Agner Erlang was a Danish mathematician. A century ago, he developed a formula that affects your IVR capacity purchases today. Thanks to Erlang, if you’re planning to deploy an IVR system on premise, you can predict how much capacity you need to buy.
Erlang’s formula zeros right in on the busiest hour of the busiest day. That’s your peak traffic period, and unless you want angry callers you’ll need to buy just enough capacity to handle that peak. Erlang tells you how much.
The trouble is, when you deploy enough capacity on premise to handle the peak, you end up paying for a lot of capacity that goes unused in the valleys. In fact, you may be shocked at how much idle capacity you’re paying for when you buy a premise-based IVR system.