Email & ticket staffing calculator
How many agents do you need to handle your email, ticket, or case volume — and reduce your backlog before SLA deadlines? Uses a backlog flow model, not Erlang C.
Capacity requirement
Backlog impact
SLA at risk- Existing backlog
- 200 items
- Backlog workload
- 23.5h
- Clearance target
- 24h (SLA)
- Extra FTE for backlog
- +1.3
- Clearance time at 3 agents
- 30.2h
At your current 3 agents
Why not Erlang C?
Erlang C is for live queues
Erlang C models what happens when customers arrive at a queue and wait for the next available agent — like a phone queue. It answers: “how many agents must be seated right now so that 80% of callers wait less than 20 seconds?”
Email is a different problem
Email and tickets don't queue in real time. Customers send a message and wait hours or days. The right question is: “how many productive hours do we need to handle 500 new emails and clear 200 backlog items before Friday?” That is a flow balance problem, not a queuing problem.
What is efficiency?
Not every minute of paid work goes into handling items. Context switching, system delays, rework, and reading before responding all consume time. Efficiency is the fraction of active handling time that produces completed items. 85% is a reasonable default; calibrate it against your actual throughput.
What is backlog trend?
If your team handles fewer items per day than arrive, the backlog grows and SLA risk increases. This calculator shows whether your current team is keeping up, falling behind, or reducing the backlog — and how many days it takes to clear it.
Track backlog and cost over time
The free calculator answers a single interval. Turnella connects it to a forecast across weeks, a shift schedule, and a weekly labour cost model.