Tag Archives: aht

3 Pitfalls When Measuring Average Handle Time

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3 Pitfalls when Measuring Average Handle TimeIt is critical to choose the right metrics to track in your contact center. Metrics drive your budget, the jobs of your agents and, of course, your company’s bottom line.

Today, we will look at “Average Call Time” also known as “Average Handle Time”. Its name is fairly self-explanatory, but there are important subtleties that need to be appreciated. Furthermore, we will look at the relative importance of this metric. If you’re tracking too many numbers, important signals can get lost in the noise so it’s important to prioritize. (TLDR: This one is not as important as many others.) Continue reading →

The Trouble with Average Handle Time

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The Trouble with Average Handle TimeIf you manage a contact center, one of the toughest tasks you do is prioritizing the metrics to monitor. Today’s contact center software usually makes dozens of metrics available: Service Level, Abandon Rate, Average Speed to Answer (ASA), Average Handle Time (AHT), Occupancy Rate, and more. On top of that, analysis of data provided from systems proximate to the call center (e.g. CRM, workforce management, business intelligence, etc) bring even more metrics to the party: Net Promoter Score, Customer Satisfaction, First Call Resolution (FCR)… the list goes on and on.

Choosing the right metrics is critical. Your call center’s budget might be at stake, as well as the jobs of your agents and, of course, your company’s bottom line.  We can’t tell you which metrics should make the top of your list, because there are too many variables between call centers. But, we’ll do the next best thing: We’re going to look at why “Average Handle Time” can safely be demoted. Continue reading →

Who are you #onholdwith?

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Who are you #onholdwith

That’s the cheeky tagline from our automated service that collects tweets from people who complain about hold time on Twitter. (Yes, very clever, thank you.)

Because I spend my days talking about ASA, AHT, abandon rates and the thrilling world of a call center, I often check onholdwith.com to remind me that, at the heart of all of these stats, there are real people who hate being stuck on hold. Like these folks:
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