Data Center – Staffing Levels

Coastal Technologies, developer of HELP!Desk software, has published guidelines for determining the number of technicians needed to staff a support center.

Establishing the proper support staff to customer ratio is essential for any organization. Each of the factors in the table below has an effect on the staff size. Assume a starting ratio 75 to 100 customers per analyst (75:1 to 100:1), then adjust the ratio for the following conditions:

Consideration	Support Staff Levels
Experienced support staff	Decrease
Customer handling expertise	Decrease
Large number of products to support	Increase
Multiple shifts and weekends	Increase
Support staff possesses knowledge of the organization’s business	Decrease
Internal support only	Decrease
External support only	Increase
Both internal and external support	Increase
Service Level Agreements negotiated	Decrease
Budget concerns	Decrease*
Multiple platforms to support (i.e. Web, PC, Mainframe, Mac)	Increase
Automated tools in place	Decrease
Experienced support center management	Decrease
Support center has good reputation in company	Decrease
Center has bad reputation	Increase
Multiple support center locations	Increase
Quality Assurance or Quality Control responsibility	Increase
Proactive support philosophy	Increase**
Support center has additional responsibilities not listed above	Increase

* = A staffing decrease may be required to meet your budget, but too small a staff can create bigger problems later on – dissatisfied customers, excessive stress, technician burnout and high turnover to name a few.

**= Initially, proactive support requires more staff per customer. The trend is reversed down the line as you should see a decrease in customer problems.

Source: http://coastaltech.com/hd-staff.htm

Staffing Model Proposed

Staffing ratio rarely work effectively
Good advice from JamesRL. Staffing ratio is not a very effective model in today’s complex (not meaning necessarily big)opereations. When someone asks me what their staffing level should be I always say “depends”. There are always uniquenesses to an operation that makes it different and changes the mix. JamesRL gave a good indication of what some of those considerations are. The next best thing to a staffing ratio in the Gross Staffing Model. This model can be easly created in a spreadsheet and the process and calculation is as follows:

1. Gather the Necessary Information
 Number of Incidents per year
 Average Handle Time including After Call work time
 Vacation, sick, holiday, breaks, training, projects, admin.

2. Determine Total Work Hours Required (TWHR) Per Year
 [Number of Incidents per year] x [Average Incident Handle Time] = TWHR per year

3. Determine Work Hours Available (WHA)
 [2080 Potential Work Hours (PWH)] – [Vacation, sick, holiday, breaks, training, projects, administrative time] = WHA

4. Determine Actual Work Hours Available (AWHA)
 Determine the Utilization rate you will use for your model.
o A good industry average for an IT service desk is 75%but should not exceed 80% or the group will be faced with issues of agent burnout.
 AWHA = Work Hours Available (WHA) X Utilization Rate (UR)

5. Determine Gross Staffing Level (GSL)
• [TWHR] / [AWHA] = GSL (number of staff required)

The problem here is that this model does not take service levels into account (arrival rate). To improve the accuracy you need to go to an Erlang-C based model. There are a number of those on the market, including ours (www.radarinteractive.com) however for smaller numbers I would go with the Gross Staffing Model(GSM). The GSM is flexable as well as it can be used for staffing for various tasks including: Email requests, desk side, etc.

These concepts are covered in the HDI certification training we deliver.

Source: http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-10878-0.html?forumID=7&threadID=178482&messageID=2035083