Arrival rates

Arrival rate refers to the rate of incoming calls in a contact center. The arrival rate metric shows how many calls are being handled or put on hold during a particular period of time. On an average, it’s a metric that should ideally be reported daily for accurate reporting.

How to calculate call arrival rate

To calculate call arrival rate, it’s important to choose a time unit– seconds, minutes, or hours and then divide the number of incoming calls by that unit. The result is call arrival rate for the chosen duration.

Here’s an example to give you a better idea.

Let’s say a contact center has to calculate the call arrival rate per minute. 

The total number of minutes in a day is equal to 1440 minutes (24 hours x 60 minutes). Now, if a total of 7000 calls arrived on a said day, the call arrival rate can be calculated by dividing 7000 by 1440. This resulting call arrival rate is 4.86.

To round things up, managers can quote the total call arrival rate for the day to be 5 calls per minute.