What is AHT and How to Improve It?

The AHT (Average Handle Time or Average Handling Time) is a indicator that helps us understand the average time of interactions between the customer and a contact center.

It is common for this indicator to be known as TMO, the Spanish acronym of Average Operating Time. It should be noted that, although AHT is generally used for incoming or outgoing calls, the concept is also applied to video call, chat, WhatsApp, etc.

A common formula for measuring AHT is as follows:

That is, the AHT (Average Handle Time) or TMO measures the amount of time an agent spends on an interaction, both during and after. It is worth breaking down each of the components of the formula to get a better approach to the concept:

1. Talk time: is the total time that agents are talking to or have contact with customers.
2. Hold time (on hold): this is the time that the customer is on hold, that is, the time they are kept waiting until an agent answers them. It is important to differentiate between hold and mute time, since in the second case it usually stops counting the call time, and therefore it is recommended not to use it.
3. After-Call Time (or ACW, After Call Work): as translated into Spanish, it refers to the time after the call and is the time spent on those tasks that the agent must carry out to complete the transaction before being available to answer another call or contact. Some examples of these activities can be: filling out a form, sending an email, making some annotation in an application, creating a case for scaling, etc.

How to Manage AHT?

It is important to mention that each call has a context, and that therefore the management of the AHT must be adapted according to the skill (Customer Service, technical support, sales, collections, etc.). However, it is clear that there is a natural desire in the operations of Call Center to optimize this indicator. Here it is key to highlight that, even if the goal is to reduce call times, we must ensure that customer satisfaction levels increase or at least be maintained, otherwise we would be improving an operating indicator by sacrificing the most important thing: the perceived customer experience.

Here are some tips for managing it properly:

• Guarantees ideal training from the agent, this will ensure that there are concrete and effective responses during the call.
• Facilitates access and management between applications, most of the inefficiencies can be generated between the jumps and searches that an agent must do for more than 1 application for the same management.
• Check that the processes and policies are aligned to facilitate the customer-facing Solution. There is nothing like generating a negative impact on the customer because the Policy does not allow it.
• Monitor transactions to understand the reasons for the call and the way in which advisors are managing it, detecting aspects of improved feedback to the channel and the company.
• Measure time durations of contact in its 3 components, review the average, but also the deviation by advisor, by skill, by schedule and other types of seasonalities to understand when times are inappropriately deviated.