Understanding Estimated Wait Time calculations

INFORMATION

This is the industry standard for the EWT calculation:

Calculation A:
If there are Devices Available to answer:
 (Average Talk Time * Position In Queue)/Agents Available
 
Calculation B:
If there are no Devices Available to answer:
 (Average Time To Answer * Position In Queue)
 
We added this to prevent 0 seconds EWT when there are no statistics due to a new day and nothing populated yet. If Average Talk Time or Average Time To Answer are 0... the default is 60 seconds. 

PRE-9.1.0.0 VERSIONS OF MiContact Center Business

Estimated Wait Time was originally only fully calculated on the Enterprise Server for the Queue Now monitor. 

This carried a severe limitation with it:  It was calculating the EWT for the final position in Queue only for both calculations A and B.  This functions correctly for the Default UPiQ (Updated Position in Queue), but IVR can output the EWT within a Workflow as well as Chat.  These showed only for the currently placed calls in Queue.

Since a call in IVR has not yet been transferred into the Queue, the calculations are not yet correctly populated.  Chat starts calculating while you are still entering your details on the landing page, which means you haven't even entered the queue yet here either.

For both IVR and Chat, the EWT would be shown for the last person in queue. If there was no-one in queue, it would show an EWT of 0, which was incorrect.

The default of 60 seconds as a base value had not been implemented yet, so at the start of a day when all of the stats are zero all EWTs would show 0.

Checking for number of Idle agents became invalid as an Agent dialing Outbound would show still as Idle, and originally we would have an EWT of 0 here as well.

MiContact Center Business 9.1.0.0 and NEWER

The Enterprise Server now calculates whether the current EWT base value should be calculated on the Average Talk Time or the Average Time To Answer and sets the value into the Queue Now Monitor accordingly.
 
Each of the three services (IVR, UPiQ, and Chat) then finish the calculations as follows:

UPiQ:  Since UPiQ is telling the call his EWT according to his position, UPiQ grabs the time that exists in the Queue Now monitor.  It then multiplies it by the Position the Call is sitting in the Queue, then divides it by the Number of Agents Available.

• If Agents Available is > 0, it uses Calculation A
• If Agents Available is 0, then it uses Calculation B

IVR: Inbound IVR flows can give the caller notice of what the EWT would be if they enter the Queue. The IVR needs to adjust the Position In Queue to simulate the caller being in queue.  IVR takes the EWT value in the Queue Now Monitor, and also gets the number of calls waiting in the Queue.  IVR adds 1 to the Calls Waiting to simulate that the call is already in Queue. It then multiples the EWT by the newly adjusted internal Calls Waiting, then divides it by the Number of Agents Available.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Chat:  Chat uses the same calculations as the IVR above.
 
Checking against real-time monitors: The Average Talk Time statistic can be found in Contact Center Client > Queue Now monitor > Average Conversation Time column.

APPLIES TO

MiCC