First of all, as often happens with contact center metrics, it is quite difficult to differentiate one metric from another if you don’t have practical experience with call center metrics and management. Average Handle Time (AHT) is one of the most confusing metrics, at least because it is often confused and misused with Average Resolution Time, Average Talk Time, and other effective metrics. Secondly, Average Handle Time (AHT) is one of the most essential call center metrics regarding agent performance and quality of customer service, and a high Average Handle Time (AHT) indicates some issues with agent speed of processing customer queries and complaints.
Finally, Average Handle Time (AHT) is the metric that allows you to understand how to improve customer satisfaction score and customer experience at all, even though it isn’t an advanced metric like First Call Resolution rate, Customer Effort Score or other KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), and it points to areas of improvement for your agents.
What is Average Handle Time (AHT)?
Average Handle Time (AHT) meaning is the time spent by an agent to perform all actions he is responsible for and able to accomplish in purpose to resolve a customer request. Thus, call center Average Handle Time (AHT) includes the average talk time and average hold time, and After Call Work (ACW) (synonymous with Wrap-Up Time) to be measured.
Average Handle Time is mostly described as a concept similar to Average Resolution Time, but it isn’t. Average Resolution Time, or Mean Time to Resolution, is the total time spent on the resolution of a customer issue, including the work performed by other departments and specialists besides the agent’s work.
Average Handle Time (AHT) vs Average Resolution Time (ART)
Average Handle Time (AHT) call center metric, as we have already mentioned, measures the total time the agent spends on resolving a customer request and can’t include any time spent by other specialists and workers on the issue resolution process. Average Resolution Time measures all the time spent until the issue is totally resolved and the support ticket is successfully closed.
To make it more comprehensive, let’s look at a clear example - a client calls the Internet customer support call center service with a complaint about poor quality and speed of Internet connection. So, the agent answers the call, tries to find out whether there are any easy ways to resolve the issue, like restarting the Wi-Fi router, defaulting settings, and so on, and if the issue is mechanical (and it often is), and requires IT specialists to investigate the cause of it, the agent creates a ticket and sends it to the IT department and offers customer to wait for a callback from IT department to appoint a time when IT specialist will come and fix the problem.
So, in this case, the Average Handle Time call center metric (AHT) of a few same issues described above will be measured only from the moment when an agent answers a call and ends the call and After Call Work by sending a ticket to the IT department. In other words, when the issue is transferred to another department, the call is handled - even though the issue is still not resolved. Average Resolution Time (ART) will also be measured from the moment when an agent answers the call, but it will last longer - until the IT specialist will come to the customer, find the root cause and fix it.
Therefore, you can see that Average Handle Time (AHT) and Average Resolution Time (ART) are two absolutely different metrics that are similar by their nature but distinct by their purpose - Average Handle Time (AHT) shows the productivity and efficiency of the agent, and Average Resolution Time (ART) points to the performance of your whole organization and operational efficiency, internal communication effectiveness and so on.
Average Handle Time (AHT) vs Average Talk Time (ATT)
Average Talk Time (ATT) is a call center metric that measures the time agent spends talking to customers. Thus, logically, it doesn’t include on-hold times and after-call work, because these periods - even though they are included in the overall processing of a call - aren’t about talking to customers. So, average talk time is a customer service metric that measures agent productivity, as well as Average Handle Time (AHT), does, but still it isn’t similar to Average Handle Time (AHT).
Average Handle Time (AHT) includes all three periods of time spent on handling the call - talk duration, on-hold duration, and after-call work. These periods put together are the Average Handle Time (AHT).
Average Handle Time (AHT) formula
The AHT formula is calculated easily. You have to add the total talk time, total hold time, and total after-call work duration and divide it by the total number of calls processed within this period of time.
So, the AHT calculation works like that:
(Total talk time on calls + total hold time + total after-call work duration/Overall number of calls processed) * 100% = Average Handle Time formula (AHT formula)
AHT calculation is important to track your progress in improving agent productivity and agent performance. In other words, the lower is Average Handle Time (AHT), the better it is for your company and for your customer experience levels.
Average Handle Time (AHT) industry standards
Average Handle Time (AHT) has no generally accepted industry standard that would be supported by all well-known call center experts, as it is, for instance, with service level which covers such metric as Average Speed of Answer (ASA). This is also because Average Handle Time (AHT) would differ from industry average to another industry average, and we can’t assume that Average Handle Time (AHT) for the financial industry should be the same as it is for the e-commerce industry.
For instance, HubSpot gives the following standards for Average Handle Time (AHT) for some industries:
- Financial industry - around 4 minutes;
- Government services - around 4 minutes;
- Healthcare industry - 3 minutes 30 secs;
- E-commerce industry and retail - 3 minutes 30 secs;
- Telecommunications - 2 minutes 30 secs.
As the report states, these numbers were calculated without including after-call work and it uses Average Handle Time (AHT) calculation by dividing the average talk time by average gold time, which isn’t actually the Average Handle Time (AHT) formula.
Another research, done by Cornell University, also proves that Average Handle Time (AHT) isn’t a metric that could have ever had a “one-size-fits-all” industry standard. According to data in the study, the Average Handle Time (AHT) for some following industries is:
- Large Business - almost 9 minutes;
- Telecommunications - almost 9 minutes;
- Retail - 5 minutes, 40 secs;
- Business & IT Services - 4 minutes and a half,
- Financial Services - 4 minutes and a half.
As you can see, the numbers here differ from what was researched by HubSpot, which means two absolutely different calculations were used, as well as the representativeness of the sample is different.
Let’s avoid doing a sociological analysis here, and say that all that is below 5 minutes is a good Average Handle Time (AHT), but if you want to provide an excellent customer experience, you would better focus on reaching around 4 minutes of Average Handle Time (AHT), or even less. The less it is, the better it is for your business - that’s the only industry standard that should always be put upon the use of this metric.
Tips to improve your Average Handle Time (AHT)
Now we are done with theory and definitions, and we can move on to the practical part of our story - how can you reduce AHT in your customer service team to improve customer satisfaction rates in your contact center?
Intelligent call routing
Intelligent call routing is one of the most important tools you have to implement if you want to reduce AHT in your contact center. What is meant by intelligent routing? First of all, it means that the agent occupancy rates will be optimized and balanced, which means there will be no case when one agent has a 95% of occupancy rate, and another has 60% or less. Secondly, it means that no unnecessary call transfers will be done because the choice of agent will be automated and provided in accordance with pre-set rules which will eliminate the need to transfer calls routed to the wrong agents. Finally, skills-based call routing can make sure that customer requests will be forwarded to the most appropriate agent possible, so skills-based routing also reduces Average Handle Time (AHT). The best way to implement the most effective call routing strategy is to implement two systems integrated with your virtual phone system or cloud call center software - IVR (Interactive Voice Response) system and ACD (Automatic Call Distributor) software. IVR system will allow you to collect customer data even before the call will be forwarded to a human agent, and the ACD system will take care of proper call routing itself by managing inbound calls.
Provide self-service options
If you know a little bit about math, you understand that if one of the mathematical variables - total talk time - is decreased, so decreased is the Average Handle Time (AHT). So, one of the best ways to decrease agent workload, and what’s even more important, eliminate unnecessary phone calls - when customers call with common questions, like “Can I check my delivery status?” and lose agents’ time - is the use of self-service options. Self-service options in the call center include an IVR menu, chatbots, FAQs, blog articles, a comprehensive knowledge base, and customer community portals.
Self-service options of your call center software also boost customer satisfaction and let your agents work with valuable customer requests, as well as customers who use self-service channels often can resolve their issues on their own, or at least come closer to finding the root cause of the problem, so it also saves time when such clients reach out to agents because there is no need to look for elementary causes of the problem, it is clear that you need to go deeper. They also allow you to manage customer contacts without the involvement of human agents, which helps you to reach customer service goals faster.
Agent training
One of the most important parts of reducing AHT is agent training. Agents have to bear all the necessary skills to handle customer complaints quickly and effectively, and this also requires you to provide them with knowledge and relevant ongoing training programs and materials. Newbie agents often know nothing about handling customer issues, and this is why they can’t perform at good AHT rates, and this is why the entire department's performance suffers. Agent training includes also skills-gaining training sessions, where agents learn to get some necessary customer service skills, including active listening, adaptability, empathy and good product knowledge, and common customer issues knowledge - these skills are called soft skills and hard skills respectively. You have to learn your agents to deal with repetitive tasks over a long time period, and even though this is stressful, that is the way the call center industry works.
To say the truth, no tool or system can replace trained and skillful customer service representatives, who are true professionals in providing customer service. Furnish your reps with regular and comprehensive training sessions and access to internal knowledge bases, and let them also train during their free time by giving them training materials. Also, pay attention to call scripts - if agents can’t improvise, then they won’t be able to provide really seamless customer service, and this is why you can’t reduce AHT, too. So, call scripts are vital, but agents have to gain skills to handle customer issues without using scripts too. You also have to use wise workforce management, to
Organize regular quality assurance procedures
To make sure that your agents are ready to meet your Average Handle Time (AHT) requirements, provide regular and multi-aspect quality assurance sessions to track agent skills, knowledge of products, and ability to meet pre-set service level requirements. To process each customer interaction, contact center agents have to be fully prepared theoretically and practically, and quality assurance scorecards are the most effective tool for this purpose. You have to decide which key metrics you would like to improve, and not only provide quality assurance sessions with QA specialists and contact center agents themselves, but you also need to record customer conversations and listen to them for further use during training sessions.
Conclusion
Average Handling Time (AHT) is one of the most essential call center metrics to track customer service agent performance, agent engagement and productivity. Average Handling Time (AHT) is different from Average Resolution Time and Average Talking Time, as well as it isn’t synonymous with Mean Time to Resolution and Average Duration of Customer Calls (Average Call Duration). The less Average Handling Time (AHT) is, the better it is for customer engagement, customer satisfaction, and customer loyalty through the entire customer journey.
There are a few ways to improve Average Handling Time, and reducing AHT customer service strategies are based on proper and regular agent training, wide use of self-service opportunities, and wise use of skills-based routing and other call routing techniques. You also need some business tools to reduce Average Handle Time (AHT) and improve customer service quality. If you want to have happy customers, provide proactive customer service, answer customer questions fast, measure contact center KPIs and key call center metrics, boost customer service team productivity and furnish agent training sessions from a single interface, you have to look for cloud-based contact center software.
