Shrinkage is the share of paid agent time spent away from the queue: breaks, meetings, training, time off, absence. Enter each category as a percent of paid hours. The planner adds them up, shows how many of your agents are actually available to take contacts, how many to schedule to keep the number you need there, and what the time away is worth.
Every formula and assumption is in the published method.
Within the planning range
Of 200 on the roster
To keep 140 on the queue
A year, at the loaded rate
Total shrinkage is 33.0% of paid hours: 25.0% planned and 8.0% unplanned. Of 200 agents on the roster, about 134 are available to take contacts at any moment.
To keep 140 agents on the queue at 33.0% shrinkage, schedule 209: 140 divided by 67.0%, rounded up. Your roster of 200 is 9 short of that. Hire and build schedules to this number.
Paid time off the queue comes to about $3,842,330 a year at the loaded rate ($2,910,856 planned, $931,474 unplanned). These are wages you already pay. Breaks, PTO (paid time off), coaching and training are part of running a contact center, so read this figure as where paid time goes. Cutting it would mean cutting those activities.
Each point of shrinkage takes 2.0 agents off the queue, about $116,434 a year of paid time. Use it to size a change: trimming one point of unplanned absence frees roughly that many agents.
33.0% is within the 28 to 35% planning range, a labelled heuristic. Treat the range as a rough reference; the right total depends on your own mix of training, coaching and time off. The largest category is Breaks at 8%, so start there if you want to move the total.
Every category is a percent of paid hours, so the categories add. If you measure a category against hours present instead, convert it first: multiply it by one minus your out-of-office shrinkage.
Paid hours 2,080 a year: the full-time definition.
Benefits load 1.3x, the platform's shared heuristic.
Planning range 28 to 35%: heuristic, no published source.
Hourly rate is the BLS median for customer service representatives, May 2025.
Bottom of the planning range for total shrinkage. A total below it can mean coaching and training time is being skipped as easily as good control.
Published figures to hold your result against. Each measures something slightly different, so read what it counts before you compare. None of them changes your result or its grade.
Total shrinkage, planned and unplanned, as a share of paid time. Practice figures; none comes from a survey of actuals.
Call Centre Helper, updated 30 Jul 2026. How to Calculate Contact Centre Shrinkage.The US Bureau of Labor Statistics median for customer service representatives, May 2025. The tool opens at the national median; if you know your own pay, enter it in the tool.
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Method 1.1, published 28 September 2026. How this is calculated
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