Average Handle Time – A Good Metric? For Whom?

Two things drive me to a posting on Average Handle Time (AHT).

1. A previous posting on Average Speed of Answer (ASA) remains the most popular posting on the blog, so I thought another Contact Center metric may be welcomed by our visitors.
2. A recent discussion with a group of the Contact Center managers clearly showed AHT to be a point of interest.

Metrics can be a subjective bunch, and as such, definitive answers about their use may be ilusive, so please be ready for some generalizations based mostly on my personal experience – which by no means is definitive.

AHT is an often misunderstood metric because on the surface it looks like a problem to be managed, while if we look deeper, it tends to act more like a symptom.

AHT Definition: The average length of time it take agents to handle a customer, wrap-up and become available for the next customers? (This differs from Average Talk Time (ATT), which excludes wrap-up and other ancillary activities such as research).

The obvious benefit of a short AHT is that agents can take care of more customers in a set time and therefore, less agens are required to handle the incoming load. Expectedly, management, usually upper management, feels very comfortable placing attention on AHT as a way to control the largest cost of a contact center, people. Likewise, many Contact Center managers concentrate on AHT ensuring agent efficiency, at times incenting agents to achieve lower an lower AHT levels.

In my experience, the control-point for AHT is not the agent. In stead, AHT is more directly affected by our ability to provide the appropriate environment, knowledge, tools and expectations.

Here are the areas I believe contribute most to AHT.

Appropriate Staffing Levels
Staffing can become a vicious cycle. “If we had more staff we would not have this problem, but, if we were more efficient we would not need so much staff”. Although this posting is too general to address this important balance, we do know that bad Average Speed of Answer, Service Levels and excessive hold times which are greatly affected by staffing levels, can add 30 to 60 seconds to your AHT. Primarily, in the time it takes to calm down irate customers and the composure time for agent stress. Irate customers have a great effect on agent morale and the efficient flow of the call. It’s amazing how much more efficient we can be when our customers are cooperative and our agents are not stressed out.

Training
It goes without saying that knowledgeable agents have lower AHT than new agents. But technical and product training only take us so far. Our agents must also know how to quickly assess a customer’s needs, troubleshoot and create an interactive flow that is conducive to quick resolution. They must also know when to escalate. An simple analysis of call length within a queue can show us the tipping point of AHT. Passed a certain call length, we can see calls have a higher likelihood of reaching astronomical AHTs. That is the point at which to intervene and ask your agents if they need help. I know of a team that calls this the 12 minute rule – at 12 minutes a lead agent or supervisor would simply ask “need help?”. Less stress for the agent, lower AHT.

Processes
How many screens do your agents need to manage in order to manage an interaction? Do they need to get up from their station and send faxes, pull manuals, etc? Inefficient processes can add considerably to handle time.

Empowerment
An empowered agent is a less stressed agent who knows he/she has some decision-making power to do the right thing for the customer. Less time is spent working towards an unlikely solution while giving the agent more ownership of the outcome and more perceived value as an employee.
Of course, empowerment is not for every agent and requires proper training and clear guidelines, but we would do well to push as much empowerment as possible to the front lines of our customer touch-points. Surprisingly, empowerment can be easier to manage than the policies and processed designed to ensure customer satisfaction through escalations.

Attrition
Attrition is an indicator to most, if not all agent inefficiencies. It is the single most costly event in a contact center, mostly occurring within 90 days of hire and costing up to $8,000 per agent.
When we have high attrition, our average newbie rate on the floor is high, which means knowledge and efficiency is low (just think what happens to your stats -including AHT – when you have a new team nesting? uhgg!).

Also, high attrition floors have more challenges in agent dynamics which make empowerment, quality, and employee participation less likely and more difficult.
Average Handle Time is therefore, greatly affected by our ability to hire and keep the right employees. If you have an attrition rate of more than 50%, don’t worry about AHT. You’ve got bigger problems.

Perhaps most controversial, is the topic of agent relations.
At times, we can enter into contentious cycles with our agent community. Usually driven by frustration in our inability to improve operations, we’ll begin to feel a disconnect and a difficulty sharing the same side of the fence with those who directly manage the customer.

As long as it’s acceptable for us not to share the same side of the fence with our agents, AHT will remain difficult to manage and, unfortunately, we will continue to press the wrong button, expecting different results.  AHT is not a measure of agents approach or willingness to follow direction, but a measure of management’s ability to Train, Hire and Empower.

I believe AHT is not the best indicator of agent efficiency but a greater indicator of management effectiveness.

Rudy Vidal
Committed to XCS!

Average Speed of Answer – A Leading Indicator of Satisfaction

In looking at the activity on the blog, I noticed one of the most popular searches was the phrase “average speed of answer“.  So, in the spirit of XCS, I thought I should say a few things about the topic.

First, I should mention that anything I know about managing call center KPIs, I learned from Don Szczepaniak and Lorraine Robbins who managed the Panasonic Consumer Call Center during my tenure there.  They are amazing people that know much about the dynamics of call center statistics. 

Average Speed of Answer (ASA) is one of the key metrics related to ”accessability”, the measure of how easily a customer reaches an agent.  Other related measures of accessibility are service level, and abandon rate. 

Average speed of answer is defined as the average speed in which a customer is reached by an available agent after being placed in  Queue.  ASA does not include IVR time (the time it takes for a customer to go through the maze of options). 

ASA has a high correlation to customer satisfaction.  It is, in fact, an inversely leading indicator of Customer Satisfaction.  That is, by managing ASA you are directly and inversely influencing Customer Satisfaction (as ASA goes up, customer satisfaction goes down).

Another interesting aspect of ASA is that it is laterally skewed.  That is, if ASA is very high, your customer satisfaction is guaranteed to plummet.  However, a very good ASA does not guarantee improved Customer Satisfaction.

ASA has a precarious threshold upon which it begins to exponentially impact customer satisfaction, your call center’s efficiency and costs.  Past this threshold, which differs by industry but is rarely higher than 5 to 7 minutes, customers grow impatient of waiting and begin to abandon (hangup).  This is the antithesis of a call center’s mission and should be fought at all costs.  Priority number one is always . . . “answer the phone”.  

What is an acceptable ASA?: The acceptable ASA for your customers will depend on your industry and the main reason for the call.  The acceptable ASA can be estimated by correlating the ASA to average talk time (the time it takes an agent speak with the customer which excludes wrap time), and the  abandon rate.  You will see in your stats that both, average talk time as well as abandon will suddenly increase at a certain level of ASA, usually in that order.  You may want to set the upper limit of your service level standard slightly below this number.

ASA is similar but different than Service Level.  Service level measures the percentage of the customers reached by an agent in a certain period of time.  For example, 80/30 is the service level where 80% of the customers  reach an agent within 30 seconds during a prescribed period.

Service level, as a measurement is not affected by highs and lows, it simply measures the percentage of total calls answered by a certain time.  This measure is usually taken every half hour in order to provide  statistically meaningful and controllable sampling.

 

These are some of the ways that ASA affects the call center and your customer (not an exhaustive list).

High ASA is inversely proportional to Customer as well as Agent Satisfaction:  After a certain level of ASA, perhaps around 5 minutes for an order taking call center or perhaps 7 minutes of support call center, customers will begin to abandon. 

High ASAs affect your efficiency:   If the customer stayed on the line even as they grew impatient of waiting, the receiving agent can expect to spend anywhere between 30 to 60 seconds listening to a now difficult customer, who may find it necessary to vent their frustrations.  This imposed dynamic on the call usually results in difficult communications and a reduction in First Call Resolution rates. 

One should not underestimate a customer’s need to prove their point about waiting too long, as source of dissatisfaction.  Once a customer is upset about having a long wait they can (consciously or unconsciously) make it very difficult for the agent to help.

ASA will increase your costs:  As ASA increases, you will pay that much more in telecommunication charges as well as the associated costs of the inefficiencies and the lack of Customer Satisfaction mentioned above.

Causes of increased ASA: 

Here are some causes (not exhaustive) 

 Staffing – Lack of appropriate agent staffing will increase ASA as customers wait for a shortage of agents to become available.  Where there is insufficient agent staffing levels, any other solution will rarely have large scale affect.   

Training - Lack of appropriate training or agent ability will increase Handle Time, and will therefore increase the ASA.

Inefficient processes or system response time- Again, anything that increases Handle Time will increase ASA.  Make sure your agents are not distracted away from the call by inefficient processes.

Poor or no skills based routing – The main goal of any call center is to match the customer’s need with the appropriate/knowleable agent.  Lack of ability to match a customer’s needs with the right agent skill will increase ASA.

 

Some technologies that can help manage high ASA:

Workforce Management:  Scheduling the appropriate number and skills on half hour intervals through a scientific and consistent methodology is key to staffing appropriately.  Depending on the size of the call center and the number of queues, manually calculated schedules and staffing can cause great staffing difficulties and thereby ASA problems. 

Skills based Routing:  The ability to better match an agents skills with customer needs will improve ASA by reducing handle time and increasing First Call Resolution.  (Customers whose problems were solved on the first call don’t need to call back another time!)

Auto Call back features:  Although this feature should not be used as a permanent solution to ASA, it can be helpful in managing an ASA emergency.  The auto call back feature prompts the customer for a phone number and allows the customer to hang up while keeping the customer’s place in line.  When the customer’s turn in Queue arrives, the customer is called and immediately placed with an agent.

Agent Station-based Electronic Training:  Increasing an Agent’s skills will help reduce handle time and thereby decrease ASA.  Station based electronic training will push training content, as prescribed by a supervisor, during valleys in call volume.  This is a cost effective and proven method of focused training.

This post is much longer than I’d like (Sorry), so I will stop here although there is so much more to say.

If there is interest, we can cover management of ASA in a subsequent post. 

In fact, I can ask our resident call center operations guru, Dru Phelps, to get deeper on the topic than I could ever hope to do myself.

Let me know.

Hope this was of assistance.

Committed to XCS !