Unplanned shrinkage occurs when you assign agents to a shift but for various reasons some scheduled agents are unavailable to take interactions. Shrinkage occurs due to many factors:

  • Breaks
  • Meals
  • Unscheduled absences
  • Vacations
  • Training
  • Coaching
  • Holidays
  • Non-Adherence
  • Meetings

Note: Workforce management takes into account any activity assigned to the daily shift, so it is not necessary to account for these activities when calculating a shrinkage factor.

Example:

The following example outlines how, when you schedule more agents, the shrinkage factor indicates how many agents you expect to be available during each interval of the day:

Expected agents = (scheduled agents – (scheduled agents * shrinkage/100). So, 200 scheduled agents and 10% shrinkage would be (200 – (200 * 10%) = 180 expected agents