How to calculate and reduce AHT in a call center?
In a call center, each interaction with a customer is an opportunity to strengthen satisfaction and loyalty. However, one question remains: are your agents spending too much or too little time on the phone? Average Handle Time (AHT) is a key indicator that can help you answer this question in order to improve the efficiency of your customer service.
Whether you are faced with AHTs that are too long, indicating inefficiencies, or too short, suggesting a lack of depth in the exchanges, this article will provide you with the keys to measure, interpret, and optimize AHT to transform each call into a positive customer experience.
What is Average Handle Time?
Definition
Average Handle Time, or AHT for short, measures the average time an agent spends interacting directly with a customer during a call. It is a crucial KPI that helps evaluate the effectiveness of these interactions.
If interpreted correctly, this metric will allow you to make the necessary adjustments to improve advisor training or the internal processes of your customer service.
Why is AHT not sufficient?
AHT is an integral part of a set of key measures for evaluating the effectiveness of your customer relationship center's calls. These measures include Hold Time (HT) and After-Call Work (ACW), which are defined as follows:
- Average Handle Time (AHT): The average time an agent spends conversing directly with a customer during a call.
- Hold Time (HT): The average time a customer is placed on hold during a call.
- After-Call Work (ACW): The average time an agent spends on administrative tasks after the end of the call, such as entering notes or updating the database.
Average Speed of Answer (ASA) combines these three indicators and is simply calculated by adding the three:
ASA = AHT + HT + ACW
By measuring the HTT, you gain a more comprehensive overview of your agents' efficiency and productivity. This holistic approach allows you to identify opportunities for improvement at each stage of the call handling process.
For example, a short ACT combined with high AEA or ACW could indicate that agents are spending too much time on non-conversational tasks, which could be a sign of inefficient processes or training needs.
Thus, the HTT offers a more global perspective that allows you to better evaluate the performance of your call center, manage resources more efficiently, and improve customer satisfaction. By taking into account all stages of call processing, you can make more precise and relevant adjustments to improve the overall performance of your customer service.
How to calculate the ACT?
Calculation formula
To calculate the ACT, you must add the total duration of all conversations during a given period, then divide by the total number of calls.
The formula is as follows:
ACT = Total duration of conversations in the period / Total number of calls in the period
For example, if the total conversation time in a day is 300 minutes for 100 calls, the ACT will be 3 minutes.
How to interpret the ACT?
The ACT is a valuable tool for measuring the effectiveness of your agents in resolving customer issues. However, the interpretation of the ACT should be nuanced and contextualized:
A long ACT may indicate inefficiencies, training issues, or complex internal processes. However, in some industries, the complexity of products and services or requests naturally requires more time to process.
Conversely, a very short ACT could mean that agents are not taking enough time to resolve complex requests, which could negatively impact customer satisfaction. On the other hand, a short ACT could also be a sign of efficiency and speed of processing.
It is therefore essential that you take into account the specificities of your sector and the expectations of your customers in order to make informed decisions based on this KPI.
Examples of average conversation time by industry
As explained previously, the ACT varies considerably depending on the sector of activity. Here are some averages per sector, according to data from Call-Center Magazine:
These average conversation times illustrate the differences in the nature of customer interactions across sectors:
- Consumer Services / Professional Services: With an ACT of 3.55 minutes, this sector is characterized by relatively short interactions, often focused on customer service questions or quick information requests.
- Financial Services and Insurance: The AHT of 4.01 minutes in this sector is slightly higher, reflecting the complexity of financial questions and insurance products, which generally require detailed explanations and additional verification.
- Government and Public Sector: With an AHT of 4.13 minutes, interactions in this sector tend to be longer due to administrative procedures and the detailed information frequently required by citizens.
- Healthcare: The AHT of 3.38 minutes in the healthcare sector can be attributed to the need to provide accurate medical information and address sensitive questions, while maintaining an efficient conversation.
- Hospitality and Catering: With an average of 3.11 minutes, this sector is characterized by rapid interactions, often related to reservations, service inquiries, or general information requests.
How to optimize the AHT of your call center?
Enhance your Quality Monitoring with Speech Analytics
Speech Analytics is a major asset for Quality Monitoring processes because it allows for automatic analysis of telephone conversations between agents and customers.
This artificial intelligence technology, specialized in contact center use cases, can help you understand the reasons for an excessively long, or short, AHT by identifying recurring issues that unnecessarily prolong conversations.
Support agent skills development
Improving AHT inevitably involves the continuous training of your call center agents to enhance their ability to resolve customer issues quickly while providing a positive experience.
Thanks to the data provided by a Speech Analytics tool like Batvoice AI, you can also provide more precise feedback on the performance of each agent.
Based on the results of these evaluations, you will be able to offer targeted training on the individual needs of your advisors and provide personalized coaching to those requiring additional support.
Optimize your internal processes and scripts
Develop clear and concise scripts that help agents navigate calls quickly while providing quality assistance. Also, consider reducing unnecessary steps and simplifying internal processes to enable agents to resolve issues more quickly.
Track and analyze the impact of your actions
Implement dashboards that track AHT and other KPIs in real-time, such as the HT mentioned above or the First Call Resolution rate (FCR), to ensure proactive management of your action plan continuously.
