Most support staffing plans compute one ratio: total volume multiplied by average handling time, checked against total scheduled hours for the day or the week. That ratio can look comfortable in aggregate while a specific hour underneath it is failing completely, because an average never checks any single interval on its own. Assembled's own staffing guide draws the channel line plainly: real-time queueing math fits chat and phone. It is not appropriate for a deferred channel like email, where a backlog can build for hours or days rather than a customer waiting live.
This pack forecasts volume at the grain it arrives in, hourly for a real-time channel and daily for a deferred one. It applies the formula each channel needs: Erlang C for chat or phone, a due-today check for tickets or email. Coverage by Hour checks that requirement against your actual rostered shifts at the same grain. Gap to Target asks one question of the result: is there a spare hour to reshuffle from, or does the whole cycle fall short. Pull the volume from a complete ticket export with real timestamps, not a pre-aggregated total.
Caldera Gear Co. forecast 339 chats and 850 tickets a week. The naive ratio, 339 chats at six minutes each against 46 scheduled hours, reads as a comfortable 36% cushion. Erlang C, checked hour by hour, needs 58 agent-hours against an 80%-in-2-minutes target: nine of twelve hours run short, and 4pm's 4.70 Erlang load makes an unstable queue with no steady state. Its ticket queue is the opposite: weekly capacity covers weekly volume, but zero weekend coverage puts 267 due Monday against 205-ticket capacity, which two weekend shifts clear to zero.
Support Staffing Model Template