What is Average Handle Time and How to Reduce it?

Imagine yourself as a customer of any business trying to connect with the customer support teams due to technical issues in their service. But the only thing you get is a call on hold and Jingle music, which causes you to lose your patience.

Sounds frustrating, right?

This is not just a personal issue of any customer but a large issue of a business named Average Handle Time(AHT) that can take down a business anytime.

So, what exactly is AHT, how can it affect your business, and why should you reduce it?

In this article, we will discuss what average handle time is, how to calculate it, why you need to reduce and its best practices.

So, let’s get into it.

What is the Average Handle Time?

Average handle time (AHT) is the time taken by the agent to handle a customer from the start of the call till they resolve their issues. This includes the time an agent talks with a customer and any follow-up work, like taking notes.

To find the Average Handle Time, you need to do the following:

Total time spent in talking, holding, and after-call work should be combined and divided by the customer interactions made during a specific period. 

Reducing AHT means that work in the call center should be faster, which will help save money and improve productivity. However, care must be taken not to rush customers or make them feel ignored or unimportant.

Customer experience management is central to the process of shortening AHT. The customers ought to feel cherished and concede that they are not kept in a hurry. The challenge in managing at once AHT reduction and customer service good is the training of the agents to be faster without compromising on service quality.

A contact center covers more ways for customers to reach out, like social media, email, live chat, and phone calls. AHT can be used for all these channels.

Let’s take a look at some reasons why the AHT is important.

• Helps measure call center performance.

• Impacts customer satisfaction by minimizing call waiting times.

• Enables better workforce optimization and resource allocation.

• Affects profitability by reducing abandoned calls and improving contact center solutions.

How to Calculate Average Handle Time

Average Handle Time (AHT) is the total time taken by an agent to handle the customer from starting of their journey till resolving their issue. It includes the time from the moment they initiate a call to the moment the issue is resolved, including talk time, hold time, and after-call work (ACW).

Many call centers monitor both individual agent AHT and overall call center AHT to track performance.

Here a formula how to calculate average handle time:

AHT = (Talk Time + Hold Time + Follow-Up Time) / Total Number of Calls

Where,

• AHT = Average Handle Time

• Talk Time = The amount of time the person is on call

• Hold Time = The amount of time the call is on hold

• Follow-Time = After Call work time

For example, if a call center agent spends 300 minutes on total talk time, 100 minutes on hold time, and 50 minutes on after-call work while handling 50 calls, the AHT calculation would be:

(300+100+50)/50=9 minutes

This means the center agent takes an average of 9 minutes to handle each customer query.

In this way, we can calculate AHT.

Why you need to reduce Average Handle Time

Reducing Average Handle Time (AHT) improves customer satisfaction, enhances operational efficiency, and lowers costs. It allows agents to handle more queries, reduces wait times, and ensures quicker resolutions, leading to a better overall customer experience.

Here are some of the reasons why you need to reduce Average Handle Time:

1. Boosts Agent Productivity

When AHTs mean shorter customer interactions while maintaining service quality, call center agents can handle a higher call flow within the same working hours. More performance is crowned to call and contact centers, keeping the agent engaged and productive.

A lower AHT further leads to less zone of fatigue by making the devices seamless, thus enabling the agents to attend to more complex queries rather than routine, boring, repetitive tasks.

2. Improve Customer Satisfaction

Long wait times annoy customers and, therefore, affect customer satisfaction scores negatively (CSAT) and net promoter scores (NPS). With AHT getting reduced, waiting times became reduced alongside the time taken to resolve calls.

In this way, such enhancements can usher in good customer experiences. Making an average time shorter gives a feeling of worth to the customers and encourages them to revisit and preach the arrival of the services to others.

3. Reduce Operational Costs

Running processes faster induces longer delays in calls, and thus, less number of agents with higher average handle time to face the stressful impact in the same timeframe, thus saving business on salaries, training, and workforce optimization.

Moreover, by way of further minimizing AHT, there is a decreased number of abandoned calls that could leave resources slumped into hopelessness due to poor usage and allow customer inquiries to be addressed without overwhelming giant legions of manpower.

4. Staffing and Scalability Planning for the Future

Once re-reading calls and interactions when the average AHT is kept low, the business has the potential for better planning in terms of human resource engagement along with forecasting further staffing requirements.

Reduced handling time promotes good growth in business scalability, especially during the rush hour. Call center management can also lean on technologies [IVRs] and solutions that automatedly distribute call loads, preventing agent overburdening or underutilization.

5. Reduce Wait Times and Call Drop Rate

An AHT of higher value translates to longer waiting times on the calls, thereby annoying customers and causing many hang-ups. Intelligent virtual assistants work to optimize the routing of calls and manage to connect them quickly to the appropriate agents.

AI-based IVR and generative AI tools also help considerably in handling basic queries automatically.

What affects Average Handle Time

There are several factors affecting AHT, such as agent experience, call complexity, system efficiency, and customer cooperation. Too long hold times, inefficient workflow, and lack of training can add extra minutes to AHT.

Effective Intelligent call routing, process improvements, and automation tools help to minimize AHT, contributing to favorable customer experiences and improving overall contact center performance.

Here are some of the factors that affect Average Handle Time:

1. Agent’s Skill and Experience

AHT is significantly affected by the level of proficiency and experience of call center agents. Agents who have strong customer service skills and detailed knowledge of a company’s products or services can perform quicker resolution of queries, leading to lower AHTs.

Conversely, less-experienced agents may not find troubleshooting as easy, floundering for help more frequently, hence prolonging AHT.

Continuous agent training and call recording access for learning purposes, alongside real-time performance analysis via call center software, provide an enhancement for agent performance.

Well-trained agents also contribute to a higher CSAT, resulting in an overperformance of the entire call center.

Solution: 

• Provide regular agent training on problem-solving and customer service skills.

• Use call recording for performance review and improvement.

• Implement AI-driven agent assist tools to provide real-time support.

2. Customer’s Inquiry or Complexity

Some customers take seconds to resolve, while others take extended hours of troubleshooting. Simple requests like checking an account balance can be resolved immediately through IVR or self-service options.

At the same time, technical issues may require escalation to a human agent, increasing call handling time. Dealing with this sets up a good case for intelligent routing that directs tickets to appropriately skilled individuals.

This may also include routing calls to categories, as call complexity informs increased resolution rate management, decreased non-value-add hold time, and hence placing time-certain and correct responses in front of customers, their customer satisfaction scores by leaps and bounds.

Solution: 

• Use intelligent routing to connect customers with the most qualified agent.

• Offer self-service options like FAQs and chatbots for common issues.

• Provide agents with unified communications to access customer history instantly.

3. Lack of AI Tools and Automation

Modern contact center solutions leverage AI and automation to improve center operations and optimize AHT calculation. Without AI-powered agent assist tools, agents spend more time searching for information, leading to longer handling times.

By implementing interactive voice response (IVR), generative AI, and workflow automation, manual work can be reduced, significantly improving call flow. AI can provide a level of assistance by suggesting responses, retrieving customer history, and automating after-call work (ACW).

Call center software equipped with intelligent virtual assistants makes sure that agents remove focus from repetitive processes and put it on solving major customer issues, therefore contributing to shorter average handling times in a contact center.

Solution: 

• Implement interactive voice response (IVR) to handle basic queries.

• Use workflow automation and rest APIs for seamless data retrieval.

• Adopt generative AI and intelligent virtual assistants to support agents.

Best practices to improve Average Handle Time

To improve Average Handle Time (AHT), train agents thoroughly to enhance efficiency and problem-solving skills.

Use automation tools like chatbots and knowledge bases to streamline workflows. Optimize call routing to connect customers with the right agents quickly.

Reduce hold times by improving system speed and access to information. Encourage active listening and concise communication to resolve issues faster. Regularly analyze performance metrics and provide feedback to ensure continuous improvement in handling times.

Here are some of the best practices to improve Average Handle Time:

1. Provide Training to Agents

Regular training of agents is vital for ensuring the enhancement of their performance and operations. The more a call center agent is trained, the quicker they will respond to inquiries, thus resulting in better call resolution and a lower number of call handling times.

Agents’ training should cover customer service skills, troubleshooting techniques, and efficient use of call center software. Reviewing the recording of calls would help the agents find the areas in which they could improve.

A knowledgeable workforce would mean greater customer satisfaction, lower AHTs in call centers, and enhanced overall call center performance.

2. Utilize Automation and AI Tools

Automation and AI-driven solutions help center operations by performing highly repetitive tasks themselves. Interactive voice response (IVR) and intelligent virtual assistants can handle basic customer queries, lessening the agents’ workloads at the center.

Furthermore, agent-assist AI tools provide suggestions to the agents in real-time, enabling the agents to resolve issues faster. In conclusion, the full implementation of workflow automation is vital in reducing the immense time spent on manual processes.

3. Proactive Service

By anticipating customer needs, call center managers can optimize interaction with customers. Using center software integrated with rest APIs, agents can retrieve customer history before picking up a call, providing a chance for seamless, relevant resolutions.

It effectively reduces the time a customer spends on hold by curtailing needless back-and-forth conversation. It champions follow-through on customer requests and issues, carries NPS to the skies after making things easy, stops follow-up calls, optimizes call center Average Handle Time, and puts customer scores in the green.

4. Implement Effective Call Routing

This best-practice method allows customers to connect with call center agents best suited to help them, with little or no time spent on transfers. Competitive routing methods that consider factors related to call volume, agent availability, and expertise allow for responsive service.

Implementation of IVR and AI-powered customer service metric systems can enable businesses to streamline call flow and reduce hold time.

Routing effectively reduces the customer experience of the customer having bounced around a department. This means better employee engagement and overall better call center performance.

5. Develop Self-Service and Knowledge Base

Such a self-service portal, combined with a knowledge base, provides valuable information to customers without resorting to contacting a call center. FAQs, AI-based chatbots, and video tutorials work to reduce incoming call volumes and have a direct impact on call center AHT.

This knowledge base enables agents to search for relevant information quickly, thereby boosting the speed of client calls’ resolution.

Such contact center solutions provide a valuable twofold approach to customer service divisions, enabling them to streamline operations and drastically decrease customer time on hold, further improving customer satisfaction in the digital check-in experience.

Conclusion

Understanding and optimizing Average Handle Time (AHT) is important for call centers to enhance customer satisfaction and operational efficiency. Most businesses can think of it as just a key performance indicator(KPI), but it can directly increase customer experience and customer lifecycle.

By reducing AHT, businesses can balance efficiency and quality service to their customers, ensuring that they feel valued and that their issues are resolved promptly.

Invest in software that can grow with your business, help your team succeed, and improve response times. Overall, choose software according to your business needs and requirements. Businesses can build strong customer relationships, gain trust, and do well in a competitive market by effectively using AHT.

FAQs

What is the Average Handle Time?

Average handle time is the average time agents spend talking on the phone with customers. It is measured in minutes and seconds.

What is a Good Average Handle Time?

A good average handle time (AHT) strikes a balance between customer call service quality and speed. Although it differs by industry, it strives for the quickest time to efficiently resolve calls, increasing customer happiness without hurrying the process.

How to Calculate Average Handle Time?

The formula to calculate Average Handle Time is:

AHT= (Total talk time+total hold time+follow-up time)/total number of calls