Average handling time

3 posts



How many times does someone use a piece of business terminology which you don’t really understand? Everyone else nods sagely, so you think the best thing to do is to nod along sagely as well, instead of asking, “Excuse me, what exactly is a KPI?”

I’m going to explain what KPIs really are and how they work so that you can discuss them intelligently and make sensible decisions.

Let's Start With The Acronym


KPI concept

KPI means “key performance indicator.” There are a number of origin stories. The most popular involves public sector management.

In 1980s Britain, where Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Party were trying to find ways to run government more like businesses, they came up against the challenge of measuring the performance of organizations that don’t, and aren’t intended to, make money. So, they started using KPIs to do the job.

KPIs often focus on what happens within processes. Businesses realized that they could use them too. Information technology was becoming available to crunch the numbers. It was the perfect breeding ground for KPIs.

Basic Concepts


Woman uses KPI dashboard

KPIs (or “metrics”) measure something in numerical terms. Sometimes, organizations try to justify funding requests by “measuring” the unmeasurable. An organization may quantify “engagement” by counting how many meetings they have with their target audience, how many people were attending the meetings, etc. While this measures “activity,” does it necessarily measure “engagement”? How many people pay attention during the meetings? What happens because of these meetings?

When someone presents you with a KPI, ask how it’s calculated or what it is supposed to represent.

Lagging & Leading Indicators


Man looks at KPIs with his coworker

​Lagging indicators are used to measure what has happened while leading indicators are used to predict what is going to happen. Lagging indicators, which measure what has happened, are often used as leading indicators, to infer what is going to happen.

Average handling time (AHT) is a good example. It measures the average length of time a contact center agent spends working with each customer, including talk time, hold time, and after-call work. It is based on calls that have been finished, so it can rightly be considered a lagging indicator.

AHT is also used to infer how many calls agents will handle in the future. AHT is an integral part of forecasting and planning. In this way, AHT is also a leading indicator.

When someone quotes a KPI you are unfamiliar with, ask if it’s a lagging indicator or a leading indicator. And if they say it’s a leading indicator, ask why.

Aggregated Metrics


KPI, key performance indicator, graph, productivity, goal concept

Aggregated metrics or KPIs are those which don’t measure something directly, but instead combine a series of other metrics to come up with an overall score. Performance ratings are a typical example.

A contact center agent gets a quarterly performance rating. Her bonus depends on this. It is a combination of her AHT, how many calls she handled in the quarter (productivity), how many hours she worked in the quarter (attendance), and a quality rating based on one call evaluated per week by her supervisor.

Her performance rating doesn’t only depend on the four statistics shown above. It also depends on how important the person designing the metric thinks each statistic is. She might have perfect quality scores in all the calls evaluated, but if quality is given a 10% weighting and AHT has a 40% weighting, then her calls being longer than the average will work against her, regardless of her quality scores.

The choice of metrics is also important. Her “performance” depends on AHT, productivity, attendance, and quality. A contact center shift has a finite length, so if AHT goes up, productivity will inevitably go down, so the two metrics are more or less measuring the same thing.

The choice of metrics has an influence on behavior. I am an agent. If I know I am going to lose my bonus spending too long trying to help a customer, then I will rapidly escalate him to Tier 2 if I can’t solve his problem quickly.

"Every Metric Has Its Place."


KPI, key performance indicator concept

To understand a metric, you need to know where it sits in the process you are measuring. Traditionally, there are four places where they can sit.

Inputs: They measure what happens to contributing factors before the process starts. Contact center classics are “number of calls offered” or “right party connects.” On the HR side, they can include “agent churn.”

Process: They measure what actually happens during the process. Most contact center KPIs are "process” KPIs. Classics in the contact center world include service level (percentage of calls answered within a specified number of seconds) or AHT.

Outputs: This is what the process produces as complete units of finished work. The contact center “classic” is “productivity,” the number of calls handled. Output measures should be hard numbers. If an “output” measure is a fuzzy aggregate KPI like “engagement,” then it’s worth asking what exactly the process produces.

Outcomes: These are intended to measure the consequences of the process. They do not always correlate with outputs. NPS scores are a typical example. High-tech contact centers may use customer sentiment scores. Outcome KPIs are more likely to be aggregated, which means they may be more subject to manipulation or bias. If you’re not sure what an outcome KPI means, try asking what it measures or how it relates to the process it’s measuring.

Wrapping Up

Done right, KPIs are a valuable tool to understand how processes are performing. They do need to be well considered and applied intelligently. If you’re looking to overhaul your KPIs and would like to bounce a few ideas around, why don’t we get in touch?


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Everything You Wanted To Know About KPIs …

How To Reduce Average Handling Time (AHT) In Contact Centers



It’s common knowledge that approximately 65% of contact center costs are staffing costs. Inbound staff get paid by the hour. If your cost per call is USD 3.82, then USD 2.90 of that cost is for staffing costs.

If you can reduce AHT by 10%, staffing costs reduce to USD 2.06, and the overall cost per call reduces to USD 3.59—a USD 0.23 cost reduction per call.

Let’s scale these numbers up for a 100-seat contact center. Assuming that each agent handles 50 calls a day, and there are 90 agents working at any one time, then the contact center handles 4,500 calls a day, so it will save approximately USD 1,033 per day, USD 23,000 per month, and USD 276,000 per year.

Common Root Causes And Solutions


Call center employee talks to a customer on the phone

​To reduce AHT, the best way to do it is to listen to a selection of calls that are longer than AHT, and a selection that are shorter. You can then see how many of the common root causes listed below you find in the longer calls as opposed to the shorter calls.

If you have speech analytics software available, you can make this task a lot easier.

Transfers And Routing Strategy


Person dials a phone number

​How many calls are agents transferring to Tier 2?

Let’s say your AHT is 4 minutes (240 seconds) and 10% of calls are routed to a Tier 2 agent.

Customers spend 2 minutes with a Tier 1 agent, 1 minute on hold while the Tier 1 agent explains the problem to a Tier 2 agent, and 3 minutes with a Tier 2 agent. Total time = 6 minutes.

If that call was routed directly to a Tier 2 agent, he could handle it in 4 minutes. This is a net saving of 2 minutes or 33% on the longest calls in the contact center.

Why not redesign the IVR to route customers with common Tier 2 problems directly to Tier 2?

“Dead Air”


Call center employee talks to her manager

This is when neither side is talking. Customers do not like it because they don’t know what is happening and they are paying for the call.

It’s often caused by slow computer systems or poorly trained agents who are not familiar with the tools or workflows.

It’s worth finding calls with “dead air” and investigating why this is happening. If computer systems are the problem, do they affect all categories of cases or specific cases where specific tools are used?

Can the tools be sped up in some way? Can the process be adjusted so that agents are running the tools while doing something else? Could this category of issues be handled by chat instead of a call, so that agents can handle multiple chats at the same time?

Call Handling Skills


Call center employees answer phone calls

Most contact center agents are nice people. They are trained to be polite to customers. They are not always so good at taking control of a conversation when a customer is upset or simply wants to talk about something else.

Agents need to be assertive to keep the conversation on track. They need to be trained to control the conversation by asking the right questions and not getting drawn into other directions.

Workflow: How Much Can You Reduce Call Length By?


Empty call center

Listen to a selection of your calls. If you reduce the call to the bare minimum of greeting, verification, needs analysis, response, and goodbye, how many seconds will it shave off of the call length?

How will this affect customer satisfaction (CSAT)? How will they react to a shorter, brisker call?

Can Some Calls Be Automated, And What Will That Do To Your AHT/CSAT?


Woman in call center talks to a customer on the phone

Some simple requests can be handled by automated “bots.” Contact center costs are a function of cost per call and call volumes.

If we reduce AHT, we reduce the cost per call.

Automating simple processes will reduce call volumes but may lead to an increase in AHT.

Let’s say we can automate 10% of calls, but this will lead to an increase in AHT by 5%. What is the net effect? Let’s do a “before” and “after” comparison.

“Before”

Assume the cost per call is USD 3.82. (See above)

90 agents normally work at any one time, and each agent handles 50 calls per day.

Total costs per day = USD 17,190 per day.

“After”

Assume the cost per call is USD 4.00 because AHT on human-handled calls has been increased by 5%.

90 agents normally work at any one time, and each agent now handles 45 calls per day.

Total costs per day = USD 16,200 per day.

This is because call volumes have been reduced from 4,500 to 4,050 per day.

This saving of USD 990.00 per day represents 69 employee hours that can be realized by redeploying them to other tasks.

Multiplying this up, savings of USD 990 per day is USD 22,770 per month or USD 273,240 per year.

Over to you!

Are you trying to reduce your AHT? How much can you cut your call length by? Which root cause looks most likely?

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How To Reduce Average Handling Time (AHT) …

Using Quality Management To Improve KPIs



“Do more with less.”

This seems to be top management’s mantra these days. Contact centers’ performance is intensively measured, often down to the second, with KPI data such as average handling time (AHT) or first contact resolution (FCR).

With so much data available, the pressure is on to shave seconds off of call lengths and solve more problems the first time around.

You can use your quality team, their expertise, and their technology, to do this. The tried and tested Lean Six Sigma process improvement methodology can be applied to such problems. It can be summarized with the handy acronym “DMAIC.”

Here’s how we would use this approach to make systemic reductions in AHT.

D for Define


key performance indicator (KPI) concept

In this stage, you define the aim and the scope of your project. For our example, the aim is to reduce AHT, so reducing the cost per call and the number of agents to handle a specific call volume.

The scope of the project might be for one team as a pilot project before rolling it out across the contact center.

This is also the stage where you recruit your project team. You will want a couple of agents, someone who can get hold of and analyze data, and a senior sponsor who should take a “hands off” role but win you the co-operation of team leaders, etc.

In our example, our aim is to reduce AHT by 10%. We are using a small team of 10 agents for the pilot, and the project team consists of two experienced agents, a data analyst, and the facilitator.

M for Measure


time, quality, cost concept

Our critical to quality KPI is AHT. We want to reduce this by 10%. Now we need to figure out what might be the root causes that are making the calls so long.

We ask our agents to map out the call flow and after-call work process as they experience it. It’s tempting for the facilitator to use a flow diagram from IT. Agents often use multiple applications which don’t fit easily into a flow diagram. Agents often develop “workarounds” when things don’t work. They start as temporary measures, but then balloon into permanent institutions.

It’s best to have these discussions with agents without management being present. Agents may not be willing to express themselves so freely in the presence of someone who can fire them.

Start by creating a simple process description with a “SIPOC” diagram. If need be, you can flesh it out with more detail.

Once you have defined the process, then you need to brainstorm all the possible reasons why the calls might be long. For details on how to brainstorm, please see “further reading” below.

Now you have your top 10 suspected root causes. You will decide how to measure them.

You will probably use them as evaluation criteria on a call listening form. For more details on creating such a form, please see “further reading” below. If you have speech analytics technology, you may be able to automate some or all of these measurement activities, which will give you a much larger sample size.

Calls are either longer than or shorter than AHT, so we want to select two sample groups, one longer and one shorter

We listen to the calls and count the presence of the suspected root causes in them.

A for Analyze


Woman looks over data for KPIs

Once you have listened to your sample, count how many times evidence of each root cause is found in the sample of “long” calls and how many times evidence of each root cause is found in the sample of “short” calls.

Where the evidence mostly appears in the longer calls, these are likely to be the real root causes. Where the evidence appears equally in both samples or mostly in the shorter calls, then these will not be the root causes of the calls being longer.

You have now identified your root causes based on data.

I for Improve


quality management concept

If the verified root cause is the result of agent behavior, then you can correct it with appropriate training.

If the verified root cause is the result of some system issue—for example, agents are using an application that loads slowly—then you may need to look into improving the application’s performance.

If there are specific steps in the process that are slowing the agents down, then you may need to adjust the process.

There should be some scope for improvements.

C for Control


Older professional gives a presentation

After taking corrective action, you will want to see if you have reduced AHT by 10%.

It’s not hard to get those results.

You will now want to see if the change in AHT was the result of the root causes you identified.

Run the same measurement program for calls longer or shorter than AHT again. If the longer calls contain evidence of the same root causes in the same proportions as they did before, then your efforts may have been for nothing, and you did not find the root causes.

Wrap-Up


Do you need to get a grip on your KPIs and “Do more with less”? Perhaps this might help. If you’d like to know more, I’d love to hear about it!

Further reading...

Here is my article on brainstorming: How To Run A Brainstorming Session

Here is my article on quality standards: Creating Quality Standards For Contact Centers


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Using Quality Management To Improve KPIs