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

Shrinkage is the share of an agent's paid time when they are not available to handle customer contacts: breaks, training, meetings, leave and absence. Because of it, covering one seat for every hour of the week takes more people than the hours alone suggest.

What it means for you as a buyer

Shrinkage means a seat needs more people than its hours suggest, because agents take leave, fall sick and go to training. A week has 168 hours and a full-time agent works 40 of them, so the hours alone need 4.2 agents; plan with no allowance for absence and the seat sits empty whenever someone is out, nights and weekends first. If a round-the-clock quote lists only four people, ask who covers the rest of the hours and the leave. If you only need your own working hours covered, shrinkage matters less, but still ask who covers the odd day off: the team lead, a trained backup, or nobody.

A worked example with numbers

One seat staffed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week needs 5 full-time agents in our cost calculator, once its 15% allowance for leave and absence is added.

Each is billed as a full-time dedicated agent: 173 hours at USD 10.50, about USD 1,817 a month. Eight of every 24 hours on the rota fall between 10pm and 6am in Davao, where Philippine law adds a night shift differential of at least 10% to the wage; the provider's rate already includes it. Shrinkage is counted before occupancy, which measures how busy the agent is while available.

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Where this appears in our pricing or process

Choose the 24-hour rota in the cost calculator on the pricing page and it shows the number of agents per seat, using this sum and the same allowance. The time-zone tool on the home page shows which of your hours fall on a Davao night shift.