Met­rics. Num­bers. Data. If you feel inun­dated by num­bers and are won­der­ing how to sort through the var­i­ous met­rics you need to be track­ing for a call cen­ter or your cus­tomer ser­vice depart­ment, you’re cer­tainly not alone.  In this post, we’re going to dis­cuss aver­age han­dle time, specif­i­cally, and give you the ins and outs of what it’s used for, when to apply it, and how to improve your aver­age han­dle time numbers.

Straight­for­ward and simple

The aver­age han­dle time sim­ply tracks how long calls last (called talk time) and how much time is spent in the post-call wrap-up (called wrap time). Typ­i­cally, a low aver­age han­dle time is seen as pos­i­tive and indi­cates effi­ciency. And, among the other met­rics typ­i­cally tracked, such as first-call res­o­lu­tion, esca­la­tion rates, or even the cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion score (CSAT), aver­age han­dle time is much more straightforward—it sim­ply aver­ages the amount of time spent help­ing callers over a spe­cific num­ber of calls.

Fore­cast­ing: Aver­age Han­dle Time + Vol­ume = Call Load

Aver­age han­dle time is pop­u­lar because it is so straight­for­ward, and it seems to be a clear indi­ca­tor of effi­ciency, but per­haps the bet­ter use of the met­ric is for fore­cast­ing the work­load at a call cen­ter. By com­bin­ing the aver­age han­dle time with call vol­ume, you will arrive at your call load, which serves as a use­ful guide for plan­ning and man­age­ment purposes.

Great. So reduce aver­age han­dle time, be able to fore­cast, and reduce costs, right?

Not so fast. Mea­sur­ing aver­age han­dle time is indeed imper­a­tive for fore­cast­ing, and by mak­ing your call cen­ter more effi­cient, you will see reduced costs and (hope­fully) a rise in prof­itabil­ity, but if you are solely focused on being quick and effi­cient, you may be sac­ri­fic­ing qual­ity. In par­tic­u­lar, if you have a cen­ter han­dling com­plex issues and a sec­ondary goal is to build rela­tion­ships with your cus­tomers, cap­ture addi­tional infor­ma­tion, or cre­ate add-on sales, then sim­ply try­ing to drive down your aver­age han­dle time could work against your organization’s over­all goals (and the ever-important CSAT score).

Be cau­tious, there­fore, if you really push aver­age han­dle time or incen­tivize your rep­re­sen­ta­tives to keep the num­ber low. In doing so, they may miss chances to cross-sell, up-sell, or build rap­port with the customer.

Focus on the process, not sim­ply the result

So where does this leave us? Focus­ing on aver­age han­dle time does seem impor­tant, but we’ve also advised not to rely on the met­ric too much and jeop­ar­dize call qual­ity. Like most con­tact cen­ter met­rics, aver­age han­dle time is a depen­dent vari­able that works in con­junc­tion with other processes in place. When you focus sim­ply on con­trol­ling one ele­ment of ser­vice, such as aver­age han­dle time, you can throw a wrench in other, equally impor­tant steps. How­ever, by tak­ing a holis­tic view of the com­plete process—from your over­all cus­tomer ser­vice strat­egy goals to your cus­tomer ser­vice train­ing process and all of the met­rics that you use to mon­i­tor your cen­ter, you’ll start to see pat­terns and be able to fix the under­ly­ing issues with­out jeop­ar­diz­ing your over­all cus­tomer service.

Peggy Car­law is the founder of Impact Learn­ing Sys­tems, a lead­ing train­ing com­pany spe­cial­iz­ing in improv­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions between front-line employ­ees and cus­tomers. Peggy is co-author of sev­eral books pub­lished by McGraw-Hill, includ­ing Man­ag­ing and Moti­vat­ing Con­tact Cen­ter Employ­ees and The Big Book of Sales Train­ing Games.

Peggy Carlaw

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