Occupancy: what it is and what it means for you as a buyer

Occupancy is the share of an agent's available, logged-in time spent handling customer contacts, including the wrap-up work after each one. It is handle time divided by available time, so an agent busy for 45 minutes of a 60-minute hour runs at 75%.

What it means for you as a buyer

Occupancy tells you how much of each paid hour is real work, which matters because a dedicated agent is paid for every hour. Low occupancy means you pay for waiting between tickets. The fix is not fewer hours; it is a second queue of back-office tasks, such as order updates, refunds or data entry, that fills the gaps. Very high occupancy for long stretches is the opposite problem: an agent with no breathing room between contacts makes more mistakes and tires faster. Read occupancy next to the quality checks, never on its own.

A worked example with numbers

In this example eight-hour shift, the agent handles contacts for 315 of 420 available minutes, an occupancy of 75%. The numbers are round figures chosen to show the sum, not a target.

The handle time in the fourth row is average handle time multiplied by the number of contacts. Now add a back-office queue: 60 more minutes of order updates makes 375 busy minutes, and 375 ÷ 420 is about 89%. The bill did not change; you got an extra hour of chores done in time you were already paying for.

Where this appears in our pricing or process

The hourly rate on the pricing page buys the agent's full shift, so occupancy is how you get value from it. The team lead supervises the shift, and the live reporting sheets show the agent's productivity, so you can see when there is room for more tasks or a need for a second agent. The who-manages section of the how-it-works page shows who does what.