Shrinkage

Occupancy rate is the portion of an agent’s logged-in time spent actively handling contacts rather than waiting for them. Sustained high occupancy predicts burnout and attrition, so workforce planners treat it as a health measure rather than a productivity target to be maximised.

Peak volume is the highest-contact period a staffing plan has to absorb, whether a daily rush hour, a seasonal spike, or an incident-driven surge. Because peaks drive headcount decisions, automation is usually justified on peak absorption rather than on average daily contact volume.

A contact centre is the team and tooling that handle inbound customer contacts across every channel, including voice, chat, email, and social. The term replaced call centre as support expanded beyond telephony, and it covers workforce management, quality assurance, and routing as well as the agents themselves.

Backlog is the set of unresolved tickets carried past their target response window. A growing backlog signals that arrival rate has outpaced capacity, and because ageing tickets attract follow-up contacts, backlog tends to generate additional volume rather than simply waiting quietly to be cleared later.