How many support agents do you need?

How the calculation works

The calculator compares the hours of ticket work you expect each month with the hours one agent can give to tickets.

• Tickets per month: how many tickets your team answers in a month.
• Minutes to handle one ticket: the time one ticket takes, from first read to last reply.
• Working hours per agent per week: the hours one agent works in a normal week.
• Share of working hours spent on tickets: the part of those hours left for tickets after meetings, training, breaks and other work.

Workload is tickets times minutes per ticket, divided by 60. Time on tickets per agent is weekly hours times 52 weeks, divided by 12 months, times the share spent on tickets. Agents needed is workload divided by that time, rounded up to a whole person.

Worked example

1,200 tickets a month at 12 minutes each is 240.0 hours of work. An agent working 40 hours a week for 52 weeks works 173.3 hours a month, and 70% of that is 121.3 hours. 240.0 divided by 121.3 is 1.98, so you need 2 agents.

What it leaves out

The result spreads your monthly workload evenly, as an average. It does not plan for busy hours or days, cover across time zones, or live chat and phone queues where customers wait to be answered. Those need queue-based staffing methods. Treat the result as a starting point for your own planning, not as a hiring recommendation.