Average Handling Time: A controversial metric

What is AHT:

Average handling time (AHT) is a contact center metric refering to the average duration of one transaction. It includes the duration of the interaction itself along with any prelimary tasks, post – interaction times as well as delays during the interaction.

The importance of AHT and methods to improve it:

AHT is an important metric that is tightly related to staffing needs. Assuming that the amount of incoming transactions is independent of the AHT, lowering AHT directly reduces the needs in personnel. This specific argument has been extremely popular in the past as a method to decrease call center operating costs. Smaller AHT can also help reduce the waiting time of incoming calls, which is another popular metric in various contact centers.

Many contact centers are thus aiming for low AHT and some (like the outsourcing company I was working for a few years ago) use this goal as the cornerstone of their operations. There are several methods that are typically used to reduce this particular metric, some of which are really beneficial while others can cause more problems than they solve and increase total costs despite decreasing costs of human resources:

• Reduce talking time. The only really successful way to do this is by coaching and training customer service representatives to increase their knowledge as well as their reflexes. It is a slow but highly recommended method for decreasing AHT. Other clumsy methods that are widely used in many horrible contact centers are prompting the customer to try/do something and then ask him to call again or find ways to get rid of the customer in case the call seems to take too long (I remember i was given a list of methods to achieve that during my training as a throwaway agent!).
• Reduce hold time. This can be achieved again via training agents to multitasking. Another method of critical importance in achieving smaller hold times is deploying a prompt IT infrastructure. Well designed CTI systems help agents find quickly the information they need. A good CRM is also critical in this regard.
• Reduce after-call time. This is again achieved by both multitasking training (part of post-call work can be completed while talking to a customer) as well as good IT infrastructure (eliminate the need for duplicate entries etc).
• Use automated systems like IVR to perform mundane tasks such as user authentication and gathering basic information about the customer's query so as to route the call to the best available agent to handle it. This in a very effective method of reducing AHT that is widely used.
  
  

AHT criticism:

However, AHT has lost a lot of its former importance lately for various reasons. First of all, the amount of incoming transactions is not completely independent of the AHT. A badly handled call that leaves several unresolved issues can have very low handling time but it may result in several additional calls in the future. Taking into account the fact that pre-interaction and post-interaction overheads are pretty much the same for most calls (an agent requires more or less a specific amount of time to fill in data in the CRM, regardless of the result of the call) this can severely increase the effort needed to actually solve a customer's issue, even by reducing AHT. Furthermore, pushing for lower AHT typically results in agents behaving in a certain manner, deliberately trying to get rid of a customer if the call seems to be taking too long. In general, AHT conflicts with FCR which can be seen by itself a severe drawback. This conflict between these two metrics has been a point of controversy in many companies. Many experts today believe that FCR should be the top goal of every contact center and other metrics that may conflict with it, such as AHT, should be looked at only in case they do not affect FCR.