can be expressed as:

Concurrency Ratio = Total Number of Concurrent Chats / Total Number of Agents

Total Number of Concurrent Chats – The sum of all live chat sessions that are being handled at the same time across all agents.
Total Number of Agents – The total number of agents actively handling chats.

For example

If 15 live chats are being handled by 5 agents at the same time, the concurrency ratio would be:

Concurrency Ratio = 15 Concurrent Chats / 5 Agents = 3

This means on average each agent is handling 3 chats concurrently.

Contributed by: Carl

Formula for Concurrency In Chat Support

Depending on the system you use and the figures it generates for you, you may have to tweak this formula; but this works.

Concurrency = Customer AHT/ Agent AHT

Customer AHT = length of time on a chat from the point of view of the customer
Agent AHT = length of time handling the exact chat + time in WRAP.

As you can appreciate, the two times will not be identical because as the agent is awaiting the customer to respond, the agent will service other chats (the timer for the first chat will stop, and the second chat will start – all while the original customers AHT increases whilst we wait for a response).

Contributed by: Michael

Alternate Formula for Chat Concurrency

This is how we get the actual concurrency…

Concurrency = Total Chat Time / Login Time

Contributed by: Sowkath

Maximum Number of Chats

If you are looking for the maximum amount of chats an agent can handle, we have done some research on this which may interest you

Contributed by: Jonty

This article was made possible due to the great community of experts we have at Call Centre Helper, to get involved just join our LinkedIn Community and and if you aren’t already make sure you are following us on LinkedIn to see our latest content.

If you are looking for more formulas to calculate common contact centre stats, read these next:

Author
Jonty Pearce

Jonty Pearce walked into his first call centre in 1989 and has been hooked ever since. He founded Call Centre Helper in 1989.

He is an Engineering Graduate with a background in marketing and publishing. In 2020 he won the AOP Digital Publishing Award for The Best Use of Data.

He writes and speaks on a wide variety of subjects - particularly around forecasting and scheduling. His in depth knowledge of forecasting algorithms has earned him the nickname "Mr Erlang."

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