Estimated Wait Time Calculation When Routing Work with Omni-Channel

When a work item is routed to a queue or at least one skill, Omni-Channel can estimate the customer's wait time (in seconds) before an agent becomes available. For instance, if a call is sent to a queue, Omni-Channel can calculate the time the call might spend in the queue before an agent picks it up. The estimated wait time appears for Messaging for In-App and Web sessions and Voice calls, and can be retrieved by the Check Availability for Routing action in an Omni-Channel flow.

To estimate the wait time for the current work item, Omni-Channel uses the actual wait times of up to the last 10 accepted work items in the last 10 minutes. To estimate the wait time when routing work to a skill, during the calculation, we use only recently accepted work items that match the same required skills. The additional skills are ignored.

To calculate the estimated wait time (EWT), Omni-Channel uses a weighted average, where the more recently added work weighs heavier than the older work. Specifically, it uses this formula to calculate EWT.

EWT =  (10n_wait_time * 10 + 9n_wait_time * 9 + 8n_wait_time * 8 + … + 2n_wait_time * 2 + 1n_wait_time * 1 ) / (10 + 9 +...+ 2 + 1)

If only 3 work items are accepted, Omni-Channel calculates EWT using this formula.

EWT =  (3n_wait_time * 10 + 2n_wait_time * 9 + 1n_wait_time * 8) / (10 + 9 + 8) 

Omni-Channel includes only primary work items in these calculations. It excludes interruptible work.