From the moment your agents pick up a call, the clock starts ticking for your contact centre’s Average Handling Time (AHT). The amount of time your agents spend on the phone talking to customers, the total time spent on hold and any After Call Work (ACW) carried out in relation to calls all has an impact on your contact centre’s AHT.
With AHT being one of the most watched KPIs in nearly every contact centre, it’s not surprising that taking steps to improve AHT is usually a top priority among contact centre managers. Improving AHT is in everyone’s best interests because it has the potential to create a better customer experience while allowing your contact centre to run more efficiently and reduce operating costs. Minimising AHT really is a win-win.
Looking more closely at the benefits of improving AHT in your contact centre, customer satisfaction is likely to significantly improve as a direct consequence of reaching resolutions faster. At the same time, resolving higher volumes of problems and queries each day could drive up revenue for your business while improved AHT also means your team is able to ‘do more with less’, lowering overheads such as staffing, office space and tech.
What is average handling time?
In the world of customer service, time is more than just money - it's the currency of customer satisfaction. Those who have spent years in the trenches of contact centres and customer support teams come to appreciate the nuanced dance of efficiency and quality that defines this work. At the heart of this balancing act lies a metric that often keeps managers up at night: average handling time, or AHT.
Average handling time is the mean duration of a customer interaction, from the moment the conversation begins to its conclusion, including any after-call work. It's a deceptively simple concept that carries immense weight in the customer service realm. Think of it as the pulse of support operations - a vital sign that indicates the health of customer interactions.
But AHT is more than just a number. It's a story told in seconds and minutes, revealing the ebb and flow of a team's efficiency, customers' needs and the complexity of the issues they face. As one delves deeper into the world of AHT, its implications, calculation and optimisation become crucial areas of focus. The challenge lies in improving AHT without sacrificing the quality of customer service. Because at the end of the day, the goal isn't just to be fast - it's to be effectively fast, providing solutions that stick and leaving customers with a positive lasting impression.
Why is average handling time important?
AHT stands as a cornerstone metric in the customer service landscape, its importance resonating through every level of an organisation. Far from being a mere number to track, AHT serves as a window into the very heart of customer service operations, offering insights that can shape strategy, improve efficiency and ultimately enhance the customer experience.
At its core, AHT is a powerful indicator of operational efficiency. In a world where time equates to resources, a well-managed AHT can lead to significant cost savings. It allows companies to optimise staffing levels, ensuring that the right number of agents are available at the right times, neither overstretched nor underutilised. This balance not only impacts the bottom line but also contributes to agent satisfaction and retention - key factors in maintaining a high-quality service team.
However, the importance of AHT extends beyond financial considerations. It plays a crucial role in customer satisfaction. In an era where instant gratification is the norm, customers expect swift resolutions to their issues. A low AHT often correlates with higher customer satisfaction scores, as it typically means customers are getting the help they need without unnecessary delays or complications.
Yet, the true art lies in balancing speed with quality. An overemphasis on reducing AHT can lead to rushed interactions, incomplete solutions and frustrated customers. This is where the nuanced understanding of AHT becomes critical.
AHT also serves as a diagnostic tool for broader operational issues. Consistently high AHTs might indicate problems with training, knowledge bases or even product design. By analysing this metric, organisations can identify bottlenecks in their processes, areas where additional training is needed or products that may require redesign to improve user experience.
Moreover, in the context of evolving customer service channels - from traditional phone support to chat, email and social media - understanding and optimising AHT across platforms becomes crucial. It informs channel strategy, helping organisations decide where to allocate resources and how to train agents for maximum effectiveness across different mediums.
Average handling time is important because it's more than a measure of speed - it's a reflection of an organisation's efficiency, customer-centricity and adaptability in a rapidly changing service landscape. When leveraged wisely, it becomes a powerful tool for continuous improvement, driving both customer satisfaction and operational excellence.
How to calculate average handling time?
The formula for AHT encompasses the entire customer interaction, from start to finish, including any necessary follow-up work. Here's how to break it down:
Let's unpack each component:
- Total talk time: the duration of actual conversation with customers.
- Total hold time: time customers spend on hold during calls.
- Total after-call work time: time spent on tasks related to the call after it ends, such as updating records or sending follow-up emails.
- Number of calls handled: the total number of calls processed in the given period.
To illustrate this, let's walk through a sample calculation:
Imagine a customer service team handles 100 calls in a day with the following metrics:
- Total talk time: 15,000 seconds
- Total hold time: 3,000 seconds
- Total after-call work time: 2,000 seconds
Step 1: Add up all the time components: 15,000 + 3,000 + 2,000 = 20,000 seconds
Step 2: Divide by the number of calls: 20,000 seconds / 100 calls = 200 seconds per call
Step 3: Convert to minutes for easier interpretation: 200 seconds = 3 minutes and 20 seconds
Therefore, the AHT for this team is 3 minutes and 20 seconds.
It's important to note that while this method gives a solid overall view, drilling down into individual components (talk time, hold time, after-call work) can offer even more detailed insights for optimisation.
What causes high AHT?
High AHT can stem from various factors within a customer service operation. Complex customer issues often lead to longer interactions, as agents navigate intricate problems or multi-step solutions. Inadequate agent training or knowledge gaps can also inflate AHT, with representatives spending extra time searching for information or consulting colleagues.
Inefficient systems or outdated technology may slow down processes, forcing agents to juggle multiple applications or wait for slow database responses. Poor call routing can result in transfers between departments, extending call durations. Additionally, chatty customers or agents who struggle with call control can inadvertently lengthen conversations.
Sometimes, high AHT is a symptom of deeper organisational issues, such as unclear policies, complicated product designs or frequent system glitches that generate excessive customer enquiries.
How to improve average handling times?
With the importance of improving AHT widely known, the question is, how can it be achieved? Here are some of the most effective ways to reduce your AHT without compromising the quality of customer service, which is a critical factor in what it means to truly ‘improve’ your AHT.
1. Set up call routing based on agent expertise
One of the best ways to boost the efficiency of your contact centre operation is by playing to your agents’ individual strengths. For example, whether it’s through experience or training, some of your agents may have more expertise or knowledge in certain areas over others. This gives you the opportunity to set up your call-routing in a way that directs select call types to expert agents who are most likely to be able to reach a resolution faster.
2. Use scripts as a guide only
The use of scripts within your contact centre can ensure all your agents are aligned and delivering a consistent customer service experience across the board, but they can bring a few risks when it comes to managing AHT. While overreliance on scripts can cause agents to spend too much time running through unnecessary information or verbatim, they can also inhibit agents from properly listening to customers or asking the type of probing questions that help them get to the crux of issues faster. As a rule, it could be beneficial to provide scripts that are more general in nature while actively encouraging agents to use them as a guide only, so they keep an open ear and mind to each individual call.
3. Bring your contact centre technology into the new era
DTMF IVR systems, which require callers to press the number on their keypad that corresponds to their chosen menu option, often contribute to elevated AHT because callers make incorrect choices, or they simply find that there isn’t an appropriate option for their query. The limitations of DTMF means agents often spend time re-routing calls or they begin calls unprepared because they’re yet to find out the true reason for the call before seeking a resolution.
Fortunately, new cloud-based technologies that are quick and easy to implement over the top of your existing contact centre infrastructure are changing the game when it comes to improving AHT. For example, Oration by Convai replaces DTMF menus with the simple open question of “How can I help?”. Oration’s speech recognition technology then determines a caller’s intent from their own natural language before routing the call to the most appropriate agent first time.
Automated solutions like Oration can help reduce AHT in other ways too, such as by automatically requesting key data (like a customer number) and passing it to agents’ screens and allowing for unlimited targeted banners or self-serve options in response to recognised caller intents. Tech-enabled capabilities like these can drive faster resolutions or even reduce the number of calls reaching agents.
4. Improve and promote your website
Your website could be the easiest and most accessible way for your customers to quickly find answers to their queries – provided it’s simple enough to navigate and always contains reliable and up-to-date information. In fact, your agents are probably receiving many calls from customers who have previously tried, and failed, to find the answers they’re looking for online.
With complete transparency over the nature of calls your contact centre is receiving, such as through Oration’s advanced caller intent reporting dashboard, you could enhance your web content and design to give customers more of what they need. For example, regularly updated blogs, useful guides and resources, FAQs, and self-service portals could contribute to reducing the number of calls received or the complexity of queries your agents handle.
5. Give time for your agents to review, reflect, and feedback
Encouraging agents to spend time listening to their calls might help them identify where too much time is being spent and what’s driving the wastage. Specifically, affording the opportunity to take a step back as an objective observer can make it easier to spot unnecessary inclusions in their verbatim, or the type of communication style that either draws out the best responses from customers or slows them down. Reviewing calls could also provide agents with the insight they need to offer constructive feedback around standard call flows, script guides, or other protocols which might be affecting your AHT.
6. Focus on training
Frequent training sessions that focus on product knowledge and real-life customer scenarios are an effective way to reduce AHT in your contact centre. Well-trained contact centre agents will be able to resolve customer queries more efficiently and intuitively, especially if training sessions are designed to refine and hone call handling techniques in line with changing customer needs and the types of calls being received. Agent training can also be used to build specific subject matter experts in your team who have the knowledge required to resolve more complex scenarios in a shorter time than others.
7. Boost your internal comms capabilities
You could help improve AHT by taking steps to facilitate real time communication and collaboration between your contact centre agents, such as implementing an internal chat app. With this capability, agents will be able to quickly help each other resolve customer queries without transferring calls. Transferring calls between agents not only wastes valuable time because agents begin interactions from scratch and repeat questions, but it can have a negative impact on the overall customer service experience and levels of satisfaction.
8. Do what you can to minimise After Call Work (ACW)
Contact centre agents often spend a lot of time entering notes and completing tasks after finishing their interactions with customers. For example, this might include logging the reason for the call, what the outcome was, or scheduling follow up actions. With ACW accounting for a significant proportion of your AHT, it’s important to look for ways to reduce ACW or streamline ACW processes. Using solutions like Oration to automatically capture customer information up front or setting up easy user interfaces that allow ACW to be performed during the call could decrease the time it takes agents to wrap up a call and be ready for the next caller.
For every contact centre, AHT is one of the most significant measures of performance, but it’s not about reducing your AHT at any cost. By focusing on sustainable steps that improve your AHT rather than simply lowering it, you could achieve all the goals of driving down operating costs, increasing revenue and most importantly, delivering the best customer experience your contact centre can offer.
Summary
Understanding and optimising average handling time is crucial for any customer service operation aiming to balance efficiency with quality. While the challenges of high AHT can seem daunting, innovative solutions are transforming how businesses approach this critical metric.
Take, for instance, a leading health and wellness company that faced overwhelming call volumes at their club receptions. By implementing an AI-powered IVR system, they not only gained insights into caller intent but also dramatically reduced their AHT by three minutes. This improvement freed up hundreds of hours for receptionists across their locations, allowing them to focus on face-to-face member interactions.
Similarly, a major retail giant tackled the complexity of multiple IVR systems by centralising their approach. Their strategic use of natural language processing and automated voice personas led to a remarkable 43% reduction in AHT. Moreover, they achieved an 82% automation rate for customer calls, significantly streamlining their operations.
These success stories highlight the potential of modern technology in revolutionising customer service efficiency. By leveraging AI and smart routing systems, companies can not only reduce AHT but also enhance the overall customer experience. The key lies in identifying the right solutions that address specific pain points in the customer journey.
