Seat Utilization Ratio in Contact Centres

As call centres grow and manage multiple shifts, tracking seat utilization becomes essential for efficient use of space and controlling costs.

But what does a good seat utilization ratio look like, and how do you work it out?

This question came up in our Community of industry professionals when Joseph asked:

I’m looking for seat utilization ratios for call centers. Can you give me a hint where to find it?

The responses from the experts were great and we wanted to share them with you.

The Seat Utilization Formula

It all depends on how many staff you have and the number of productive seats available, but generally to work out seat utilization you would divide the ‘Number of Production Seats’ by the ‘Total Number of Agents (FTE).

Seat Utilization (%) = Total Number of Agents (FTE) ÷ Number of Production Seats

For Example, if you have 210 agents and 120 seats the formula would be:

Seat Utilization = 210 agents/120 seats = 210/120 = 175%

Contributed by: Koshy Mathew

Seat Utilization Ratios

As per BPO standard we use 1.7 as standard seat utilization ratio. Now question is how we reach to this number, we divide 24 by total number of hours wherein most of the seats were full.

So let’s suppose you have 24/7 call center but you will not get calls on all the desk in all the interval. In call center customers start calling around 8am and then until 10 pm (this can be changed based on your timezone, I am taking Indian call center’s example here).

Total peak window is 14 hours and if your divide your available hours i.e 24 with 14 your will get the result 1.7 seat ratio. I may be wrong and if anyone have any other calculation they can share with all of us.

Contributed by: gurpreet

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:

• What is Call Centre Shrinkage and How to Calculate It?
• How to Calculate Required FTE for Inbound Call Volumes
• How to Calculate Contact Centre Service Level

Author: Jonty Pearce
Reviewed by: Hannah Swankie